Four rounds as a standard for initiation?

Why on Iskcon one has to wait for years, chant 16 rounds, and develop a relationship with the guru while on other places, one can get a name easily after promising to just chant four rounds?

A question that some ask is about initiations in the Gauḍīya Maṭhas. Why on Iskcon one has to wait for years, chant 16 rounds, and develop a relationship with the guru, while on some of the Gauḍīya Maṭhas, one can get a name very easily after promising to just chant four rounds, or sometimes by just attending a program and meeting a sadhu, without promising anything at all?

There are a few details here. First of all, is the usage of the term “Gauḍīya Maṭhas”. Nowadays, some use this term for any Vaiṣnava institution or group outside Iskcon, without considering if they are really connected with some of the original Gauḍīya Maṭhas or what the connection is. It’s very common for groups of dissatisfied ex-Iskcon devotees to define themselves as “Gauḍīya Maṭhas” without having any real connection with any of the maṭhas.

A second question is about where this idea of four rounds came from and how it became popular. This is something I’m really challenged to answer, since, as far as I know, Srila Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Thākura was telling his brahmacārī disciples to chant 64 rounds and was offering 16 rounds to householders already as a concession. Some think that Prabhupada invented the standard of chanting 16 rounds when he initiated his first disciples in the West, but in reality, he just applied the standard Srila Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Thākura was, at his time, using for householders, seeing the reluctance of his first disciples in chanting 64 rounds. History shows this decision was correct since had he insisted on the original standard of 64 rounds, not many of us would be able to maintain the standard.

Srila Sridhara Maharaja, Godbrother of Srila Prabhupada, once mentioned that even if there is some emergency and one is not able to chant his rounds, one must chant at very least four rounds since the “beads should not starve”. It seems that there was a standard of a minimum of four rounds in the original Gaudiya Math for situations of emergency, but it’s questionable if this can be applied as a standard for initiation.

A third point is the relationship of the “guru” with the “disciple” in such an “initiation”. I’m using the terms in quotes because it seems they may be misused here. Once, I talked with a devotee who was serving in one of the maṭhas. He explained that in the particular group he was part of, the understanding is that harīnāma (giving the beads) is not an initiation, and thus can be given to anyone without establishing a guru/disciple connection, just like when we give someone a book on the street, for example. According to them, real initiation is when one receives the sacred thread. In their nomenclature, diksa is what in Iskcon is called second initiation, or brāhminical initiation, and harīnāma means to just encourage one to chant the holy names, so one can practice and receive proper initiation later on.

Whether this view is correct or not could be a subject for another discussion, but the point is that this view is accepted in a number of groups. With this, we can understand that different Gauḍīya Maṭhas have different standards and understandings of initiation, just as they differ in the understanding of other points. Followers of all Gauḍīya Maṭhas will agree on the basic points, such as prema-bhakti being the goal of life and the chanting of the holy names being the means to attain that goal, but they will often disagree in the details. It’s incorrect to consider all Gauḍīya Maṭhas as a single unified group.

We thus need to talk with devotees and understand what the understanding is in their particular group. It can go from the understanding that initiation means receiving the beads and chanting 64 rounds, all the way to the idea that harīnāma is not initiation and can be given to anyone who promises to chant four rounds, or even to people who attend a program without promising anything at all. Before accepting “initiation”, one should thus inquire from the sadhu in question what their relationship is and what is being given. Does he assume the responsibility of taking all one’s sins upon his shoulders and taking him or her back to Godhead? Or is it just a name and a set of beads in exchange for a donation?

In Iskcon, for example, we sometimes see that senior devotees give names to children or even beads to stimulate them to chant, but this is not understood as an initiation. It’s just a sadhu giving a cute name to a child. The child still has to grow, find a guru, develop a relationship with him, and make his vows before being duly initiated. The initiation itself is also just the beginning of a longer path back to Godhead, which will involve the participation of the initiating guru, and possibly of multiple siksa-gurus along the way.

We sometimes tend to think that the spiritual path is something easy and cheap and that we can go back to Godhead by just casually practicing 30 minutes per day. While the path of bhakti is indeed very easy if compared with other paths, such as dry asceticism or mystic yoga, it still requires a good deal of commitment. Going back to Godhead requires us to completely focus our attention upon Krsna, which demands us to completely withdraw it from matter. The ultimate goal for us is to reduce eating, sleeping, mating, and defending to zero, and completely focus our attention on the chanting of the holy names. Such chanting must not only be constant, but completely pure to award us the ultimate result. How someone can expect to achieve it by just casually chanting four rounds per day is something I’m puzzled to answer. Even the sixteen rounds Srila Prabhupada established are defined as just the beginning. In reality, we are supposed to chant more, as well as study the scriptures, do some practical service, etc.

One may start by chanting any number of rounds, or by just casually chanting the Mahā-mantra after hearing it from devotees chanting on the street, for example, but at some point, one will need to become more serious in his spiritual practice to progress further, and even more to finally break free from all material contamination and find his or her way back to Godhead.

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