Is chanting the mahamantra starting with Hare Rama a namapradha?

From: Priya

Is it true that the mantra ‘Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare’ is given in the Vedas ? If so, then why is the mahamantra ‘Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare’. Does chanting the former constitute namaparadha?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
That’s how we’ll go back to Krishna.
Is it true that the mantra Hare Ram, Hare Ram, Ram Ram, Hare Hare, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, is given in the Vedas? If so, then why is the Mahamantra starting from Hare Krishna and thus chanting the form of Constituent Rama Pradhana? Answer, actually the mantra in both forms is mentioned in various sources in the Vedic literature. So the Kalisantara Upanishad is one of the standard sources for the Mahamantra and different recensions of the Kalisantara Upanishad give this mantra in different ways. That means the recension is a particular you could say from modern point of view, an edition of a book.
So in the olden times, there would be manuscripts which would be written and when different manuscripts are preserved in different places and there are some slight differences between them, so then they are said to be the recensions of that particular book. So many of the recensions of the Kalisantara Upanishad found in South India have the Mahamantra starting from Hare Ram and the recensions found in North India have the reference, have the mantra starting from Hare Krishna. Now historically, if we look at it, in general the Northern recensions seem to be older and so the Hare Krishna Mahamantra is present in the older manuscripts also and apart from that there are several other sources also where the Hare Krishna Mahamantra is to be found.
There is on this website itself, there is a question on are there any Vedic… where is the Hare Krishna Mahamantra mentioned in the Vedic literature? So there, in that answer, I have given a further link where from the Ananta Samhita, from the Brahma Yamala, from the Brahmanda Puran, the Radharadaya Khanda, the mantra is mentioned as Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna. It’s not starting from Hare Ram. So actually, when we look at the Vedic literature, the Kali Santhana Upanishad has been published, one of the prominent publishers of the Vedic literature is Venkatesh Press in Mumbai and they have published the mantra starting from Hare Ram and because of that the standard notion has come up that that is the standard name, that is the standard rendition of the mantra.
But there are older publications of the Kali Santhana Upanishad which are still preserved in libraries in Calcutta and Jaipur and there the mantra starts from Hare Krishna. So either way, we are chanting the names of the Lord and so whichever way a person chants, there is purification involved in that. Of course, within the movement, within the Krishna Consciousness movement, we chant the Hare Krishna Maha Mantra because that is the order that Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu gave us.
Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu chanted the Hare Krishna Maha Mantra because He is the Supreme Lord and it is His desire. So certainly chanting any names of Krishna is purifying and it’s certainly not a namapra to chant the Maha Mantra starting from Hare Ram. Because it is the holy name, it is always purifying.
But there is a small technicality over here. Because the mantra starting from Hare Ram is considered a standard Vedic mantra and it is also found in Chaitanya Upanishad. Approximation of the seeds are at least found over there.
Basically because it is considered a Vedic mantra and in conservative traditional Indian society, Vedic mantras were not meant to be chanted by everyone. So there is a unsourced popular story within the traditional Gaudiya circles which was not quoted by Srila Prabhupada in a time but which would be frequently quoted by Srila Prabhupada’s God brother and respected senior scholar among the disciples of Bhakti Sanskrit Thakur that was Shri Dharmaharaj. And that story was that when Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was chanting the mantra starting from Hare Ram, at that time the local Brahmins in Navadvip objected.
They said this is a Vedic mantra. This is not meant to be chanted in public. You cannot have everybody chanting this mantra.
Chaitanya Mahaprabhu out of deference for the traditional perceptions or opinions of those traditional Brahmins he said okay we will not chant this Vedic mantra. We will chant the same mantra but with the order changed. So then we started Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna.
Since then he always chanted Hare Krishna Mahamantra and we had the famous precedent earlier of Valmiki being told by Narad Muni to chant Ram but being unable to chant so Valmiki told him to chant Mara Mara Mara Mara. So by reversing the order then in a cycle the names remained the same and he got the same purification. So that he would have got by chanting the names of Ram, he became a great devotee of Ram.
So even if somebody argues that the Vedic reference is the Hare Ram Mantra, actually you cannot make a strong case for that because there are adequate references for the mantra starting from Hare Krishna also. But even if somebody argues like that and still the point remains that even if the order is reversed the order is interchanged slightly then still because the mantra in effect is the same in its purificatory potency it not only remains the same but because this has been the mantra that the Supreme Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu chanted so there is extra purification available. Ultimately the holy name is not different from Krishna but how much Krishna reveals himself as the holy name will depend on the devotional attitude that is there in our heart and if we are following the instruction of the spiritual master or of the parampara which is coming down from the Supreme Lord like Chaitanya Mahaprabhu coming through the Gaudiya Sampradaya then that submissiveness is itself an expression of devotion it is one expression of devotion and because of that submissive expression the holy name manifests its potency greater so therefore we actually chant the Mahamantra that we have received in the Gaudiya tradition is the Mahamantra starting from Hare Krishna and that’s why we chant it that way so chanting the Hare Ram Mantra will also have its own purification potency.
It is not a namapra but because that is not what our spiritual master and our tradition has given us so generally speaking the Lord reveals the potency on the path of devotion through the grace of the devotees through so if we are directly chanting the mantra surely there will be some benefit but because the grace of the devotees is not there so the benefit will not be as much as we will get if we are chanting as per the guidance of the Lord and his devotees that’s why the recommended the Mahamantra for the sages Hare Krishna Mahamantra not the Hare Ram Mahamantra and somebody else is habitually chanting the Hare Ram Mahamantra, we don’t have to get into debate with that person we can encourage that person to keep chanting and also help them get a broader philosophical understanding and maybe later on they may become inspired to chant the Hare Krishna Mahamantra or even if they continue chanting the Hare Ram Mantra, it doesn’t matter they are going to make spiritual advancement and get some purification by that also so these are technicalities from the point of view of understanding the history of the Sampradaya and our connection with the Sampradaya, we need to be careful about how we chant the Mahamantra but these are not things which we need to impose on others of course somebody is open to spirituality and does not have any past cultural influences then we naturally recommend to that person to chant the Hare Krishna Mahamantra but suppose somebody has been in the South Indian tradition where that person is habituated to hearing the Hare Ram Mantra and wants to chant that Mantra itself, there is no need to try to scare that person by telling that that will be a Nama Pradha or anything like that no, it is also a holy name, a Mantra comprised of the holy names it is also given in the scriptures and it will also lead to purification at the same time because that is not the format in which the Lord gave it and because we are not getting that Mantra in that particular form from the devotees so the holy names will not manifest the potency as much as they would if we chant the Hare Krishna Mahamantra