Chant One Round

One of the best times to chant was in the morning with Swamiji.  After kirtana he used to say, “Chant one round.”  We did it together.  He usually finished before we did, and then we all trailed off, even if we hadn’t finished the round.

One day I was sitting on a bench on a traffic “island” on First Street.  I was fingering the beads and chanting, when my mind suddenly faced me and said, “What do you actually feel?”  I had to admit that I did not feel anything.  I did not feel contact with Krishna.  Some of my old friends had said that the whole practice of chanting Hare Krishna was a concoction from the East.  It was something that the practitioners made up and believed in because of tradition.  I faced that barrier and continued chanting.  I concluded that rational analysis was not the deciding factor.

In my apartment, chanting privately, I sensed the luxury that japa afforded.  I owned no comfortable furniture, no rug, television or air conditioning.  Yet I felt luxury by fingering the beads.  I imagined sages in India as described in the Bhagavatam.  As they were chanting, so was I.

When we chanted as a group, we watched each other’s operations.  Everyone moved the strand around their necks, working and clicking the beads.

Devotees wrote poems about chanting and published them in Back to Godhead.  I wrote one called “Separation”, and Brahmananda wrote a prayer, “In my next thousands of births, may I please chant at least one attentive round”.  What a humble statement!  Brahmananda wrote another poem about chanting Hare Krishna on the subway.  “You think I am crazy sitting here with my beads.  But you don’t understand that I have God’s spine in my bead bag.”  The metaphor “God’s spine” was a bit strange, but the meaning was, “I am happy chanting Hare Krishna”.

Raya Rama also published a poem, “Red Cherries”.  He compared the wooden beads to cherries.  The cherries that grow on bushes fade, just as the patterns of flowers fade in an oriental rug.  However, the cherries of devotion, the holy names, are everlasting.