Japa Reform Guidelines

[Guest guest]

Hare Krsna my dear devotees. I hope your week of chanting has been nice and you were able to chant in a peaceful way. I was reading in the Japa reform booklet I received from a retreat H.H. Sacinandana Swami gave this year and there are some good advice about how we can make our chanting better by supervising it daily.

The first thing we have to do is to state a number of rounds to chant daily and have it fixed, not chanting less than that. Next....rounds chanted without interruption - in the beginning it will be very difficult because all the thoughts will come and we may let the mind wander but we need to persist and chant. Another important point is to have the rounds chanted before the day starts, when we do that we have a better day in all aspects because we won't be thinking about the rounds we need to chant later and our mind will not wander so much.

Time in bed at night is another very important aspect, we need to focus on the rounds we need to chant in the morning so our mind becomes more peaceful and we know we have an objective in the next morning.Posture, rounds chanted sitting in one place, the mind is affected very much by the way we sit and all the environment, so choosing a good place to sit upright helps a lot to focus the mind.

After all these nice guidelines the main thing to do is to chant as if you were praying, resembling a child crying for her parent. Trying to do it everyday after a week your mind will be nicely trained and you will be experiencing the nectar of the association of the holy names.

I will try to follow these nice advices this week, I hope they also work for you and you can have your japa obstacles fixed. All these nice guidelines are being taught in our japa rooms sessions every weekend also and just by associating with devotees and discussing all these good ways to improve we are more aware of what we can do for a better japa. Wishing you all a very nice week of chanting.

May the Lord protect our chanting and give us the determination to persist in our daily efforts to improve chanting and one day chant purely the holy names of the Lord.your servant,Aruna devi--

Take advantage of this rare opportunity of this human form of life.  There are 8,400,000 different species of life through which we are rotating lifetime after lifetime. So getting a human body is not an every day affair. This most auspicious opportunity only comes after many millions of lifetimes in the lower species. Anyone who does not utilize their human life for self-realization is making the greatest mistake. When this happens it is the greatest tragedy, and unfortunately today this neglect of the human form has become the standard behavior for the entire human society. What can be done? We must first ourselves become solidly situated in Krishna consciousness and then do the highest welfare activity of spreading to everyone else all over the world.

Chant:Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare HareHare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama Hare Hare