Hello,
And welcome to Methods,
An exploration in guided prayer and meditation.
Today's method is Mantra.
In Buddhism,
The word mantra means mind protecting.
A mantra protects the mind by preventing it from going into its usual patterns,
Which are often not our desired or optimal conscious perspective.
Mantra is a powerful spiritual practice for centering and for letting go of strong emotions such as fear,
Anxiety,
Or anger.
The more you practice mantra,
The more it becomes part of you.
When you need it on a psychological level,
For example,
When you feel afraid,
Using your witness,
You notice the fear and replace the fear with your mantra.
This will occur naturally once the mantra becomes an established practice.
It's a daily reminder of the presence of the divine within ourselves and all beings.
Mahatma Gandhi said,
The mantra becomes one staff of life and carries one through every ordeal.
It is no empty repetition,
For each repetition has a new meaning,
Carrying you nearer and nearer to God.
Our identification with thoughts at every stage of the spiritual path can be an obstacle to freedom.
Thoughts can keep us separate as the thinker of them.
Even thoughts like union with God are very different from the union itself,
And they never seem to stop,
Always auditioning for our attention one after the other.
Some thoughts are better than others in that they can act as a raft to help us cross the lake,
But once we're on the other side,
The raft itself is let go of.
Or we can think of a lake where what you treasure most lies at the bottom,
And you're trying to see through to the depths,
But the surface is covered in waves going in all directions.
Choppy water is clouding your vision.
Each thought is like one of those waves,
Some from your sense perceptions,
Some from memory,
Some from imagination,
But all long-formed habits of thought mechanically running with no one doing them.
Now the key to mantra practice is that we direct all of our attention and intention into creating our own wave,
A single thought wave that repeats in an even pattern to override all the choppy water of our thought patterns.
Since that single thought is made dominant,
The energy of the other waves is absorbed into it,
And no other thought captures our attention.
Thoughts may still happen,
As they're simply what the mind does,
But we're essentially freed from their demanding our attention.
When we arrive at the point where that one thought is present in the foreground of our mind throughout our lives,
When we're going to bed or when we're waking,
Talking or eating,
Walking or sitting,
Then we're shown the brilliance of non-doership,
Of life happening automatically.
Then we're free of all but that one thought,
And through deep meditation,
Even that thought is released.
It's a way of emptying all of our will and intent into one simple phrase and using that to direct our attention to the divine.
Because really,
God already knows our prayers and petitions and desires.
We don't need to rattle off a laundry list of thoughts and complaints to her.
But using a simple phrase like this,
Or a similar one,
Allows us to maintain zikr,
Or remembrance of God,
Throughout our prayer period and into our day as well.
There are many different mantras from many traditions,
Each one having a unique history,
Meaning and usage.
Sanskrit mantras are meant to affect not only our rational mind,
But also resonate through the sound of the mantra as well,
Through the vibration.
Some to open up chakras within the body,
To deepen our compassion or strengthen our will.
Some traditions have different mantras for doing different things,
While some recommend keeping the same mantra at all times and staying with it.
Here are some common mantras.
From the Hindu tradition,
Om Nama Shivaya,
Or I bow to Shiva.
From the Buddhist tradition,
Om Mani Padme Hum,
I bow to the jewel in the lotus of the heart.
From the Jewish tradition,
Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad,
Hero Israel,
The Lord our God,
The Lord is One.
From the Islamic tradition,
Allahu Akbar,
God is Great.
From the Christian tradition,
Lord Jesus Christ,
Have mercy on us.
This prayer goes back to the Eastern Orthodox spiritual fathers whose collection of texts,
The Philokalia,
Outlines many mystical practices used by hermits of the early church.
The continual practice of the Jesus Prayer can be traced back to the Gospel of Luke and the story of the publican and the Pharisee.
It's also mentioned in the classic Way of a Pilgrim.
The author says,
Nothing made me feel cast down.
It was as though these things happened to someone else,
And I merely watched them.
The prayer brought sweetness into my heart and made me unaware of everything else.
If said with rhythmic breathing,
It's common to recite the first part,
Lord Jesus Christ,
On the in-breath,
And the second part,
Have mercy on me,
On the out-breath.
Another well-known mantra in the Christian tradition comes from John Main,
A priest in the 20th century whose work is largely carried on by Lawrence Freeman today.
He liked to say that meditation is so simple,
The instructions could be written on the back of a postage stamp.
His method used a one-word prayer from the tradition of John Cassian,
An early Christian monk and mentor of St.
Benedict.
When St.
Cassian speaks of this prayer,
He says,
The mind thus casts out and renounces the rich in ample matter of all thoughts,
And restricts itself to the poverty of a simple verse.
The Aramaic word used in this tradition is maranatha and means come,
Lord.
Whether you use the name Christ,
Ram,
Or Krishna,
It can be translated as a call for the Supreme Lord to be present with you,
Or an affirmation of that continuous ever-presence that's always here.
Maybe there's a word that sticks out to you in Scripture.
Maybe you want to look up that word,
See what it is in Hebrew or Greek,
And then use that as your mantra.
Some mantras help us to accept the reality of the universe,
Like,
Let it be,
And that too,
Or Not my will but yours.
There are general mantras that move us from whatever stage of the path we find ourselves on to the next,
Like,
Gate,
Gate,
Paragate,
Parasamgate,
Bodhisvaha,
Which means gone,
Gone beyond,
Gone beyond beyond,
Hail the goer.
There's modern mantras used by Baba Ramdas like,
I am loving awareness,
Which communicates to us the essence of our true nature.
There's also japa,
Which is simply a mantra of one of the names of God.
Ram,
For example,
When repeated with intention,
Can bring us closer to the experience of oneness with God.
We can consider the context of who Ram is as an avatar of the divine in the Satyuga.
He represents living daily life as an act of worship,
Throughout all roles of father,
Husband,
King,
Brother,
Son.
Ram represents universal love and compassion,
Wisdom and power in perfect harmony,
As the essence of one who we are when we realize our true self,
The Atman.
Tulsidas says,
Place the name of Ram as a jeweled lamp at the door of your lips,
And there will be light both inside and out.
If you'd like to have a physical touchstone to make the mantra a more embodied practice,
You can get a mala,
Which is a string of typically 108 beads plus a guru bead.
In Western culture,
It's often likened to the rosary,
Or the tazbeh in Islam.
The beads are passed toward you through the thumb and the middle finger of your dominant hand with each repetition of the mantra.
Once you get to the larger bead,
You turn around and go the opposite way.
You can also pair the mantra with your in-breath and out-breath,
As stated before.
For longer mantras,
You can break them into an inhalation and an exhalation.
For shorter ones,
Simply say the entire mantra on both the inhale and the exhale.
This is a wonderful way to allow the mantra to even out the breath,
And let the breath even out the mind,
And allow the mind to even out the body.
The method goes like this.
Begin to pronounce the mantra of your choosing silently,
At a pace that feels comfortable and right to you.
Not too fast,
Not too slow.
Pairing it with your breath can really help here.
Do the prayer for however long you want to,
But the customary period is 20 minutes.
You could do it for as little as one minute and have a profound effect,
Though.
Repeat the phrase while listening inside.
When you begin to hear the repetition from within,
Allow it to emanate outside the body vocally,
Like you're speaking in unison with the inner voice.
If it's difficult to hear that inner voice,
Or if you're primarily a visually oriented person,
You can picture the phrase written out,
Like on a blank page of paper,
In your mind.
This may help for a while before moving toward the inner voice.
After a certain amount of time,
It begins to quiet down and be subvocal until it starts to resonate within the heart.
Most people,
When they subvocalize,
Automatically feel as if the words are coming from their head,
Maybe right behind the eyes.
The idea is to feel your kinesthetic attention drop from your head into your heart,
So that the prayer arises from your heart center.
Often referred to as the prayer of the heart,
Eastern theologians,
Along with mystics of other traditions,
Emphasize that the heart is the center where matter and spirit meet,
The gateway into the spiritual realm.
Residing the mind and the heart is placing the rational faculties inside the intellectual eye of the heart.
The intellect,
Rather than residing in a cerebral space of thoughts and analysis,
Can be properly seen as residing in the depths of your being.
Contemplation is the stage when the prayer becomes one with your heart,
And the awareness of the words falls away completely.
In this,
A profound inner solitude is felt.
This is the basis for the tradition of hesychasm in the Orthodox Church,
Coming from the word hesychia,
Which means inner stillness.
You may begin to feel that sapphic sense of peace as the fragrance of your true nature,
But then sometimes you may practice and not have that sense at all,
But rather have a million thoughts running through your mind.
You may think that the practice has stopped working,
But stick with it.
We like to feel calm,
Peaceful,
And at rest,
Which is completely normal,
But the real benefit comes when we can maintain our practice even when we don't immediately see these fruits of physical,
Mental,
Or spiritual benefits.
Maintain consistency with your mantra until it becomes a well-worn groove.
You can journal in the morning and write out your mantra 108 times very slowly,
Savoring each repetition with loving devotion.
Or take a walk and practice mantra,
Noticing everything but having the mantra going in the front.
Keep bringing awareness to the fact that everything you see is part of the divine.
Everything you meet is Christ,
Ram,
Krishna,
Coming to teach you something.
Come out of sleep directly into mantra.
Whenever you have a strong positive or negative emotion,
Let it bring you back to mantra.
While some monks go into their private cells and say this prayer hundreds of times with prostrations and bowing,
It can also be an easy practice for the layperson to maintain in a day-to-day life.
Say it aloud in traffic.
Say it silently while waiting in line at the grocery store.
Make it a part of you here and there,
Moment to moment,
Day by day.
Just quote again the way of a pilgrim,
Everywhere,
Wherever you may find yourself,
You can set up an altar to God in your mind by means of prayer.
And in the end,
You no longer do the mantra,
But the mantra does you.
God bless.
You you you you you you
