Stay Forever Connected.....
Stay Forever Connected ……but to Whom and How ?
You must have heard of the store Forever 21. Well I saw their sign and was amused by it. Stay Forever Connected. It brought a question to mind: to whom and how do I want to stay connected to, Forever. Sometimes these mundane advertising slogans can stir up our mind in the positive direction.
Well I would like to Stay Forever Connected to my sweet Lord, Sri Sri Radhe Shyam. The connections here in this temporary world are exactly that, temporary. People come into your life and people go. Things in this world are constantly changing. So what is our real connection? The connection of the soul to the super soul is the real connection. That connection is never lost, separated or interrupted, in any way at all. That is an eternal connection. Yes for lifetimes we have bad communication due to the soul being covered up by illusory energy but once that connection is re-established through re-ligion it is never lost. Religion in Latin is spelled religio meaning to link or to re-connect with God. Reconnect because we have somehow lost that connection.
How do we stay connected forever though? Caitanya Mahaprabhu has given us a beautiful means of re-establishing and re-connecting forever. The chanting of the Hare Krishna Maha Mantra is means of reconnecting and reestablishing that lost connection.
Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare,
Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare
The holy names remain forever, as they are our connection to God and His spiritual Kingdom. The holy names are Radha and Krishna Themselves right here, right now. The names are all powerful. The prayer Sri Shikshastakam spoken by Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, sloka 2 says:
namnam akari bahudha nija-sarva-shaktis
tatrarpita niyamitah smarane na kalah
etadrishi tava kripa bhagavan mamapi
durdaivam idrisham ihajani nanuragaha
O my Lord, Your holy name alone can render all benediction to living beings, and thus You have hundreds and millions of names, like Krsna and Govinda. In these transcendental names You have invested all Your transcendental energies. There are not even hard and fast rules for chanting these names. O my Lord, out of kindness You enable us to easily approach You by Your holy names, but I am so unfortunate that I have no attraction for them.
Source: http://www.harekrishnatemple.com/siksastakam.html
The Lord has invested all Their power in the holy names, but we have no taste for Them. There is hope for us though, as these holy names cleanse the mirror of the heart and fill the heart with love for Radha and Krishna. The holy names are not from this world, they are never in contact with material nature, but are eternal and liberated. The names are never any less powerful than Krishna Himself as Krishna and His names are non-different. We just have to keep chanting and establishing that connection. We can chant on our beads out loud or within the core of our heart and mind or we can sing along with whatever we are doing. Kirtan captures the heart and mind like nothing else as there is a beat and rhythm to it and it can be sung anywhere, any time, with what ever you may be doing. Therefore whether we chant on beads or sing in kirtan we STAY FOREVER CONNECTED !!
Keep Chanting !!!
Here are this weeks tunes and Katha !!