How to avoid becoming discouraged when we are unable to pronounce the mahamantra clearly and correcting it takes too much time?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

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question is that sometimes when we chant the holy names, we may not pronounce properly and while dealing with various problems in the world this improper pronunciation becomes a further problem and becomes discouraging, how to deal with that firstly the pronunciation is not the most important thing in devotion the important thing is the devotional intention so if if occasionally there is a mispronunciation it is not, Krishna is not a fault finding god he is not there to catch us when we do wrong, he is there to catch us when we fall Krishna is not there to catch us when we do wrong he is there to catch us when we fall so first of all we recognize that devotion can be expressed even through an improper pronunciation that is not a problem at the same time when we want to serve Krishna, we want to serve him in the best possible way so when we chant his holy names, we try as much as possible to chant clearly and sometimes we may do a recording of our own chanting to see if we are mispronouncing where we are mispronouncing and by that we can correct ok this is when, maybe when I start thinking about something, I am going to mispronounce or when I am rushing and trying to complete the rounds very quickly in some time limit, I mispronounce and improper pronunciation also if we find that usually, maybe sometimes the last Hare gets missed out because there are three Hare, Hare Ram, Hare Ram, Ram Ram Hare Hare, then Hare the three Hare may sometimes become one or two so we can find out what is the mispronunciation and gradually work towards that if it seems like too much of a task then we can make it gradually, say if you are chanting 16 rounds then a habit of mispronunciation has been developed somehow then at least some rounds we consciously take care that we pronounce properly even if that requires a little more time but suppose say if we are mispronouncing and we are chanting every round in 5 or 6 minutes and we are going to pronounce clearly it takes 10 minutes then the mental burden becomes how can I spend so much time then as I said again we start becoming offensive towards the whole thing, why is it taking so much time so at that time we may decide at least we should try to correct the habit, so at least 1, 2, 4 rounds I will chant with careful pronunciation, remaining also it is not that I will be intentionally careless but if there is a default habit I may not be able to invest so much energy in countering that at that stage but those 4 rounds few rounds whatever we do carefully if we do that gradually that habit of clear pronunciation will pass over to others, I mean the other rounds also and another thing is that pronunciation is also relative that means we may ourselves pronounce a word clearly but someone else may say I can’t hear this word being pronounced so if that is happening then we have to ourselves record and check it, it shouldn’t be that we are enunciating the words ourselves but because they are being enunciated in such a way that others are not able to hear it others say that you are not pronouncing properly so introspect and check it properly there is no need to be very discouraged, no matter whatever happens there is actually the biggest problem in bhakti is discouragement if we don’t get discouraged, if we keep moving onwards doing what we can Krishna will help us to do what we can’t do but when we become discouraged we don’t do even what we can do and then Krishna will not force things upon us then he will not help us directly, he will not intervene with us so first of all find what is the problem and then take practical manageable steps to gradually correct it and when we get discouraged we should know that anything normally we think of temptation as lust, anger greed and these things as temptations so we usually think that Krishna is here something takes me away from Krishna that is temptation but actually that is not the only definition of temptation anything that comes between us and Krishna that is also temptation so discouragement can also be a temptation if discouragement stops us going towards Krishna then you should know this is so actually how it works is that the same mind which makes us do a wrong thing then afterward the same mind becomes a judge and starts saying you are such a fool why did you do such a wrong thing so the same mind is like the same mind is the criminal and then after it commits the crime it makes us commit the crime then it becomes a judge and sentences us so when this happens this is like a dangerous double rule of the mind so at that time we shouldn’t listen to the mind anything that discourages us we should recognize this is a temptation and not pay attention to it so yes there are different kinds of sources different sources of discouragement but whatever it is if there is something discouraging us we move away from it move towards something which encourages us that is not to deny or hide our faults but we cannot deal with all our faults at the same time we have one fault, one problem we slowly overcome step by step so discouragement is also temptation and it needs to be intelligently resisted is the answer