Japa Workshop—01 Entering the Workshop

Giriraj Swami: Hare Krishna. 

The topic is my journey with japa and as Yagya Purusa Prabhu said, our journey is continuing right now. But to begin I will go back to the first time I saw a devotee chanting. I wasn’t sure, I didn’t know at the time, he was a devotee but later I understood he was a devotee. 

I had come to the bay area in the summer of 1968 and I was walking along Haight Street and I saw a tall fellow wearing robes with a shaved head and I wasn’t conscious of it at the time so clearly, but in retrospect I am pretty sure he was chanting japa. Then some days later, I was on my way to do something that I thought was very important and I saw a big crowd in Union Square and I looked through the crowd and there were some devotees chanting Hare Krishna and I paused, I was a seeker- I paused but at the time I felt I had to get somewhere and I also couldn’t quite figure it out maybe I wasn’t ready.

And then the next time was in end of March 1969. I saw a poster on my campus—Lecture on Bhagavad-gītā As It Is, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami. So I went and after the lecture there was a kirtan, in the hall it was the auditorium is actually quite a nice auditorium but it had bare brick walls, it was just a style and Satsvarupa Maharaja led to kirtan. Srila Prabhupada was sitting on the stage and the sound was just captivating, I mean I really- students were getting up from their seats and going on to the stage and joining the devotees and dancing and I also felt like doing it but for social reasons, not the usual social reasons but some specific social reason, I contained myself. 

And then after the last kirtan, a devotee, might have been Satsvarupa Maharaja, asked if anyone in the audience had a car and was driving to Harvard Square or to Boston. The devotees needed a lift and I was going to Harvard square and I did have a car so everyone piled in it was a red rambler station wagon. Everyone piled in and there was some discussion in the car and I was very impressed. Actually one lady devotee Jahnava Mataji was in the front seat. The men were really piled in the back and I was so impressed with her. I was looking for a guru and I had met many Swamis and yogis and masters and she spoke with more authority than any of them, this young lady, but I could understand she could not be speaking with that authority on her own strength, the authority must be coming from somewhere else from her teacher and I just I was very eager to meet him.

So the next day I went to the temple and Hansadutta Prabhu had come down from Montreal. Srila Prabhupada actually introduced him and said we are very honored today that one devotee has come all the way from Montreal and now we will hear from him. Hansadutta Prabhu spoke and I didn’t know who was who at the time, but then Srila Prabhupada did speak and I understood this is the main lecturer, but Hansadutta also spoke very nicely and then there was kirtan and it was very powerful. All the kirtans were so ecstatic, devotees just look forward to it and dance in ecstasy.

So I started to come every day and soon enough someone told me about japa and I began to chant and I liked it. And I remember just that little storefront, 95 Glenville Avenue, just chanting on my beads and there are beautiful devotional pictures on the wall and they looked like not pictures. There was Krishna, there was Vishnu, there was Pancha-tattva, there was Prabhupada, and I would chant and I chanted pretty loudly. At first I wasn’t counting my rounds or anything just chanting. And then they told me about rounds and how Srila Prabhupada said that if two of the senses are fixed then the mind will be fixed and therefore we chant on the beads because the beads engage the sense of touch and then we hear; that engages the sense of hearing and if those two senses are fixed then the mind will be fixed.

Then eventually it came time for initiation. I was initiated by mail but still I had to send my beads and the devotees told me because in those days we didn’t import beads from India, we would go to a bead shop and buy beads and string them. So one devotee told me that if you chant one mantra for each bead that you string by the time you have strung the 108 beads you will be in complete ecstasy. So I did it and what they said was pretty true. Then they sent the beads and in those days we would go on street chanting hari-nāma-saṅkīrtana every day and distribute BTGs and one day on hari-nāma I don’t know what happened I just started to cry, and I just felt some spiritual force—spiritual presence and so I asked some devotees. He said it could be that at that moment Srila Prabhupada was chanting on your beads and giving you initiation and then a couple of days later the beads came in the mail with the letter and it seemed very possible. So yes, we didn’t go out that much then. We would only go out as I mentioned with the hari-nāma party and BTGs. Later devotees would go out with BTGs and books without the hari-nāma party. And we were a small temple, so usually we would just go out, of course the hours increase, we would go out in the afternoons so they had a lot of time to chant japa. So I had the whole morning and it was very nice. So then I was asked to go to India which was great. I think every devotee in the temple was hoping they would be the one. Anyway I was the one from the Boston temple and I always had a policy to chant twelve rounds before I did anything else and I think this was tested. 

I arrived in Bombay and I was based in Bombay and we put on the first Bombay pandal. Then after the success of the first Bombay pandal, Srila Prabhupada asked Tamal Krishna Goswami and me to go to Calcutta and do the first pandal in Calcutta, which was the second pandal in India. And so I did very well, meeting people and speaking to them about Krishna consciousness and getting support. Tamal Krishna Goswami said, “You raise the money and I will spend it.” So that is okay. It was fine with me and it is funny I never got into competition. I did a lot of BTGs before I went to India and never got into competition but in Calcutta, I got a souvenir book that was published for a function of a Mayavadi in India; the famous Mayavadi of India. And we didn’t know anyone so I guess I will just approach the people that gave him ads but I thought I must go to every single person who gave to him and get them to give more to Krishna consciousness than they gave to the Mayavadi. And I think in the end we defeated. So that that was very good. But then after the pandal, maybe it was even during it, anyway during that period, Tamal Krishna Goswami he really wanted me to make a lot of appointments. I think it was after the pandal and I just had my own way of working and my way of working was I had to do my twelve rounds before I did anything else because I felt I could do my other four it wouldn’t be too hard, but even then sometimes it was a little hard. Later I heard Mahatma Prabhu say that Srila Prabhupada said if you don’t finish your sixteen rounds by ten in the morning you will be in anxiety for the rest of the day. And I could see that because sometimes even those four little rounds that I left, it really got difficult because we were so busy, but if I did twelve I could function. If I didn’t do twelve I just couldn’t function. And Tamal Krishna Goswami wanted me to start earlier. He didn’t want me to be standing in front of the deities chanting my rounds, when I could be making phone calls and making appointments and I tried to explain and “You are just pretending you like to chant, you actually just want to avoid work.” And I don’t really even know how to assess that statement but the fact is I couldn’t function unless I did my twelve rounds. Then from Calcutta eventually I went to Bombay. And the Juhu project, that really was a struggle. That was a struggle when Vaisesika Prabhu said I stayed in Bombay through thick and thin and then he said I got pretty thin—in my mind I was thinking mainly thin. 

I must say that it was very difficult to chant after the day began. It was very difficult and so I would really. . . but it was the same thing. I would do what I could in the morning but it was so intense sometimes it wasn’t like that, that I could just chant and then begin my work at nine in the morning or ten sometimes and then I would just have to squeeze them in. And so that wasn’t a good period in terms of concentrated japa. It was a wonderful period in terms of guru-sevā but I would be chanting on the train from Santacruz to Churchgate or just fitting them in. Anyway I think I will have to skip ahead because. . . So I continued that pattern, chanting in the morning.

After Prabhupada left I would always like to chant in front of his deity in the temple room. And then in 1999 I had a health problem. I developed it in my travels but I didn’t realize that I had heart disease until I came to California. I was actually scheduled to be in California for twelve days as part of the tour and I had these symptoms beginning. I had them in Mauritius, I had them in South Africa, I had them in India, but I had a very bad bout at Heathrow airport on the way to America but it just never occurred to me that it could be heart disease. But when I got to Santa Barbara I realized I had better find out what this is and then I found out I really had to change my lifestyle so I couldn’t travel as much, and japa was about all I had. I wasn’t living in a temple community anymore and I would relish that japa. For some time I moved down to Dana Point. Krishna Kirtan and Kandarpa Manjari let me use their apartment there and they stayed at her parents’ house which was just across the street because their parents were mainly living in Texas and they just came once in a while to California. And she had a very nice altar which, I would just sit and chant in front of those deities. It is really nice.

But during Prabhupada’s presence he had instructed me to write and it was always in my mind that I had to write but I was always too busy. I thought, “Okay, this is the time.” It seems to be some arrangement that will enable me to write and then I found that the best time to write was early in the morning, which was when I would always chant and then my japa was pushed to the afternoon. And being out of that routine of chanting in the temple room in the morning, chanting in front of the deities, I guess it slipped a bit. And then I saw a letter by Mahatma Prabhu on the internet “Put an end to courtesy japa.” And I read it. I don’t know, this is very interesting; it was very interesting. And then, I don’t know how it happened but people kept mentioning Sacinandana Swami’s book, The Nectarian Ocean of the Holy Name which I had but I have never really read seriously and it just kept coming up so I thought, Oh this is very interesting, I should read it. I started to read it and then His Holiness Niranjana Swami came to stay with me for some weeks or more and I thought, “Oh this is really a good opportunity because he is such a serious chanter and he has so much taste for the holy name, this is a really good chance for me; I can serve him.” The Bhāgavatam says that by serving great souls you develop their qualities and first and foremost is the quality of attraction for chanting and hearing. 

The idea for it had come earlier. Purusa Sukta Prabhu had sent out a letter. These people have volunteered to work, to do something for the spiritual care initiative and who would you like to team up with? So Sacinandana Swami and I spoke. We decided well, we team up with each other so initially the idea of the Ohio japa retreat was that it would be near to me because at that time my travels were still very limited and Sacinandana Swami and I would have a chance to be together. But that year he got very sick and he had to cancel his visit and he assumed that we would cancel our retreats. But Purusa Sukta Prabhu said no, we don’t want to cancel, we want to go through with it, the retreat. And at that time His Holiness Niranjana Swami was still staying with me, and that was really a transformative experience. It was the culmination of reading Mahatma’s letter, reading Sacinandana Swami’s book, chanting japa with Niranjana Swami—just an increased awareness of the importance of attentive chanting, offenseless chanting.

That retreat was a smaller group. At the time, they had the idea of having retreats for leaders- so they were all Prabhupada disciples. And it is very intimate and I learned a lot and as Bhurijana Prabhu often used to say, the best way to learn something is to teach it. So by speaking about the holy name, I became more aware of some of the principles that we discuss but which aren’t always in the forefront of our consciousness and it is also service to the holy name. That was my main idea, by serving the holy name, by participating in these retreats, I will get the mercy of the holy name. And I would say that the retreat was working up to the sixty-four round day. That is one thing we aren’t able to do in a workshop and the experience I had in the sixty-four round day was just profound. It was profound! I had experiences chanting that I had never had before and things were just so clear about the power of the holy name, the efficacy of the holy name, but it also became clear to me how important the association was. And that was another highlight.

The next morning we shared our experiences with the sixty-four round day and another important feature of the sixty-four round day was the mauna-vrata—not speaking. I cannot tell you how much time and energy was saved by not speaking. It was immense. And I realized that apart from speaking, so much mental energy goes into thinking whether to speak or not, thinking what to say, thinking how to say it. Then after having said it, thinking how the person took it, if I have to adjust what I said because the person might not have taken it the way I wanted. And that is the one side. The other side is, worrying that someone might speak to me while I am chanting and interrupt me. And then if they say something that I don’t like and my mind is going to be distracted, even if they say something I like my mind might be distracted. So besides the time actually spent speaking, a tremendous amount of time and mental energy goes into thinking about speaking and reacting to people speaking to you, by reacting to the way they reacted to you speaking to them. And that was really good but we would see each other. There is a beautiful grounds in Ohia so one could usually walk into the woods and be alone or one might cross paths with devotees. Earlier I was more in that mood to be in the woods but later I found I got great strength chanting in the hall that we had established as the temple in the association of the other devotees. And as it got closer to the sixty-four, fifty-six, fifty-eight, sixty, it was more and more realization. And by the end of sixty-four, there had been some profound experiences. And then the next morning we shared them and at night we had kirtan. That is another nice thing about the retreats, that there is kirtan every evening from seven to nine. So that is wonderful as well. 

So Ravindra Svarupa Prabhu had come for that and I really wanted to have his association, so he agreed that after the retreat he would come to my place and spend the night time there and it said doctor’s order; I have to walk an hour a day. So then the question was, what do we do during our walk, how do we chant japa? And he said that he has learned how to walk and actually hear when he chants. Now the tendency is that the scenery is in the foreground and the japa is in the background, but he said it is possible to walk and the japa is in the foreground but we have to make an effort. So we did that. We spoke a lot. He also had wonderful realizations, and one thing he mentioned in the retreat, and it is something he has mentioned on other occasions, is that some years ago, maybe twenty years ago, it struck him that we really have to hear when we chant. It seems obvious now with devotees writing books and conducting seminars that we are meant to hear but it actually took a while.

Many devotees, they just get in the habit of chanting but not really making a serious effort to hear. First is to pronounce it and sit properly different techniques that we will learn, but the conclusion is to hear. And when he started to do that seriously, he started experiencing an overwhelming sense of sadness and from the time he joined he had heard “chant and be happy.” That is almost our motto—chant and be happy. And he was chanting very seriously and he was feeling an overwhelming sense of sorrow and he started to wonder what was happening but he couldn’t tell anyone because he thought he was doing something wrong. He thought, “We are supposed to chant, feel happy, everyone else is chanting and feeling happy.” So as he said, this was his dirty little secret that he didn’t want to share with anyone. And then after some days he had a profound experience of sorrow, and at the bottom of it he had a realization that the sadness had come from being separated from Krishna. That he had at some stage turned away from Krishna, and that it had nothing to do with anything wrong in Krishna, anything bad in Krishna. He had the realization or the perception that Krishna was perfect and that his turning away from Krishna was his fundamental mistake. And then he realized that this realization was a result of his chanting—that he understood his fundamental mistake and after that his whole focus became, how to restore his relationship with Krishna and his japa was the means to that. 

And I also had some experiences, one actually. I was chanting at the beach and that was when Purusa Sukta was staying with me. He stayed with me for a week in Santa Barbara, and I thought it is not a coincidence that I had that experience when he was there. I thought, He is serving the holy name, I am serving him, the holy name is pleased and so the holy name gave me some mercy. And so I was chanting on the beach, sitting and chanting, and I was somehow just feeling everyone’s pain. It began with some individuals but at the beach it extended to all the creatures at the beach and from a superficial point of view, oh it is very nice you are sitting on the beach and there is the pelicans and there is the sandpipers but I wasn’t seeing it like that. I was seeing that the souls in these bodies are full of anxiety. They are full of anxiety and they are struggling for existence. You see the pelicans, they are flying high then they swoop down; they are looking for fish to eat. It is like a kamikaze dive—trying to get some fish to eat and they do it; they make all the effort. I don’t even know if they get the fish. They probably don’t even know if they will get the fish but they have to keep doing it otherwise they will starve to death.

And one stage I looked down and my left hand, I saw there was a little ladybug and it was the same thing. This creature is struggling for existence and it was overwhelming. I was thinking, “I don’t think I can take this. I can’t take the volume of the pain and anxiety of all these living entities.” And then at the same time I was chanting, chanting as attentively as I could. Just feeling it, just an unbearable burden of the pain of all these living entities. And then I had a realization; it reminded me of Ravindra Svarupa Prabhu though, it is a little different.

My realization was that my fundamental mistake is wanting to take the place of Krishna, and I thought of that. We hear it all the time but at that moment I felt it and even now I do when I think of it. Krishna is. . . He is in the heart of all these living entities. He is in the heart of the pelican, He is in the heart of the sandpiper, He is in the heart of the dog, He is in the heart of human beings, He is in the heart of the insect. He really loves them and that is why He stays with them through all different situations. He loves them more than I do and not only that, He has the power to really do something for them. Even if I am aware that the pelican is suffering, the sandpiper is suffering, the dog is suffering, the man is suffering, oh yes, we were seeing the dolphins, the same thing, the hard struggle for existence looks very pretty all of them. That is just like, the façade underneath it is the hard struggle for existence and I realized that this is also part of taking the place of Krishna, wanting to be the best friend of the living entities. Krishna is the best friend of the living entities and that is part of attaining peace—Suhṛdaḥ sarva-dehinām—that when we realize that Krishna is the best friend then we attain peace. And yes, that was a more recent experience but I do think of that experience and there have been others but I think I am making the point here that when we chant seriously, when we chant attentively, we may have profound experiences but the profound experiences are not always easy or pleasant. In ordinary terms it can be difficult. They can be horrifying.

And it reminds me of one disciple who told Srila Prabhupada that he thought that he had better qualities before he joined than after he joined, and he was naming all these things that were coming up in him. And Prabhupada said it is like you live in a house and you haven’t cleaned it for years, and all the dust has settled but you don’t see it because it is all settled. And then you decide to clean the house and then suddenly you see all this dirt; all the dust is flying up. And then you say, “Oh my God, the house was cleaner before I started the process of cleaning it.” So, ceto-darpaṇa-mārjanam, chanting is a process of cleansing, and part of the process of cleansing is that dirt comes up; you see it, you have to face it, and then you expel it—the way it works.

I will end with it on a different note. And again I am emphasizing more recent experiences but almost for the entire month of June, His Holiness Indradyumna Swami stayed with me and during that period we had a bit of a hot spell. Not terribly hot, but it was hot. So it was pleasant to chant in the evening. And in October I went to India and then in December I went to Jagannatha Puri. It is the first time I have been back to India since my surgery and I really had a wonderful experience in Puri. And one of the main reasons I went was, I wanted to get Haridasa Thakura’s mercy, to chant the holy name but this place where I was walking, called Butterfly Beach Montecito, it reminded me so much of Puri, just exactly. They did some renovations there. It reminded me so much of Puri and it was wonderful. And then there is this huge mansion but that was the only thing that was in congress. Everything else seemed like Puri even I couldn’t get it out of my mind that was just some rich man’s mansion, and then suddenly it clicked. This is like Ramananda Raya’s palace just near the Jagannatha temple and it is really very similar. And then it all fit and that was a very good time to chant because there is no one there; no cars, nothing but safe. And then at that time you would see the moon rising over the ocean. It just reminded me of all Mahaprabhu’s pastimes in Puri and it was really wonderful; a really wonderful japa. 

And I was at the end of my walk, at the end of my rounds, and I didn’t think there was anyone else there. And this young man I couldn’t even see him because it was dark, he came up and said hi. Then he wanted to talk and I was thinking, Should I or shouldn’t I? And I said, “Well, I have a certain quota of chanting that I have to complete and I still haven’t completed it so maybe I should keep chanting.” Well, whatever you want but from that I could see that he wanted to talk. I said, “But I could always finish them later and I could talk to you now,” so I spoke with him. It turns out he is eighteen years old, an art student, and discussed God a bit but it went on for about twenty minutes and then I really wondered, Am I ever going to see him again whatsoever? What is going to come of this time I spent with him? Should I have spent this time just chanting? And after we parted and I went back to my japa, it was better than it was before I began to talk to him, and it was already pretty good by my standards and the japa, the whole thing was really that moment was like being in Jagannatha Puri. It was just really like being in Jagannatha Puri and the chanting, really relishing the chanting. And then I realized that the holy name is pleased when we give ourselves to others. It is always both; that we are attentive to our own personal practices especially japa, but we also extend ourselves for the sake of others. And by being attentive in our personal practices, we get more potency when we speak to others and by speaking to others in the right mood, we get more mercy from the holy name and the two support each other.

Then maybe three days later or something, chanting the same place, it is going really well and I learned many of the things that I have heard in the japa workshops and retreats were things that I did on my own, just intuitively but I never realized that they were techniques or that there were principles involved, that they are just things I did. But one thing Mahatma Prabhu said at the last workshop in Houston is that, if your eyes move you cannot concentrate. He did a very simple exercise. You try to focus on something and you move your eyes around and your mind becomes distracted. And if you keep your eyes fixed on whatever it is, a candle or you just pick something in the room and then try to fix your mind on whatever it is, you can do it. So I was walking and whenever I would go more deeply into chanting my eyes wouldn’t move. I would just be chanting and moving along and although there weren’t many people there I perceived when I got almost to the end that there was a group of people coming. So I thought, Should I move my eyes or not? Should I break the magic spell? But the thing is, it was already broken because from my peripheral vision I could see there was a group of people coming. So this thought within my mind means the spell was already broken but I girded myself. Let me keep my eyes fixed, I am not going to look up. And the group approached very close and one lady of the group looked at me. I wasn’t looking at her at that time but very loudly she said, “Hello!” But I could not get what her expression was because sometimes if you are talking to someone and you think they are not getting it you say, “Hello, anybody there?” So I didn’t know she was; I couldn’t see if it was that or whether it was. Hello, there is a whole world out here. It is not just the two feet in front of you.  Or whether it was, hello, I am seeing a devotee even if she didn’t know a devotee.” I had seen a monk, seeing a man of God—hello. So that was on my mind. What did she mean by that? But it was more than that, it was what is Krishna trying to tell me? That is what I was thinking, What is Krishna trying to tell me through her? So then I thought maybe because as it is, this whole contemplation, should I look up; and then I had already loss my concentration. So instead of accepting and rejecting I can just look up and I can even say hello and go back to my japa. It would be better than what I just went through. So that was a good lesson and then it just so happened that when I reached the end I turned around to go back and coming up the same group was, and again she smiled and said hello and that time it was just completely friendly, just full of appreciation.

And so this is a point that we will come to in our more philosophical discussion that one shouldn’t . . . that the cultivation of renunciation isn’t really part of the practice of bhakti. One becomes detached as a natural result of bhakti. One loses taste for pale, dead, material things when one experiences the higher taste of the beauty of Krishna. So that was a small incident but it did teach me a lesson. I shouldn’t just not move my hand and it has worked better now. If it does happen I look up. I smile if they say hello. Yesterday two people said Haribol, but I wasn’t hung up. I just said Haribol back and went on with my japa. And Haribol literally means chant the holy name of Hari, so I followed their order and chanted the holy name of Hari.