26 The Perfection of Yoga

are My devotee. You are My very dear friend.”
Despite this qualification, Arjuna refused to exe-
cute the meditational yoga system described by Sri
Krsna. 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 Krsna con-
sciousness. The mind must be fixed always in Krsna.
Insofar as the mind is absorbed in Krsna it has
attained the perfection of yoga.

Now when we turn to the Srimad-Bhagavatam, in
the Twelfth Canto we find Sukadeva Gosvami tell-
ing Maharaja Pariksit that in the Golden Age, the
Satyayuga, people were living for 100,000 years,
and at that time, when advanced living enti-
ties 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 Tretayuga,
by the offering of great sacrifices, and in the next
yuga, the Dvaparayuga, by temple worship, would be
achieved at the present time, in this Kaliyuga, by
simply chanting the names of God, hari-kirtana, Hare
Krsna. So from authoritative sources we learn that
this chanting of Hare Krsna, Hare Krsna, Krsna Krsna,
Hare Hare / Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama,
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 intel-
ligent, and, at the same time, we’re unfortunate.
