Hare Krishna maha-mantra

Sixteen words, thirty-two syllables, three names repeated: Hare, Krishna, Rama. It is called the maha-mantra — the great mantra — and in the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition it is the central practice.

The full mantra

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare Hare. Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama Hare Hare.

It appears in the Kali-Santarana Upanishad, and was carried into wide practice by Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in sixteenth-century Bengal.

What the names mean

Krishna and Rama are names of the divine. Hare is read in the tradition as a vocative — of Hari, or, in Gaudiya theology, of Harā, meaning Radha. Which reading you hold changes what the mantra is doing, and practitioners differ.

How it is counted

One full mantra — all sixteen words — per bead. A mala of 108 beads is one round. Initiated devotees in ISKCON commonly vow sixteen rounds a day, which is 1,728 repetitions of the full mantra and takes most people around two hours.

Because a bead is the whole mantra rather than a single word, japa here is slower than with a short name. Counting rounds, not repetitions, is the usual way people speak about it.

Counting it here

Set the mala size to 108 and tap once per full mantra. Root Jaap tracks rounds completed and the running total, keeps everything on your own device, and works with no connection.

Opens the counter with this mantra chosen. No account, works offline.