You can go anywhere: sit in your home, in your garden, you can be at work, and if you sincerely repeat the names of God and listen carefully, then you'll have this sense of direct communion with the Divine, with Kṛṣṇa.
One of the teachers from antiquity said, "How focused should we be?" You should imagine yourself going to the ocean with a kuśa straw. It's got a little flat area on it, and you could use that as a tool to empty the ocean, to drain the ocean. How long do you think it would take, Braja Rāsa Bhāvana, to use a little straw, one drop at a time, to drain the entire Pacific Ocean? A long time. And he said, be prepared for that. If you want success, approach the simple process with such focus and determination: "I'm going to sit here with this one straw until I drain the whole ocean."
Now there's another story connected with this, and this is what the great teachers talk about. There was a little bird. She lived by the seashore, and she laid her eggs along the sandy beach. And one day, the ocean personified came, and in a mood of being mean, stole her eggs. With a sweep of his hand, a wave, he reached out and grabbed them, pulled them into his waters, and then chuckled as the little bird seemed distressed. Isn't that mean? Say yes.
So then the little bird puffed out her chest and walked to the ocean, even though she was such a tiny creature. She said, "You give my eggs back. That's my offspring. My duty is to protect them." And the ocean said, "Good luck, you're not getting them back." A bully.
So she said, "I'll show you," and my mother used to say, "Never underestimate the power of 'I'll show you.' So she sat there at the ocean. She began to peck out the water of the ocean, saying, "I'm going to drain you one drop at a time." And what did the ocean say? "Hahaha, good luck, it'll never happen."
An audience started to gather around to watch her determination. All the creatures who saw her trying to drain the ocean began to talk amongst themselves, and it spread from one forest to the next. All the birds were talking, and then the mongooses picked up on it. They live under the trees, they passed it on, and they started talking about it, and it spread so far that the very powerful, heroic bird Garuḍa—we saw a license plate on the way here that said "Garuḍa," so I thought I'd tell the story—Garuḍa heard about it. Who is Garuḍa? He is the powerful carrier of Lord Vishnu. He came down to see his sister bird and he landed there and said, "What's going on?" She said, "I'm going to drain this ocean." And he said to the ocean, "You give the eggs back or I'll dry you up myself. With my wingspan, I'll flap so hard that the air will evaporate you now." The ocean then became frightened because Garuḍa is not an ordinary bird, and gave the eggs back.
That's a story the ancient teachers tell. In the practice of chanting the mantra, if we approach it like that, willing to peck out every drop— you can imagine it when you're chanting one mantra: "Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare/ Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma, Hare Hare," and if you like, you can use beads. Normally, they have 108 beads on each one. If you hold on to each one, you say each bead is one drop, and I'll keep going till the whole ocean's drained. This is the idea of what Kapiladeva said: be willing to do this for a long time. Not, "I'll try it for a week, and if it works, maybe." You have to get enough knowledge intervention in your mind to see material world is as all risk, no gain, and spiritual life as all gain, no risk. But you have to be all in, to be successful.
If you do that, and you practice in that way, then very soon you'll get help that you never imagined you would get. And that's something Kṛṣṇa says throughout the Bhagavad-gītā. "I'm there to help you. As soon as you show your determination, then I'll be there to intervene in your life and help you in ways that you could never imagine."
(excerpt from the talk)
