 |
| Japa Chanting |
"It is not that instead of staying with us, God stays in some far‑off place; He is always with us. His darshan is available when the internal sins are destroyed by repeating naam in every breath. As one repeats naam in this manner, something like a mirror manifests gradually. The entire universe, from the dust particles to the solar universe, is manifested. The sins and piety of men—everything—are manifested. All the stars and planets come into view. Continence is what does the special work, like the mercury of a mirror… The siddha state will be attained the day naam will continue through twenty‑four hours, meaning not even a single breath will go futile." — Bijoy Krishna Goswami, His Divine Life and Sermons
Vira Chandra: A few sentences—yet an entire cosmos of practice opens before us. Goswami’s words follow me like soft thunder: each breath a bead, each heartbeat a bell. The mantra keeps tapping behind the sternum, whispering: When will you let me flow as effortlessly as breathing?
Ramana Maharshi pointed to the same destination, though with feather‑light kindness:
“Japa must be done until it becomes natural. At first it requires effort; later it happens automatically. When it becomes natural, that is realisation… Bhakti, vichara and japa—all finally resolve themselves into that one single Reality. They are only different tools to keep out the unreality.” — Conscious Immortality
He likened mature japa to a silent river of oil: continuous, unbroken, without splash or strain.
Different Altitudes of the Mountain
Mountains have many altitudes, and climbers carry different lungs. A newcomer who chants sixteen rounds before sunrise may be walking the rim of her current capacity. Another soul—ripened by births of devotion—might find the mantra spinning of its own accord through work, laughter, and sleep. Samskāras and vāsanās weave unique karmic weathers; no single rulebook gauges every heart.
When Quantity Becomes a Badge
I have met practitioners who announce, almost like accountants, that they complete their quota of lakhs of Names daily and have held that tally for fifteen years. “It is simple,” they say. “Do this number long enough and siddhi is inevitable.” Yet the aura around them feels brittle, as if the heart’s petals have dried in the heat of self‑congratulation. The mantra may fly from the tongue at breathtaking speed, but the eyes carry a hardness, a subtle contempt for anyone whose rosary beads click more slowly.
Their confidence unsettled me. For a time I wondered: Am I merely lazy? If lakhs daily make a saint, why don’t I shoulder the same yoke? But the more I listened, the more I sensed a grave inversion. The Name, meant to soften stone, had become a badge stitched to spiritual uniforms. Quantity without alchemy. No fragrance of mystical insight—only the dust raised by relentless counting.
Where Zeal Turns Into a Knife
This experience clarified how sincere zeal can slide into subtle violence. The mandate to keep the Name in every waking moment, if wielded without tenderness, wedges the practitioner away from the very wholeness she seeks. Five wounds reveal themselves—named here in Jung’s tongue and lived nerve:
1. Shadow Buried Alive
The first wound arrives with the sweetest perfume: “Keep chanting; no room for stray thoughts.” At dawn a desire flares—coffee, anger, an old ache—and we smother it beneath syllables. Yet what is repressed is only replanted. It tunnels underground, gathers pressure, and resurfaces as sarcasm toward slower chanters, or sudden lust that shocks us mid-rosary. Jung warned that unlived life leaks back as fate; Goswami would say the mirror clouds over. Chanting that cannot welcome a human pulse slowly chants itself into spiritual anesthesia.
2. Guilt as a Second Heartbeat
Once shadow is buried, guilt becomes its seismic monitor. A moment’s lapse—news headline, childhood memory—and the chest tightens: unworthy. I have seen devotees beat their foreheads with beads, muttering “Hare Rama” like a self-issued citation. The Name shrinks to a burglar alarm, blaring each time the mind opens a window. Far from cleansing sin, such guilt fossilizes it; the mantra’s nectar tastes of iron.
3. The Clockwork Tongue
If guilt lasts, the psyche defends itself by going automatic. Lips race, fingers whirl, but presence stands outside the temple door. I have caught myself finishing a round only to realize I was mentally 'debugging' my live struggles the whole time. Mechanical japa insulates the ego from further guilt but also from grace; it is a wax replica that cannot melt.
4. Outsourcing the Compass
Exhausted, we look to an external arbiter: “Maharaj, how many lakhs will erase last night’s distraction?” The guru prescribes, the disciple doubles the dosage, and the inner shepherd Ramana praised falls silent. Spiritual adulthood stalls; one remains a talented child performing homework. When storms hit—divorce papers, missile alerts—there is no inner pilot to steady the craft.
5. Severity that Forgets Flesh
Finally, zeal blind to circumstances maims the most vulnerable. A cancer patient who cannot sit upright, a mother soothing a feverish child during black-outs—both read blanket injunctions about twenty-four-hour mantra and feel disqualified from grace. This is spiritual ableism dressed as orthodoxy. The knife now cuts outward as well as inward, dividing the “pure” from the merely surviving.
A Gentler Shepherding
Ramana compared true mind‑guidance to a shepherd nudging stray lambs—not a soldier policing thought‑crime. The Name is invited home, never forced. When an intrusive melody appears, I greet it like an errant guest, listen for the human need it carries, then watch it dissolve into the mantra’s hum. Dreams, too, have become midnight letters from the unconscious—one night bearing Kali’s fierce face, another a lost connection. None are dismissed; all are folded into practice.
Love, the Quiet Thermal
There are evenings when the mantra feels buried under fatigue, anger, or relentless news scrolls. Those nights I lay one honest breath at the feet of the Divine and whisper, “You do the japa tonight.” Slowly warmth rises, lifting the sound on an invisible thermal. Practice continues without me, yet through me—the mystery Goswami hints at when not a single breath is wasted.
Gold, Not Guilt
So I keep the high compass‑point of continuous remembrance—yes. But I travel toward it with Ramana’s kindness, Bijoy Krishna Goswami’s awe, and Jung’s watchful eye. I let the mantra soak the wick because love longs to burn there, not because an inner sergeant is counting failures. Then even the pauses become part of the chant, and the mind—no longer enemy—turns into a mirror quietly reflecting the whole universe, dust motes to distant suns, within the infinite rhythm of a single holy syllable.
No comments:
Post a Comment