Text 14

satatam kirtayanto mam
yatantas ca drdha-vratah
namasyantas ca mam bhaktya
nitya-yukta upasate

Translation

Always chanting My glories, endeavoring with great determination, bowing down before Me, these great souls perpetually worship Me with devotion. 

Commentary by Srila Prabhupada 

The mahatma cannot be manufactured by rubber-stamping an ordinary man. His symptoms are described here: a mahatma is always engaged in chanting the glories of the Supreme Lord Krishna, the Personality of Godhead. He has no other business. He is always engaged in the glorification of the Lord. In other words, he is not an impersonalist. When the question of glorification is there, one has to glorify the Supreme Lord, praising His holy name, His eternal form, His transcendental qualities and His uncommon pastimes. One has to glorify all these things; therefore a mahatma is attached to the Supreme Personality of Godhead. 

One who is attached to the impersonal feature of the Supreme Lord, the brahmajyoti, is not described as mahatma in the Bhagavad-gita. He is described in a different way in the next verse. The mahatma is always engaged in different activities of devotional service, as described in the Srimad-Bhagavatam, hearing and chanting about Vishnu, not a demigod or human being. That is devotion: shravanam kirtanam visnoh and smaranam, remembering Him. Such a mahatma has firm determination to achieve at the ultimate end the association of the Supreme Lord in any one of the five transcendental rasas. To achieve that success, he engages all activities—mental, bodily and vocal, everything—in the service of the Supreme Lord, Sri Krishna. That is called full Krishna consciousness. 

In devotional service there are certain activities which are called determined, such as fasting on certain days, like the eleventh day of the moon, Ekadasi, and on the appearance day of the Lord. All these rules and regulations are offered by the great acaryas for those who are actually interested in getting admission into the association of the Supreme Personality of Godhead in the transcendental world. The mahatmas, great souls, strictly observe all these rules and regulations, and therefore they are sure to achieve the desired result. 

As described in the second verse of this chapter, not only is this devotional service easy, but it can be performed in a happy mood. One does not need to undergo any severe penance and austerity. He can live this life in devotional service, guided by an expert spiritual master, and in any position, either as a householder or a sannyasi or a brahmacari; in any position and anywhere in the world, he can perform this devotional service to the Supreme Personality of Godhead and thus become actually mahatma, a great soul.

Commentary by Sri Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakur

In the last verse it was mentioned that they worship me. What type of worship do they perform? They worship always (satatam), not as in karma yoga which is dependent on suitable time, place, person and purity for its execution. The smrti says:

na desa-niyamas tatra na kala-niyamas tatha
nocchisthadau nisedho' sti sri-harer namni lubdhaka

For one eager for the name of Hari, there are no restrictions of time, place or impurity. Visnu Dharma

Just as poor householders strive for money at the door of a wealthy man in order to support their families, my devotees seek out (yatanti) the assembly of devotees in order to obtain devotional processes like chanting. Attaining that, they repeatedly recite the scriptures teaching bhakti. They have strict rules for themselves (drdha vratah), thinking "I must do this number of rounds of chanting, this many obeisance, this much service." They offer their obeisance. The word ca indicates that they also perform all the other process of bhakti such as hearing, and serving the lotus feet, which were not mentioned. They desire to be in eternal association with me (nitya yuktah). There is a rule that desire can be expressed by the past tense. Here the past tense expresses the present condition of desiring. Singing about me, they worship me. This parallel construction indicates that the singing and other acts are their form of worship. Thus there is no fault in repetition of the word mam.