Wherever we are, whether it's Goloka or here, we're still eternal servants of the Lord. So in the beginning stages, we understand by hearing sambandha-jñāna that we're not Kṛṣṇa, that we're actually His servants, then that's a beginning position to chant from. The antithesis of that is mentioned by Bhaktivinoda Thākura and by Haridās Thākura in the Harināma Cintāmaṇi. That idea which contaminates the chanting is Māyāvāda, which is the idea that "I am God." "I'm just chanting. I'm temporarily inconvenienced by being in the material world, but I'll realize my godship again by chanting, and I'll merge." Sorry, everybody, but this is the antithesis of sambandha-jñāna, which means a relationship. I have a relationship. How can you have a relationship if you're one and the same? So it starts with understanding that I'm an eternal servant. I'm not the master. 

Later on, one's relationship with Krishna will be realized by the mercy of the holy name. We can't artificially know our relationship with Kṛṣṇa in Goloka Vṛndāvana. There are some people who have a premature way of offering this to others and saying that, "This is your relationship; now meditate on it." But in our line, we first meditate on the holy name and the fact that we're eternal servants, and the Holy Name reveals to us gradually what our relationship is. That comes to be known to us by Kṛṣṇa's arrangement. This you can substantiate this by reading the last song in the Saranāgati by Bhaktivinoda Thākura, in which he describes how the holy name comes to him, takes him by the hand, and introduces him to Kṛṣṇa and his relationship with Kṛṣṇa in the spiritual world.
(excerpt from the talk)
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Lessons On Chanting From Harināma Cintāmaṇi | HG Vaiśeṣika Dāsa | ISV | 10 Jul 2021

This japa is described as a kind of self-examination. It's possible to live an unexamined life. Socrates said, "The unexamined life isn't worth living." There's no value in it. Worth means you're getting something out of it.
One feature of japa is that we have 108 contiguous decisions to make. Each bead is a new decision: "Will I meditate on the mantra that goes with this bead?"

And you can see, if you go for the next one, you think, "I already did that?" So now I'm not going to concentrate, then you can go for eight beads or 107 more without thinking of it. But if we train our mind to make a decision, use our free will to come back to each bead individually, it's a meticulous kind of training for the mind. Because the mind wants randomness in order to escape reality, which is that we're not this body, we are not part of the world. It's been conjured. And we don't like to be challenged our sense of reality. But it's not painful if we face reality, because reality is beautiful and abundant. Krishna is friendly.

So if we train our minds that every bead is a new choice, and remember that between the gap of one bead and the next, we have to renew our decision to meditate on that next bead. If we can practice that, then the mind becomes trained to stay constantly in that decision-making process until it becomes completely natural to only think of the holy name and stay fixed there.

Otherwise, if we let it descend into randomness, then it becomes like a dog. If you've ever met a dog—I have—who wasn't trained properly, he jumped on everything, everyone. Doesn't matter what you tell him, he just goes nuts because he wasn't trained early enough on. So that's one of the aspects of japa that's the great advantage to our own personal well-being and our training of the mind: attention training.
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Every Bead is a New Decision | HG Vaisesika Dasa | Make Japa Great Again | ISV | 29 Nov 2025

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