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Question: Sometimes I feel like chanting becomes a burden. You always share how the bliss experienced from chanting is endless. When does chanting change from being a burden?

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Jayapataka Swami: If you are committing a lot of offences then the chanting may be somewhat of a burden. And when you chant offenselessly, or you are clearing your offences away, then you start to taste different degrees of bliss. You don’t believe me? Ha! So, if we can, someone told me I don’t feel bliss. I said, how long have you been chanting? Since yesterday! How much do you chant? I chant twice, I don’t feel any ecstasy! So I don’t know, how many times you have been chanting? How long you have been chanting? How many offences you are doing? Obviously it takes more than two days, or twice to get taste in chanting. You have to chant and keep on chanting. Srila Prabhupada said, it took him twenty years for perfection. Normally it takes many, many births to achieve liberation, by another process. Bahunam janmanam ante, gyanavan prapadhyante – after many, many births, one who is knowledgeable, he surrenders to Krsna. But by following the process of Caitanya Mahaprabhu, then the whole thing can happen much faster! And you can get a taste. I once saw there was a mother and father, they came to see their son in Montreal. And they put their arms around their son and talking to him. And they caught him and said, COME WITH US, LEAVE THIS PLACE! Pulled him! He grabbed the handle of the doorway, the parents were pulling his feet and he was pulling the handle. Srila Prabhupada said, he has developed attachment! Ha! Ha! Normally, if the parents call like, you would surrender, but he did not want to leave! The child would succumb but he had developed a lot of attachment. Similarly, I was one time solicited to play a devotee in a TV show. It was a fairly easy role for me. At that time, they agreed to pay me something like 245 (?) dollars. So it was a show where the village leader, he and a band of psychologists, three people, I forgot who, they heard out a dispute and gave their verdict. So the father wanted to give me a bicycle or something. But he decided not to do it because he was afraid, I would use it for Krsna. And then so, there was this debate where I had to say why he should give it and he tried to explain, why he shouldn’t give it! So after we both presented our part, they had a commercial break! Ha! Ha! The panel, they started talking amongst themselves. He really believes in what he thinks; I mean he really believes! One of them said, I don’t believe in anything in my whole life, how would you like to believe in something? What would it be like to have belief in something? So, that was an eye opener for me. Of course they were actors but, they didn’t believe in anything! Anyway, I won the argument!
06-JANUARY-2020 NEW PANIHATI DHAM, ATLANTA, USA