Japa Mini-Course Installment 3
Chanting is a Relationship

 

Here is a powerful principle that you can immediately apply to improve your japa: Chanting is not just a process; it’s a relationship.

 

There’s a problem in seeing chanting only as a process.  Of course, chanting is one of the nine processes of bhakti, but the problem is that we can easily define or relate to a process as something mechanical and think that externally executing the process will guarantee specific results. This can lead to an impersonal approach to japa in which we focus more on the process than the Person the process is aimed at connecting us to. Srila Prabhupada said the quality of our chanting depends on our feeling. Feeling is the essence of the “process.” Heart is the essence of the “process.”  Relationship is the essence of the “process.”

 

Suppose someone advises me that I can become a better husband to my wife if I buy her some flowers, touch her when I come home, and ask her how her day went. So I come home with some flowers, throw them on the table, give my wife a high five, and, as I  run off to watch TV, I say with my back to her, “How did your day go?” and then  close the door behind me while she replies. I did the process but I did so without heart, without relationship, without feeling, without consciousness. The point is you don’t have a personal relationship with a process.

 

Let’s say you don’t chant well one morning. You may think that since you didn’t execute the process well (you were not concentrating, not pronouncing properly, not sitting properly, etc.) your japa wasn’t good. And you might be feeling some remorse that you let yourself down. And you will probably think, “I need to chant better tomorrow (meaning I need to execute the process better tomorrow).” But what really happened was that your relationship with Krsna suffered that morning.

 

When you think of chanting as a process, you can easily think that only you suffer by not executing the process well.  However, when you think of chanting as a relationship you become aware that the relationship is suffering when you don’t chant well (which is why you suffer). Since Krsna wants an intimate relationship with you, and since He wants you to come back to Him, He is also unhappy when you don’t chant well. Try thinking in terms of “our japa,” as opposed to “my japa.” You and the holy name are together when you chant. It’s not that the relationship will come later when you are more purified. You already have a relationship with the holy name. Chanting is further developing that relationship.

 

Tomorrow when you sit down to chant, welcome Krsna before you chant your first mantra. Affirm to Him and yourself that this is the most important relationship you have, that you will recognize that chanting is a personal exchange, that we are together for these next two hours, that this is “our japa,” and that this is a matter of the heart, not simply a mechanical process.

 

 

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