An overlooked key for good chanting

Many, many years ago, I read a verse in Srimad-Bhagavatam which I could never forget. It speaks about a certain way of approaching Krsna. A way of approaching Krsna that is totally different from what I have mostly been doing during my 50+ years of practicing Krsna consciousness. At first, I felt challenged by it. However, recently, this way of approaching Krsna has brought many new discoveries to me and new results came in my spiritual life. The verse is spoken by the devotee Indradyumna Maharaja, who, in the body of an elephant, is awakening to the fact that he urgently needs the shelter of Krsna. He is therefore turning to Krsna:
Since an animal such as me has surrendered unto You, who are supremely liberated, certainly You will release me from this dangerous position. Indeed, being extremely merciful, You incessantly try to deliver me. By your partial feature as Paramatma, You are situated in the hearts of all embodied beings. You are celebrated as direct transcendental knowledge, and You are unlimited. I offer my respectful obeisances unto You, the Supreme Personality of Godhead.
— Srimad-Bhagavatam (8.13.8)
In his purport, Srila Prabhupada says ”It is not that He becomes attentive to us only when we offer prayers to Him. Even before we offer our prayers, He incessantly tries to deliver us”, that Krsna is ”within our hearts and is not at all inattentive”, that He is ”never lazy in regard to our deliverance”, and that even though ”we refuse to accept His instructions” He ”has not become angry.”
When I read this for the first time: ”He always tries to bring us back home”, I actually became very moved. I could see that it was Krsna who was sending people into my life, sending events into my life. It all came from Him.
When a person understands that there is someone who constantly wishes them well, they become very grateful and thankful to that person. And they want to respond. Think about perhaps when you were a teenager, when you were revolting against your parents who were maybe too rigid for you and did not leave you enough space to develop, and you had some ill feelings towards them. And only much later in life, you recognize: they only tried to assist me! And then your attitude towards your parents changed. Or you might have had a similar experience with your spiritual master. In any case, at that time, when this realization comes to you, you will think, maybe I should look at our relationship with fresh eyes…
So in the same way, we can reboot, restart or reset our vision towards Krsna. He is not just capable, but He is merciful. He wants to help us, and then the next thing is: He is also attentive. That means He understands my situation and what I’m going through. He is ”never inattentive” and ”His only aim is to deliver us from material life” and ”He is never lazy in regard to our deliverance.”
When we want to make our contact with Krsna, these truths about Krsna are very important. If we, instead, have an understanding of God who is so far away, in the heavens, judging everyone according to how pious or impious they are, it is really difficult to approach the Lord with genuine devotional feelings. In Krsna consciousness, we have a much more suksma, fine, understanding of the Lord than that.

When you do the most important and perhaps the most difficult spiritual practice in Krsna consciousness, chanting the Holy Names of Krsna, and you have this understanding of Krsna, your chanting will be very different. You will be able to get out of your complicated thoughts and enter more into the world of devotional feelings. Then everything is so wonderful, and there’s an immediate reciprocation, almost as if the Supersoul says, ”Ahh, now this person is calling my name, now this person is turning to me.”

Perhaps we can fall in love with someone who does not like us and we can even marry that person. But on the long run it is impossible to love someone who doesn’t feel affection for us. In bhakti you also need to know that Krsna is there and He’s interested in you, He’s attentive to you, even when you are perhaps not so attentive to Him. That is important.

I want to tell you very honestly: I know of no more efficient sadhana or practice than chanting while you know that Krsna is right next to you and is listening to you. It is a divine communication. That is how you start. You sit down, you ideally have a picture of Krsna which helps you to remember Him, or you sit before the deities. Then you enter into the flow of the mantra, which comes, through the sampradaya, from Goloka Vrndavana. And you throw yourself into this current of eternity and it takes you somewhere.

Srila Prabhupada: Krsna’s miracle

When I was alone in your New York, I was thinking, ”who will listen to me in this horrible, sinful place? All right, I shall stay little longer, at least I can distribute a few of my books, that is something.” But Krsna was all along preparing something I could not see, and He brought you to me one by one, sincere American boys and girls, to be trained-up for doing the work of Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu. Now I can see that it is a miracle. Otherwise, your city of New York, one single old man, with only a few books to sell for barely getting eatables, how he can survive, what to speak of introducing God-consciousness movement for saving the humankind? That is Krsna’s miracle. Now I can see it.

From a letter of Srila Prabhupada to Sudama, dated Bombay, Dec. 23, 1972.