Re: Entry 03

Dear Suhrit,

           Nityananda Gauranga Hare Krishna! Please accept my respectful obeisances!

           We are all very pleased to see your rapid progress and I hope that I will be fortunate enough to be inspired by your sincerity. From my experience I will just add one or two things, though I am unfit to advise, I say it because it is a universal fact.

           The important thing in chanting is QUALITY before QUANTITY. Even if one can chant fewer than 64 + 64 + 16, nevertheless one must ensure that quality is always at the top. One name chanted properly is way better than a thousand chanted without any quality and you have perhaps seen it by now.

            The other thing is do not neglect chanting of Hare Krishna as well. Gaura naama and Nitaai naama are included within Krishna naama and Krishna naama is also included in Gaura naama. By chanting Hare Krishna we are obeying Lord Gauranga's desire which is to chant the maha mantra and by chanting the Hare Krishna maha mantra, Lord Gaura Nitai are very pleased.

             Improvement should be steady. For the moment, do not subject your rounds to excessive variations. It is good to refer to Swamiji's japa chart to see the different levels. Or you may stick to any alternative what is optimum for you.  One should increase quantity only when quality is improved and also when one has been able to do a lower stage of japa steadily without a problem for some time. Abruptly increasing it might create some difficulties because it is a different matter to sustain a higher level of japa continuously and that is done when your quality is that high.

             Do not worry about committing offenses like what you face because it is not entirely in your hands to avoid certain things right now. As an example, I am 18 and in a college hostel where the food has all onion and garlic and even otherwise is not always even satisfactory to be in the mode of goodness. Nevertheless if we leave the Lord to have his way, he will protect us. But we must be careful not to take advantage of that to eat more garlic to satisfy our senses. Then we might have to learn the hard way that we should not take the Lord's protection for granted.

             I say that because every devotee practitioner in the beginning does get some thoughts like that once a while. But we must just ignore the weeds and let them die and water the real creeper of bhakti. Please do not consider me offensive. I say that because we all had a great start in the beginning just like this, but I and a few others did lose the initial momentum and have fallen behind. So we have to regain that. So please be careful to see any weeds before they grow and cut them before they slow you down.

PS : Looking forward to your bio data. You can refer to some of our introductions if you want to see a model. You may see the posts in Vignesh, Srinath and Venkat's user names under Introduce yourself sub heading. I am happy to be of service to you. Nityananda Gauranga Hare Krishna!

Daaso'smi,
Srinath

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