Riverside morning satsang

When someone asks how much they should chant, he almost never gives them the number they were hoping for. Devotees arrive ready to promise something impressive, and he steers them downward instead: take an amount you can keep up on your worst day, not your best one. The size of the commitment is the least important part of it.

The reasoning is about what a broken promise does. A person who commits to a large daily count manages it for a week, misses a day, misses two, and then stops entirely, and the stopping is rarely about the chanting. It is about the accumulated failure. Having broken the promise, the practice now carries guilt, and nobody keeps returning to something that makes them feel worse each time.

A small amount held without interruption has the opposite property. It survives illness, travel, a bad month at work and a difficult week at home, because it was set at a level those things cannot knock over. He points out that consistency compounds and intensity does not, and that a modest routine kept for five years produces a person that a spectacular fortnight never will.

He is also alert to what large commitments are often for. Announcing a demanding practice feels like seriousness, and it is frequently a substitute for it. The size is a statement, made partly to oneself, and the statement has to be maintained. Practice built to be impressive is under pressure from the first day, and pressure is what makes people quit.

There is a natural objection: surely more is better. His answer is that more is better only if it is still happening in a year, which is an empirical question rather than a matter of enthusiasm. He does not object to a devotee doing extra on a day that allows it. He objects to the extra becoming the promise, because then an ordinary day starts to count as a shortfall.

What it asks of you is an honest downward estimate. Pick the amount you could complete on the worst day you can reasonably expect, one where you are unwell, travelling and behind at work, and set the daily commitment there. Do more freely on the days that allow more, but never let the extra redefine the floor. The floor is the thing that carries the practice.

The rest of his most repeated sayings are on the quotes page, the teaching they belong to is set out on the teachings page, and the questions devotees bring him about anger, money, family and grief are answered on the questions answered page.