Techniques of Hearing and Memorizing
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remembering the form, qualities, pastimes, etc., of the Lord.
In the  Padma Purāṇa  there is a statement about remembering the activities of the Lord: “A person who is always engaged in meditation on the sweet pastimes and wonderful activities of the Lord surely becomes freed from all material contamination.”
Meditation on Executing Devotional Service
In some of the  Purāṇas  the evidence is given that if someone is simply meditating on devotional activities, he has achieved the desired result and has seen face to face the Supreme Personality of Godhead. In this connection, there is a story in the  Brahma-vaivarta Purāṇa  that in the city of Pratiṣṭhānapura in South India there was once a  brāhmaṇa  who was not very well-to-do, but who was nevertheless satisfied in himself, thinking that because of his past misdeeds, and by the desire of Kṛṣṇa, he did not get sufficient money and opulence. So he was not at all sorry for his poor material position, and he used to live very peacefully. He was very openhearted, and sometimes he went to hear some lectures delivered by great realized souls. At one such meeting, while he was very faithfully hearing about  Vaiṣṇava  activities, he was informed that these activities can be performed even by meditation. In other words, if a person is unable to actually perform  Vaiṣṇava  activities physically, he can meditate upon the  Vaiṣṇava  activities and thereby acquire all of the same results. Because the  brāhmaṇa  was not very well-to-do financially, he decided that he would simply meditate on grand, royal devotional activities, and he began this business thusly:
Sometimes he would take his bath in the river Godāvarī. After taking his bath he would sit in a secluded place on the bank of the river, and, by practicing the  yoga  exercises of  prāṇāyāma , the usual breathing exercise, he would concentrate his mind. This breathing exercise is meant to mechanically make the mind fixed upon a particular subject. That is the result of the breathing exercise and also of the different sitting postures of  yoga . Formerly, even quite ordinary persons used to know how to fix the mind upon the remembrance of