What does it mean practically to always remember Krishna?

From: Sudhir Bokade

We often hear that Chanting will ultimately allow us to remember Krishna every second of the day. I came into KC a year ago and am chanting 16 rounds but i am not able to remember Krishna even for five minutes during the day. Why is this? I am being impatient?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
question from we often hear that chanting will ultimately allow us to remember Krishna every second of the day I came into Krishna consciousness a year ago and I am chanting sixteen rounds but I am not able to remember Krishna even for five minutes during the day why is this? am I being impatient? answer we need to understand what it means by remembering Krishna constantly Rupa Goswami in the Bhakti Rasa Amritsindhu defines different kinds of Dhyan so he defines, describes four main categories Naam Dhyan, Rupa Dhyan, Leela Dhyan and Seva Dhyan so Naam Dhyan is meditation in the holy name which is what we are all trying to do when we chant our daily rounds then there is Rupa Dhyan that is when we take darshan of the deities then there is Leela Dhyan that is when we hear the pastimes and the philosophy of the Lord so when we hear the classes when we are concentrating on that that is also a form of absorption meditation in the Lord and then there is Seva Dhyan so when we are doing service to the Lord that is also a form of remembrance of the Lord so we shouldn’t think of remembrance as something very abstract or something very otherworldly remembrance can happen at different levels and some of them are very practical for us essentially what does it mean to always remember Krishna actually it is injunction to develop love for Krishna because when we love Krishna we will naturally remember him if a person loves cricket then he doesn’t have to be told that always think of cricket even if the person is sitting in a classroom and if he knows that a cricket match is going on that person is still thinking about the cricket match and maybe he is looking for some updates on the mobile and turning on whenever the mobile beeps a little bit so nobody is forcing or disciplining that person but because there is love there is constant attraction and there is constant remembrance so essentially the principle of always remembering Krishna means that we develop our love for Krishna when we truly love Krishna then we will automatically remember Krishna so of course how do we develop that love for Krishna one important way of developing our love for Krishna is by remembering Krishna also so remembering Krishna is also a form of devotional service and there are nine forms of devotional service shravanam, kirtanam, vishnu, smaranam, padasevanam marjanam, vandanam, dasyam, sakhyam atmanivedanam iti pum sarvita vishnu, bhakti shchena navalakshana, kriyeta bhagavatyadha tanmanye dita mustham Prahlad Narayan says in the 7th canto of Srimad Bhagavatam that these are the nine ways in which kriyeta bhagavatyadha we can develop attraction for the lord so these are shravanam, kirtanam, hearing, chanting and remembering and then he goes on in the full list serving the lotus feet, offering prayers, worshipping the deity befriending the lord surrendering our whole existence to the lord and becoming a servant of the lord so these are ways in which we can develop our attraction to Krishna so the very fact that we are chanting 16 rounds right now indicates that we have developed some level of attraction to Krishna because otherwise it is just not possible on a day after day basis to invest two hours in an activity like this so even if we don’t feel that we have developed much of love for Krishna the very fact that the commitment is there for chanting 16 rounds indicates that there is at one level some serious philosophical understanding that Krishna is the ultimate object of love and I need to develop my love for him and also there is some level of taste in the chanting of the holy names even if our mind doesn’t feel in any way satisfied or absorbed when we are chanting but at a deeper level we are experiencing some taste and that’s how we are able to continue chanting 16 rounds but as I said apart from Nama Dhyan there is Rupa Leela and Seva Dhyan so especially at our level if we are trying to absorb ourselves in service to Krishna then that is also a form of remembrance of Krishna because remembrance is not abstract as I said if we have a relationship with Krishna if you want to express your love for your father and if your father has a business and he has a huge responsibility in the business you just go to the father and tell I love you please do something for me please help me in my business please share some of the responsibilities the same way we need to take up responsibilities in Krishna’s mission we can assist by sharing his message by distributing his books or doing any kind of seva that we feel inspired to do so that taking up responsibilities in Krishna’s mission is also an expression of love for Krishna as well as a way to develop our love for Krishna so love is both a verb and a noun love is both a feeling and an action so the feeling feeds the action and the action feeds the feeling that means that sometimes you may feel some devotional attraction for Krishna and at that time you may feel Krishna I want to serve you so taking inspiration from such times we make some commitment to serving Krishna and if we stick to that commitment on a regular basis then we will experience a deepening of our relationship with Krishna we will experience a deeper emotion in our relationship with Krishna and as that emotion will deepen we will want to expand our service to him so in this way the feeling of devotion expands the service in devotion and the service in devotion deepens the feeling of it feeling of devotion these are cumulative so at our level we can try to take up some responsible committed service for Krishna so that we can our relationship with Krishna becomes tangible and real and of course our service may vary according to our time, place, circumstance and we can take consultations about what service we can take up but service will really bring our Krishna consciousness into the realm of tangible and real experience for us so now there is a significant difference between the father-son relationship and our relationship with Krishna you know we may say that I don’t have to go about chanting my father’s name I just have to work for him so then we may wonder why we need to chant Krishna’s name so we just do some seva for him no, if we just do seva without chanting Krishna’s name then that seva will soon degenerate into work it will just become like another task that I have to do and then we start wondering, why am I doing this task if I do some task in my college I get marks for that if I do some task in office I get some pay for that why am I doing all this work in devotional service actually if we are not connected with Krishna through chanting his holy names then we will not be able to experience the deepening of our Krishna consciousness so there is sadhana and there is seva sadhana means we exclusively take out time to fix our mind on Krishna and in that sense and during that time we sort of withdraw ourselves from the world and focus on our inner connection with Krishna and seva means through the outer world we connect with Krishna that means whatever talents Krishna has given to us, we use them in Krishna’s service and we try to make offerings for Krishna in this world so in that sense that we have external life and we have inner life so sadhana is an attempt to spiritualize our inner life and seva is an attempt to spiritualize our external life and of course both feed each other cumulatively so as I said, if we have sadhana without seva then our spiritual life stays mostly at the abstract level because no matter how much sadhana we do we are largely in external consciousness we are largely in material or bodily consciousness and if we are not doing much for Krishna at the material or bodily level then our Krishna consciousness will stay very hypothetical but because we are mostly in the material or bodily consciousness if our relationship with Krishna is only at the material or bodily level then the activities done in relationship with Krishna will soon start seeming similar to the activities that we are doing in material life and then we will start looking for the material fruits for them and when we don’t get any material fruits, we will feel that there is no need to do them and we will give them up so therefore we need an inner connection with Krishna through our chanting, through our sadhana and we need an external connection with Krishna through our seva so in the 12th chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna gives various levels at which we can serve Krishna so he says the highest level he describes in 12.8 he says, fix your mind on me fix your intelligence on me, in this way you will live within me so this is the stage which I talked about as the goal for all of us where remembrance of Krishna is natural because we have love for him, so our mind and intelligence and our heart dwell in Krishna at that time now for those of us which includes most of us when that is not practical the next level Krishna describes so in 12.9 he describes, oh Arjuna this is not possible for you then that means try to make a practice of remembering me so by this your attraction for me will increase so this refers to our sadhana bhakti, this refers to our chanting of 16 rounds and our hearing of classes, so basically naam adhyan, rupa dhyan and nila dhyan come in this abhyas yoga or they can come in the higher level of constant and natural absorption in Krishna but then this is also not possible for us throughout the day even the two hours that we chant is sometimes a struggle for us, so Krishna says ok if you can’t do this on a regular basis then on something else also you can do he says if actually such abhyas is not possible for you then work for me so Krishna says again, do seva for me work on my behalf and by this so then Krishna goes further and he says, if you can’t do this he says, if you can’t even work for me then he says, sacrifice the fruits of your work because at least by that you will be creating a culture of selflessness and sacrifice within your hearts, so it’s best if we can sacrifice the fruits of our work for Krishna but if we can’t do that then actually sacrifice them for some good cause so now let’s look at these levels once again and see where we can fit our lives in so the first level is complete absorption in Krishna, that is our aspiration, but that may not be the reality for most of us right now so the second level is practicing to fix our mind in Krishna and that is what we need to do during our chanting of holy names during our deity darshan, during our hearing of the philosophy, try to fix our mind in Krishna then the next level is working for Krishna this is seva, so this is something so at the second and third levels, all of us need to connect ourselves with Krishna at both levels so we have to have internal life of sadhana, we have to have external life of seva and then for most of us if we are say in the householder life then our whole life cannot be directly seva, we also have to work to take care of our family members and to earn a livelihood so then Krishna says you sacrifice the fruits of your work to me means give charity that is also because our heart is in money so what Krishna is telling is basically a progression it’s best if you can offer your heart to me if your heart is naturally offered to me, that is the best if that’s not possible, then try by practice to offer your heart to me if your heart is too externally materially conscious that you cannot offer the heart to me then offer the activities that you do in your external consciousness to me, that means work for me if you can’t offer all the activities that you are doing in external material consciousness to me then ok, in the material world whatever you are achieving and whatever your heart is in, offer that to me, so in material life our heart is generally in earning money so Krishna says if we sacrifice a part of our earnings in charity because in one sense when we offer that which is in our heart to Krishna, we offer Krishna a place in our heart because if our heart is filled with thoughts of money then there is no place for Krishna to enter in our hearts and Krishna doesn’t want to kick out what is there in the heart and gate crash into our hearts Krishna wants us to voluntarily invite him into our hearts so if we offer something to Krishna then we offer some part of that which is occupying our heart presently if we offer that to Krishna then as we offer that part to Krishna, that part of our heart, that place in our heart becomes occupied by Krishna in this way Krishna in Krishna’s presence manifests and spreads in our heart so in this way bhakti is a very systematic and progressive process so if we are thinking of remembering Krishna for 5 minutes a day in terms of the first level, just being absorbed and lost in thoughts of Krishna it’s a good aspiration but we also need to do the process by which we will achieve that aspiration so that process involves sadhana, seva and dana and when we do all these things gradually our hearts will become transformed, our love will become redirected to Krishna and then naturally organically we will come to the level where we can always remember Krishna. Thank you