A while back a friend wrote me in one e-mail**:

“I have been desiring to be engaged in one type of service to really penetrate into its nature and focus on it without deviation. “

In this case the devotee was referring to Deity worship, yet this morning I realized how much this relates to our sadhana. This is one steady service that we absolutely must “penetrate into its nature and focus without deviation”. No matter whether we are a book distributor, a cook, a toilet cleaner or a pujari for Krishna, still our japa will be there. Good japa will be the anchor that prevents us from drifting away during the most turbulant times in our voyage back to Godhead.

So this morning during japa period, I took an opportunity to scrutinize my chanting, seek what faults were there. For a while now, I’ve been focusing on trying to hear my chanting. This may sound simplistic but really this is what japa is all about, sravanam. One devotee once asked Srila Prabhupada, “What should we think of when we chant japa?” Prabhupada looked at him kind of weird and said, ” Think?, Simply hear.”

This morning while trying to hear my rounds I noticed a discrepancy in my pronunciation the “Hare Hare” sounded more like “ad-hy ,ad-hy”. So I focused on trying to correct this which meant, slowing down. It took a lot of concentration to try and change this but, my mind was more peaceful than usual as it was fully engaged in trying to properly pronounce each syllable while simultaneously hearing to monitor if my reform was working. Although I did not finish my rounds before sunrise , I felt much more enlivened afterwards. From this I realized that if we do a little tapasya for Krishna, He reciprocates so much. Just by endeavoring to hear and chant nicely He gave me a tiny glimpse of the sweetness His names contain.

Anyways, that was my tiny realization of the day.

** note this entry was written a while back for the Japa Group, currently I am doing a spring cleaning for my draft box, so out into Planet ISKCON it goes