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Pareto as an analytical framework is popular in B-schools and is widely deployed, both in manufacturing as well as the service industry. The Pareto principle states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.  It is a common thumb rule in business that 80% of one’s sales come from 20% of one’s clients. Yesterday while studying Srimad Bhagavatam, I realized that we could apply this principle to Bhakti Yoga too!

A devotee’s schedule is usually choc-a-bloc, as in addition to managing his own family and spiritual life, he has to engage in cultivating others. Thus he engages in myriads of activities and it is not too uncommon for one to lose strategic focus and worse, not realize it. This is akin to an organization that has scaled up in terms of geography, products and processes to such an extent that the sheer scale of activities it has to manage leaves scarce bandwidth for a fundamental introspection. At this time an organization engages in pruning its processes and tries to identify those 20% of entities that contribute to 80% growth, be it in topline or bottomline.

The sastras unambiguously declare that chanting is the principal yuga-dharma and our  acaryas have reiterated time and again that ‘Quality of  Chanting ‘ (which is that 10% activity given a devotee adheres to the minimum stipulated 16 rounds in a 24 hr day) has the maximum impact in our spiritual progress.  I have heard lectures where it was mentioned that 99% of spiritual progress comes from this single most-important activity and all others fall into the remaining 1% bucket.

What perplexes me most is that, even after comprehending this Pareto principle well, one consciously ends up  relegating ‘quality of chanting’ to the background and instead focuses one’s energies on so many other aspects that will offer instant recognition, possibly from all quarters save Guru and Krsna. If this is not enough evidence of the subtle yet awesome power of Maya, what is?…

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