Chanting in the Present Moment - Now
If it isn’t obvious, there is a lot of suffering here in the material world, many different kinds. It’s a good reminder to note that all suffering is intended to bring us closer to Krishna. If that's not happening then there is a problem somewhere. We need to awaken to that fact and do something about it now. We know from scriptures that to come closer to God, we must chant His holy names with love. But often we find our minds wandering off, which is true for any meditation practice. So how do we chant in the present moment? Now
These days you hear a lot about mindfulness. I am not an expert on this, but I am also learning as we go along on this spiritual journey together. Basically all things in the past and future are troubling. The mind’s tendency is to take us either to the past or the future. But spiritual teachers mention that the real time is now. In the past when it happened it was now and in future when it will happen it will be now. So really our only option is to be in the now, yet somehow it escapes us. One means of staying in the present moment is being mindful of the task at hand and engaging the mind and senses into that.
In this present moment, is when we can be conscious of Krishna, the next moment we don't know. So in this moment we try to please Krishna with service, remembrance, japa with presence, and desire to love Him. That's actually all we can do. But our minds take us on a roller-coaster ride. It will bring a lot of peace if we start practicing presence. There are many teachers in the material world, teaching mindfulness practices. We can use their teachings to improve our bhajan, and to improve our state of mind to serve Krishna better. So to continue in the present moment, there is no problem generally and even if there was you need “presence of mind” to tackle it. So let’s learn and practice to be present.
Often when we chant japa the mind wanders off to la la land, and lands up somewhere in our life or thinking about someone else’s life. So the mind can be really wicked in that sense to take us off track. However if we are present in the moment, then we can hear our own voice chanting Radha and Krishna's names, but mostly we don’t. Without hearing, no progress can happen as Radha and Krishna think that this person is supposedly calling us, but they are actually distracted in other things. So they stay far, far away just observing. If we are sincere, Krishna sends us the know-how and sends us Sri Guru to wake up the sleeping soul. Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu gave us the Hare Krishna Mahamantra, but also told us that sankirtan is the way to Krishna. Sankirtan, which is done with others, or kirtan done by ourselves can capture the mind immediately. How brilliant is it that kirtan so beautifully takes us into the present moment. In kirtan we can notice how the mind hears each word of the mantra and gets into the rhythm of the kirtan. That's why Mahaprabhu recommended Sankirtan for this age of Kali as our minds are so disturbed and distracted.
If we find ourselves distracted in japa, we can immediately start to sing the mantra on beads, and then go back to silent Japa. You can go back and forth, japa and singing on beads, on each mantra. There are no rules to chanting as Mahaprabhu told us. In this case singing brings our attention back to now, back to our chanting. Eckhart Tolle a mindfulness teacher says “Presence is the soul listening”. The soul is listening to the mantra. By the process of chanting in presence, it's the soul interacting with supersoul…that would be an amazing experience.
The monkey mind 🐵🐒, we have no option but to train it. Teachings by our Gurudev and scriptures tell us how to chant, which is to speak softly so we can hear ourselves chant. Scriptures tell us it takes only one mantra with a pure heart to connect with Krishna. So why haven't we connected yet? Well here is the answer…our heart and mind are full of material conditioning and we are unable to hold our attention on the sound of the holy names. Not only our hearing, but our other senses are also conditioned so that we are unable to see the form of the beautiful Radhe Shyam, smell the fragrance of their tulasi leaves and flowers, feel the touch of their mercy and grace, or taste the nectar of their Prasad (sanctified food). All of our senses are occupied in other objects as we do things in absence, not presence. I'm talking to myself dear friends, as I can see the problem clearly now. I write these blog posts so I can learn myself and share it too.
Our senses and mind are both the biggest distraction and our greatest means to presence, it just depends how we engage them. When the mind wanders off, the quickest way to re-engage is to sing kirtan. We may also become conscious of our breath or conscious our fingers touching each bead. We can chant in front of the deities, or look at a picture of the Lord, or Sri Gurudev and come into the present moment by re-engaging our mind and senses to the Lord. Therefore we use the mind and senses to bring us into presence. Then we can go deeper within.
It's a practice and what better time to start than now.
Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama Hare Hare