What to do when we feel attracted to holy names other than the mahamantra?
Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies.
Question from Latha Mataji. Before coming to ISKCON, I was reciting many shlokas, but after understanding the philosophy, now I am going to accept that Lord Krishna is Supreme Personality of Godhead and need to worship Him by chanting Hare Krishna Mahamantra. But when chanting the mantra, so many doubts arise in the mind.
Is only this holy name powerful? Why can't we chant just Ram or Krishna, Om Namo Bhagwate Vasudeva, Sita Ram, etc.? I feel, I understand this Mahamantra is the only hope for this Kali Yuga, but still mind is wandering. How to get the full faith that Hare Krishna Mahamantra is everything? Answer, certainly if the mind is desiring to chant other holy names of Krishna, that is our other holy names of the Lord, that is our good fortune. For most of us devotees who chant, the mind craves for so many other things.
And if mind is going towards other mantras, then definitely that's not just a sattva guni daya distraction, that is also, we could call it a devotional distraction. So, we can have the distractions in ignorance that would be sleep. We can have distractions in passion that could be lust or greed.
We can have distractions in goodness, which can be say attraction to knowledge and some intellectual thoughts, more than a devotional call for prayer. And we can have, or we can also have some sattvic cultural aspects, like say more to the musical recitation of shlokas or more than the devotional call or the import of those shlokas. And then we could have devotional distractions.
Now, if the higher the level of the distractions, that is our good fortune. That means the battle that we will have to face is lesser in redirecting our consciousness towards Krishna. So, there is absolutely nothing wrong with chanting other mantras like Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya or just Ram or Krishna.
If you feel inspired to chant them, definitely we can chant them. And if you find them enlivening, we can even make them our default meditation. At the same time, we have the Hare Krishna Mahamantra given as the Yuga Dharma and there are many scriptural references to it.
And on this website itself, there is a page where you use several references to the Hare Krishna Mahamantra from the Kalisantra Upanishad and other places. And similarly, thousands of devotees all over the world have found the potency in the chanting of the Hare Krishna Mahamantra. So, therefore, we should make that our primary sadhana.
So, for example, our V.C. Shanbhava of chanting 16 rounds, which we may take eventually, that can be our primary sadhana. And apart from that, we can chant other names also. And it is not that we have to be, in order to be focused on the Hare Krishna Mahamantra, we don't have to be fanatical or exclusivist.
The other holy names of the Supreme Lord can also purify us. And so, if apart from our chanting, at other times we feel inclined, we are feeling a little tired and need to relax. We can chant Ram's name, we can chant Govinda Jai Jai, Gopala Jai Jai.
We can chant Jagannatha Swami Naina Pathagami. So, Prabhupada would also do kirtans of Jagannatha Swami Naina Pathagami. So, in a sense, at our level, we need to recognize that we focus on the principle of Yena Kena Prakarena Mana Krishna Niveshaya.
Somehow or the other, fix the mind on Krishna. With this principle, whatever attracts us to Krishna, we cherish that as an opportunity to come closer to Krishna and use it accordingly, gratefully, happily. At the same time, Vaidhi Bhakti means that there is Vidhi which we also should follow.
So, that's why we chant our prescribed number of rounds and we need to know that the holy name also acts as a medicine. So, whether our attraction to the different holy names of Krishna, of the Lord, which we feel right now, whether it is spiritual or more of mental, cultural, emotional, that we can't really say right now. To understand that difference, we will have to see the consistency of the attraction, not just the newness of the sounds.
Because we chant the Hare Krishna Mahamantra constantly, the mind may want some break into something and that's why it may prefer the other holy names. But if we chant the other holy names regularly and the mind may well become tired with that and want to chant some other names and like that also the mind may come back to Hare Krishna Mantra. So, rather than letting ourselves stay on the mental platform, of course staying on the mental platform while being within the realm of devotional service is far better than staying on the mental platform and going down to Rajoguna or Tamoguna.
So, this is good but being ultimately surrendered means we want to go beyond the mental platform to spiritual platform. So, even within the realm of Bhakti, there are some things which we like to do and we can surely do that and we increase our attraction to Krishna by doing that. But along with that, we also recognize that Bhakti involves doing things for Krishna's pleasure.
So, our chanting of the Hare Krishna Mahamantra, we do it for Krishna's pleasure and over a period of time as we become purified and develop devotion to Krishna, we will find that we will get enormous fulfillment, purification and illumination by chanting the Hare Krishna Mahamantra also. So, there is no need to feel that we are deficient in faith or that we are or to become discouraged by thinking that there's something wrong with us because we don't have faith in the holy name in the Hare Krishna Mahamantra. Rather, you know, we look at our good fortune that we have attraction to something devotional and understand the philosophy that what we feel attraction to right now may not be spiritual, may not be at the spiritual level, it may be at the mental level and the way to rise from the mental level to the spiritual level is to persevere irrespective of whether the mind likes a particular thing or not and if we persevere in this way, the mind will become purified and eventually it will start liking things, liking the Hare Krishna Mahamantra and liking the other holy names also at a deeper level where our bhakti will no longer be dependent on the mercy of the mind.
It will become spontaneous and consistent being based on a heartfelt and deep attraction to Krishna in all his manifestations. Thank you.