What to do when we can't chant with full concentration and without offenses?

Much is spoken about improving the quality of our japa, but that's easier said than done. Despite all good advice, it's not always easy to chant all our rounds without distraction.

I have a great admiration for devotees who can chant their 16 rounds in full concentration. Nowadays, much is spoken about improving the quality of our japa, but that's easier said than done. Despite all the good advice we receive, it's not always easy to disconnect from all the complexities of life and chant our 16 rounds without distraction.

One conclusion I came to after many years of practice is that chanting just 16 rounds is just for very advanced devotees. People like me, who are not at this level, have to chant much more! In fact, Prabhupada established 16 rounds as the bare minimum for devotees aiming for initiation, the idea was always to chant more.

It's not easy to just start chanting good rounds all of a sudden. Usually, we chant on a certain level, and it's not so easy to improve just like that. Meditations and aspirations can help to a certain degree. Chanting together with advanced devotees helps much more, but that's not always possible. Therefore, the only solution left, most of the time, to improve our chanting is to just chant more.

In the last chapter of A Second Chance, Prabhupada mentions that when one is not capable of chanting the holy names without offense, the way to neutralize such offenses is to chant the holy names constantly and regularly, without deviating from the process. In this way, even though incapable of chanting completely without offenses, one can remain in a transcendental position. This is a very beautiful quote:

"Even if one chants the Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra offensively, one can nullify these offenses by continuously chanting without deviation. One who becomes accustomed to this practice will always remain in a pure transcendental position, untouchable by sinful reactions.

A devotee’s duty is to chant the Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra. One may sometimes chant with offenses and sometimes without offenses, but if one seriously adopts this process, he will achieve perfection, which cannot be achieved through Vedic ritualistic ceremonies of atonement."

That's what I try to do. Instead of being mental about not being able to fully concentrate, or chanting completely without offenses, I just try to chant more, and I see that Prabhupada's advice works.

Once, I spoke with a devotee who was chanting 64 rounds regularly for several years. He told me that the main difference between chanting 16 rounds and chanting 64 is that when we chant 16 rounds, japa is just part of our lives. We do many things, and at a certain point in the day, we stop to chant. When we chant 64 rounds is the opposite: we chant japa, and sometimes we stop to do other things. In other words, when we chant just 16 rounds, it's easy to put our japa inside a compartment, something we do for just one and a half hours and then forget for the rest of the day. When we chant more, japa becomes more of a priority. The chanting becomes a constant, something that occupies all our free time. We become like an unchaste woman (in a good sense), looking for opportunities to meet the "lover" (the holy names) whenever there is any free time during the day. Japa then becomes like a constant companion, instead of just some acquaintance we meet just once per day.

I'm not there yet, but I can appreciate the beauty of the example, and I try to apply it as far as possible. There are many devotees in our movement who chant a lot of rounds daily, they just don't advertise themselves.

Again, I offer my humble obeisances to all the great devotees who are on the path back to Godhead by just chanting their 16 rounds in full concentration, but for myself, I realized I have to chant much more than that.