This japa is very individual—it's the most individual of all the practices that we do. We have to take personal responsibility for it; nobody else can do it for us. If you go to a kīrtana, somebody else can do it for us—oh, Kadamba Kānana Maharaja tomorrow, he'll just keep it going, and I'll just sit there and go like, "whoa" But with japa, you have to keep it going, and you have to take personal responsibility. There's nobody else there that's going to help you. You have to be the one who takes the sole responsibility.

So if we understand this diffusion of responsibility, and if I think there are other factors that define my success, this is another way of looking at it: there are other things that are more important in my life that I have to do that define success. Why would we do anything that didn't bring us some kind of reward? Everything we do, we have some sense that either it's staving off misery or it's going to help me get in a better position where I'll have more money so that I'll be the king of the world, and then I'll stave off misery because I'll have a swimming pool.

But if I think like that, then I diffuse the responsibility. I just think, "I'll let something else define me and define my life and define my happiness." So, I can also think, "I'm in an organization; therefore, you know, it's good enough, I got initiated, I'm in an organization, I'm mixing in with other people—I don't have to take personal responsibility." But if I realize that I'm independently responsible to connect with Kṛṣṇa, and nobody else is going to come and help me, then I'll be more diligent.

Finally, japa means that we're giving a personal response to Kṛṣṇa. It's very personal—we're responding to Him. And so we looked up the word "respond," and it comes from the word "sponsor," which means to pledge. So when we're responding, we're offering a promise or a pledge, and we're saying it. So you can think of when you're chanting japa, it's a personal pledge to Kṛṣṇa that, "I'm your servant," and we're reinforcing that again and again. So that's what responsibility means. How much impetus do we have to actually respond to Kṛṣṇa? To that degree, we're responsible.

(excerpt from the talk)

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