Practice Resources

Bhakti yogis carefully control their senses and minds by engaging them in service to Krishna and Krishna's devotees. The control is not the white-knuckle restraint we tend to imagine when we hear the word discipline. It is, instead, the quieter and more lasting work of giving the senses something better to do.

"Thus practicing constant control of the body, mind and activities, the mystic transcendentalist, his mind regulated, attains to the kingdom of God by cessation of material existence."

— Bhagavad-gita 6.15

Constant, not occasional

The Gita's word is constant. Not heroic, not occasional, not reserved for the dramatic morning. The senses are practiced the way a musician practices scales — daily, gently, without spectacle. The mind, after long enough, learns the new song.

And so the small interior weather of the practitioner begins to change. The room of the chest, once crowded, becomes a room one can return to. The senses, once scattered, begin to point in the same direction — toward the holy name, toward the service at hand, toward the next quiet hour.

There is no spectacle in this. There is only, slowly, a life that has become its own steady practice.

Greed has a very short vocabulary. Whatever you offer it, its single response is the same: more. It does not know how to say thank you, because it cannot afford to. Gratitude is its quieter opposite — a divine quality, the tradition says, marked by a readiness to notice what was given and to return some kindness in turn.

Bhakti as the practice of thanks

The whole of bhakti yoga can be read as a long, patient cultivation of this one quality. Each chant, each offering, each small attention given to the holy name, is a way of saying — this was given to me, and I am noticing.

"When human society is grateful to the Lord for all His gifts for the maintenance of the living entities, then there is certainly no scarcity or want in society. But when men are unaware of the intrinsic value of such gifts from the Lord, surely they are in want."

— Srimad-Bhagavatam 3.5.49

Want, in this reading, is less a condition of the world than a condition of attention. The cure begins where attention turns. Om Tat Sat. Adapted from a reflection by Vaisesika Dasa.

Some months ago, during a serious drought, I adjusted the small automatic watering system in our backyard, lowering the volume and the frequency. Within two and a half months the garden had quietly given up — leaves dry, growth stalled, the figs paused mid-effort.

Two weeks ago I increased the daily water by five percent. Just five. The garden has begun to perk up: green tips returning, the figs filling out again, even a rose or two emerging from the brown.

The arithmetic of practice

It is hard not to see in this a small parable for spiritual life. A five-percent increase in one's daily bhakti practice — a slightly longer round of chanting, one more chapter heard, a few more minutes given to service — is often enough to revive a wilting taste for it. The change need not be dramatic to be real.

The bhakti scriptures advise us, accordingly, to keep a careful eye on our daily intake of devotional water. Not because the soul is fragile, but because attention is. Adapted from a reflection by Vaisesika Dasa.

What is Krishna consciousness?

Krishna is one of the names of God in the Vedic tradition, indicating supreme beauty and an all-attractive nature. Krishna consciousness is, in plain terms, the soul's natural state — quietly absorbed in loving service to that all-attractive source. It is not something added to us from outside; it is what we have always been, momentarily forgotten under the conditions of material life. As one moves a little away from the loud demands of the senses, this older state begins to recover itself, and a more stable kind of happiness becomes possible.

Where does this tradition come from?

Its roots are in the Vedas, among the oldest scriptures of the world. In its present-day form, the path of devotional chanting was given a particular shape by Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu in Bengal, India, about five hundred years ago. In 1965, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada brought the same teaching to the West, and the international community of practice that grew up around him has temples and farms today on every continent.

What are the Vedas?

The Vedas are an extensive body of Sanskrit literature concerning, broadly, the nature of the self, the world, and the divine. They include the four original Vedas, the Upanishads, the great epics like the Mahabharata (which contains the Bhagavad-gita), and the Puranas, of which the Srimad-Bhagavatam is, for bhakti practitioners, the most beloved.

What does a daily practice actually look like?

At its simplest: chanting the Hare Krishna mantra (often on beads), reading a little from the Bhagavad-gita or Srimad-Bhagavatam, eating food that has been offered with care, and giving some small portion of one's day to the welfare of others. The path is not asking for heroic gestures. It is asking for a little, daily, kept up gently over time.

Adapted from a reference page by Vaisesika Dasa and the FanTheSpark team.