Hare
The vocative of Hara — understood in this tradition as the divine energy, addressed as Radha. It is a calling, not a statement. Every line of the mantra begins by asking to be heard.
The mantra
Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare
It is called the maha-mantra — the great mantra. Sixteen words, and only three distinct names between them, repeated in a fixed order. In the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition it is the whole of the practice: not a preliminary to something else, but the thing itself.
The three names
The vocative of Hara — understood in this tradition as the divine energy, addressed as Radha. It is a calling, not a statement. Every line of the mantra begins by asking to be heard.
“The all-attractive one.” The name carries the sense of something that draws everything toward itself, the way gravity is not a rule a thing obeys but what the thing is.
“The reservoir of pleasure” — the source of delight rather than its object. The same person, named for a different quality.
There is nothing asked for in it. No petition, no bargain, no outcome named. It is a form of address repeated until the one addressing and the addressing itself are all that is left. That is the claim the tradition makes about it, and it is worth understanding on its own terms before agreeing or disagreeing with it.
Japa, and kirtan
The same mantra is used two ways. Kirtan is sung aloud, together, with drum and karatalas — the thing most people have seen. Japa is the other half: alone, quietly, on beads, often barely above a whisper. Kirtan is the public face. Japa is the daily work, and it is what the counter on this site is for.
Why 108
A mala carries 108 beads plus a larger head bead, which is never counted and never crossed — on reaching it you turn and go back the other way rather than stepping over it. The number appears throughout Indic tradition and is explained a dozen ways; the tradition does not insist on one of them. What matters in practice is that it is long enough that attention has to be brought back several times, and short enough to finish.
One pass of the mala is one round. Sixteen rounds is the vow taken at initiation in ISKCON — 1,728 repetitions, somewhere near two hours a day, usually begun before dawn.
Hearing, not saying
The instruction given most often is that japa is an act of listening. The mouth forms the names and the ear receives them, and the mind is brought back to the sound each time it wanders — which it will, continuously, and that returning is not a failure of the practice but the practice. Nobody describes it as easy. Everyone describes it as cumulative.
This page sets out what the tradition teaches about its own practice. It is not a statement about what Kevin Wu believes today, and it is not asking you to believe anything either. It is here so that the words on the rest of this site mean something.
The count
A mala has 108 beads and a round is one pass of them. The honest answer to why is that the tradition offers several explanations and does not settle on one. Two you will hear often: that the beads stand for the 108 gopis, and that they stand for the 108 Upanishads. Both are given in good faith by people who practise, and they are not the same answer.
What is not in dispute is the arithmetic. One round is 108 repetitions. The vow taken in ISKCON is sixteen rounds a day, which is 1,728 repetitions — roughly two hours. That is the number the lamps on the practice page are counting towards.
The beads themselves
The beads are usually turned tulasi wood. They are held in the right hand and moved with the thumb and the middle finger; the index finger is kept off them. Many practitioners keep the mala in a cloth bag so it is not handled carelessly or shown off.
There is one larger bead, the head bead, and you do not chant on it and do not pass over it. When you reach it the round is finished, and you turn the mala around and go back the way you came. So a long session is not a loop running forward forever — it is the same hundred and eight, walked up and walked back, over and over.
Three words for it
Quiet, alone, on beads. Loud enough that you hear it and no louder. This is the private practice, and the one this site is built for.
Sung, with others, usually with instruments, call and response. The same words. The difference is that somebody answers.
Kirtan taken outside, in public, by anybody. This is the thing Chaitanya Mahaprabhu actually started, five hundred years ago.