Is chanting 16 rounds practical for an engineering student (or for anyone in our fast-paced times)?

From Sushant Kulkarni

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna. Question from Sushant Kulkarni Prabhu. Is it practical for an engineering student to chant 16 rounds every day? I currently chant 8 rounds.
And with the demanding study schedules, it seems difficult to have time to chant 16 rounds every day. Answer, what is practical depends on our understanding of life. So, is it practical, there are many people who are engineering students, and they play video games several hours a day.
There are several, there are many engineering students who do so many other way activities that waste a huge amount of time, or at least they do not use time. And they spend, so many people spend time, hours surfing on the net, if not for obscene content and just for some Facebook chit-chatting and things like that. So, it is not that we can study 24 hours a day, and practically nobody does that.
And people spend their time on various activities, which are often unproductive, relatively very less productive, or even unproductive, or even sometimes counterproductive. So, if people are watching, say, wasting hours and hours, just watching movies, or watching more obscene stuff on the net, so many bad habits different people have, and so much time goes in that. So, we do not think of that as an expenditure of time, because often, no, because people do not plan it like that, that I am going to spend hours on this, but just the mind catches and drags one towards that.
So, the mind does not often allow us to act according to what is practical and what is not practical. The mind forces us to act according to its will. And for some people, this may be happening in gross ways.
For others, it may not be happening in such gross ways. We do not even know how much of our time may be going away in worrying, because we do not allocate time for worrying, but worry may be well dissipating our energy, mental energy at a background level, sucking it in a subtle but sinister way, not allowing us to focus, not allowing us to concentrate on our studies or do anything effectively. And sometimes we commit mistakes because of that, and we end up having to do the same thing two times, three times.
So, if we have better concentration and better focus, then we will save a lot of time. And yes, there can be certain exercises which people can do to develop concentration, and some people may have naturally more concentration or less concentration. But by the process of meditation, we develop our concentration by coming more in the mode of goodness.
In the mode of passion, one has concentration only on the things which provide sense gratification. People can spend hours watching a movie or watching a cricket match because that is relatable to them at the level of passion, but they cannot spend much time studying. People in the mode of ignorance can sleep for hours and hours and just be lethargic, doing nothing.
People in goodness can choose to focus because they have a far greater control over their mental faculties. This is what I want to do, this is what I do not want to do. I focus my mind over here for a particular amount of time, then turn back and focus the mind over there for a particular amount of time.
So, even from the point of view of material time management, meditation can help us to come to the mode of goodness, help us to gain greater control over our mental faculties and thereby concentrate better and become more productive. So, in that sense, it is eminently practical. In the sense of time management, yes, it is not just a problem with engineers.
In fact, with engineering students, afterwards when one person gets a job, at that time things may be even more difficult. Engineering students can sometimes bunk lectures, but people cannot jump, bunk their job or going to office without far more severe consequences. So, life is never easy and life always requires us to make trade-offs.
Trade-offs means deciding, okay, is this, I have to give up this for this. So, if we want to make serious spiritual advancement, then we have to make some trade-off, we have to cut down on some things which we are doing materially and what they will be, we have to sit, take inventory of our life and make priorities accordingly based on our understanding of life as we get from the Vedic literature, Bhagavad Gita and other scriptures and then orient our life accordingly. It may be gradual reorientation that happens, but it is important to know that we will have to make trade-offs.
If you want serious spiritual advancement, then we have to invest serious amount of time in our relationship with Krishna and that often that quantity also forces quality because if we decide that I am going to spend one and a half to two hours every day in chanting, then we will also make sure if I am spending so much time, let me do it in the proper way so that I will get proper returns from it. Unfortunately, for some devotees, chanting just becomes a ritual and they just think that, okay, I have to spend one and a half, two hours, I just spend it, but they do not put their heart into chanting and then afterwards, chanting becomes a burden and a boredom. There is an article on the spiritual scientist website where I talk about why chanting appears like a burden and boredom, but suffice it to say that if one does not put one’s heart, then it will definitely become a burden and boredom, but if one puts in the heart concentrating attentively, then one will find that chanting is enormously beneficial and then devotees even look forward to chanting.
That may seem to be a very advanced stage, but even at our day-to-day level, if we, as sadhakas also, if we recognize that not only is chanting at a transient level helping me to develop love for Krishna, but even at an immediate level, it is helping me to move closer to Krishna, it is helping me become more materially efficient and materially effective by helping me to concentrate and focus better, by preventing my mind from taking control of my life, either by making me engage in gross wasteful activities or by subtly sucking my mental energy through worry or craving or things like that, we will be able to get the intellectual impetus and the willpower to invest the time in chanting. So whatever level of rounds we are chanting right now, we do that attentively and based on that, as we ourselves experience the benefit, we will feel inspired to increase the amount of time we are spending in chanting and we will see that it is not spending, it is investing. It is going to give us great returns and not just in the future in terms of going back to the spiritual world, but even now it will increase our clarity, concentration, calmness and help us not just do more things but live better, live in a more aware, more fruitful way and be able to relish Krishna’s presence and experience higher peace and happiness while we go through life.
So it is the best investment that we can do of our time and we shouldn’t force ourselves to do it if we are not yet convinced about it and as our conviction increases, we can increase the number of rounds we are chanting, but at the same time, we shouldn’t neglect chanting 16 rounds by thinking that it is impractical. No, it is practical because there are not just one or two but thousands and thousands of devotees who are professionals in their fields, who are even some super busy there, they may be multinational companies which require sometimes 12, 14, 16 hours of work or they may be heading companies where they are not just owners who can delegate all the work to others but they are hands-on managers also of their own companies and they have to work and of course there are hundreds and hundreds, thousands of students including engineering students who are also practicing Krishna consciousness seriously in chanting 16 rounds. So one can talk with one’s senior devotees and find out what is the best way to balance.
If one has some supportive cultural environment like a youth center, a base or a voice, then that environment helps us to bring a certain level of structure to our life and within that structured living, the necessary amount of time for chanting automatically gets incorporated and that helps us also to invest the time in chanting without it appearing to be a constant burden that takes away our time and puts us in anxiety. If we incorporate into our schedule giving it a specific amount of time daily and a specific duration, then we will find that it will not be a burden also. So it is an investment and how we feel intellectually as well as experientially convinced about making that investment and then by making the investment practically, we have to see how we can integrate into our schedule by taking assistance of other devotees and a devotional culture if possible.
Thank you.