The Perfection of Yoga

Giriraj Swami: Before I will speak about yoga, bhakti-yoga, I will sing some prayers to our spiritual masters. And those prayers are called maṅgalācaraṇa; maṅgalā means auspicious and caraṇa means lotus feet. So, I pray that their lotus feet will invoke auspiciousness.

[Kirtan and prayers]

So, the Sanskrit word yoga means literally to link or connect. And the English word yoke, to yoke oxen together comes from the Sanskrit word yoga; and link to who and to what? To God. The basic textbook of yoga is the Bhagavad-gītā, which is spoken by Sri Krishna, who is accepted. . .He Himself says it in the Bhagavad-gītā, and even otherwise he is accepted by learned scholars and spiritual authorities as the Supreme Personality of Godhead. So, the Bhagavad-gītā mentions different types of yoga—karma-yoga, jnana-yoga, ashtanga-yoga, but the highest is bhakti-yoga. And it is only by bhakti-yoga that we can know and enter into a personal relationship with God or Krishna. There are nine practices in bhakti-yoga; śravaṇaṁ kīrtanaṁ viṣṇoḥ smaraṇaṁ pāda-sevanam arcanaṁ vandanaṁ dāsyaṁ sakhyam ātma-nivedanam. And the first two is most important, śravaṇam, which means hearing, and kīrtanam, which means chanting. What you are doing right now, as I am speaking, is śravaṇam, that is hearing. You are hearing about Krishna; you are hearing about the process of devotional service. And when you repeat what you have heard, that is kīrtanam. Now, there are different ages in cosmic cycles; Satya-yuga, Treta-yuga, Dvapara-yuga, and Kali-yuga, some of you might have heard it. So, we are right now in Kali-yuga. And it is started in shastra,

harer nāma harer nāma
harer nāmaiva kevalam
kalau nāsty eva nāsty eva
nāsty eva gatir anyathā

That chant the holy name, chant the holy names, chant the holy names of Lord Hari, of Krishna. There is no other way, no other way, no other way for success in Kali-yuga.

So, the chanting is very powerful and effective. And the science behind it, or the philosophy behind it, is the is that, God is absolute, Krishna is absolute, and therefore, the name of Krishna and Krishna Himself are the same. In the material world or the relative world, there is a difference between the name of the word and the thing or the substance. If you are in the desert and you are dying of thirst, and you chant “Water! Water! Water!” Just chanting water, water will not quench your thirst, because the word water and the substance water are different. But in the absolute realm, the transcendental realm, the name of Krishna and Krishna Himself are the same. So when you chant Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna is actually present, dancing on your tongue. And one great devotee, we actually mentioned his name in our prayers at the beginning, Rupa Gosvami. He said that, “With one tongue and two ears, what can I chant? If I had millions of tongues and billions of ears, then I could begin to chant.” He had so much taste for the chanting of the holy names. And roughly speaking, you would say there are two ways of chanting. One is what we have done, which is a kirtan, that is chanting in congregation with the music. And the other is called japa. And japa is a quiet chanting, principally for one’s own self to hear. You might see some devotees, they have these bead-bag, and in their bead-bag, they have their chanting, their japa-mala. On each bead, we chant one mantra,

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare

So, there are one hundred and eight beads, and so, to go around one time, chant the Hare Krishna maha-mantra a hundred and eight times, that counts as one round. And this standard is established by our founder acharya, Srila Prabhupada. To be initiated, one should chant sixteen rounds daily, which takes about two hours. It is very purifying, very enlivening. And there are no hard and fast rules for chanting. You can chant while you are walking on the street. You can chant when you are in the shower. You can chant wherever, on the bus or the train. And whenever we have time, we should chant. In one talk in Los Angeles, our spiritual master, Srila Prabhupada said, “If you have got time, chant Hare Krishna. Don’t speak nonsense. Don’t waste time. Chant Hare Krishna.” So, the more you chant, the better you feel. There was once a cartoon. It showed an old man and an old woman. This came to Srila Prabhupada’s attention. So, the old woman is saying to her husband, “Chant, chant, chant.” And the husband is replying, “Can’t, can’t, can’t.” So, for some reason, some people have a causeless aversion to chanting. The same effort that he would say, can’t, he could have just chant.

So, there are many instructions in the Bhagavad-gītā. The first instruction is that we are not these bodies, but we are the soul within the body; na hanyate hanyamāne śarīre, when body dies, soul does not die. The soul is eternal. So next question will be, what happens to the soul when it leaves the body and what destination the soul reaches depend on two things basically—our activities during our life and our thoughts or consciousness at the time of death. So, in the Bhagavad-gītā, Krishna says, if you quit your body thinking of Him, you go to Him. Now, besides this material world, which we are located in at the present, there is also a spiritual world, beyond this material creation. And everything there is eternal, full of knowledge, and full of bliss sac-cid-ānanda. And within the spiritual sky, there are many spiritual planets on which reside different incarnations of God. And then the highest is Krishnaloka, which is the planet of Krishna. So if we think of Krishna at the time of death, then we go to Krishna, go to the transcendental abode of Krishna, which is eternal, full of bliss, and full of knowledge and we will have personal relationship with God, Krishna. But to be able to think of Krishna at the time of death, we have to practice. Generally, at the time of death, we think of the thing to which we are most attached. And so as Krishna says in the Bhagavad-gītā, mayy āsakta-manaḥ partha. We should be attached to Krishna. Our minds should become attached to Krishna.

I have a godbrother that means a fellow disciple of the same group. And I told this story. He was driving his car and it installed on the railway tracks. And he was fiddling with the ignition, trying to get it to start, but it just wouldn’t start. And meanwhile, he saw a train was coming down to track. But he was still fiddling with the ignition trying to get it to start. And then finally he saw that the train was going to hit him. And he thought, All right, this is it; this is the end. He started chanting very loudly, the train hit. And then at the last moment, he thought, What will happen to my wife? Which isn’t wrong or bad, but it is not exactly we want to think at time of death. Fortunately, he lives to tell story. So we want to increase our attachment to Krishna. and this process of bhakti-yoga, especially chanting on beads, that will help us to increase our attachment to Krishna, ante nārāyaṇa-smṛtiḥ. The goal is to remember Krishna at the time of death. There is a saying, bhajana kara sadhana kara, I am not remembering all the words, but the basic idea is that whatever sadhana, whatever bhajana we have done, whatever spiritual practices we have done, we will be tested at the time of death. So, death is like the final exam, and our spiritual practices will be testing then, whether we can remember Krishna. So, we have yoga. As I mentioned there are different kinds of yoga mentioned in Bhagavad-gītā, they are all considered to be stepping stones on the way to bhakti-yoga. And as stated in the Bhagavad-gītā and as experienced by devotees, it is easy and it is joyfully performed.

So, yes, I thank all of you for coming and for being with us. You may or may not realize the full significance of tonight’s event in your life, but it is very significant. You have begun the practice of bhakti-yoga. So thank you for listening, patently and attentively. If you have any questions or comments, please raise your hand.

Guest: You have a beautiful voice. It was nice seeing you the other day.