26
The Perfection of Yoga
are My devotee. You are My very dear friend.” Despite this qualification, Arjuna refused to execute the meditational  yoga  system described by Śrī Kṛṣṇa. What then are we to conclude? Are we to despair the mind’s ever being controlled? No, it can be controlled, and the process is this Kṛṣṇa consciousness. The mind must be fixed always in Kṛṣṇa. Insofar as the mind is absorbed in Kṛṣṇa it has attained the perfection of  yoga .
Now when we turn to the Śrīmad- Bhāgavatam , in the Twelfth Canto we find Śukadeva Gosvāmī telling Mahārāja Parīkṣit that in the Golden Age, the Satyayuga, people were living for 100,000 years, and at that time, when advanced living entities lived for such lengths of time, it was possible to execute this meditational system of  yoga . But what was achieved in the Satyayuga by this meditational process, and in the following  yuga , the Tretāyuga, by the offering of great sacrifices, and in the next  yuga , the Dvāparayuga, by temple worship, would be achieved at the present time, in this Kaliyuga, by simply chanting the names of God,  hari-kīrtana , Hare Kṛṣṇa. So from authoritative sources we learn that this chanting of Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare / Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma, Hare Hare is the embodiment of the perfection of  yoga  for this age.
Today we have great difficulties living fifty or sixty years. A man may live at the utmost eighty or a hundred years. In addition, these brief years are always fraught with anxiety, with difficulties due to circumstances of war, pestilence, famine and so many other disturbances. We’re also not very intelligent, and, at the same time, we’re unfortunate.