This week’s excerpt is the final section of the reading used in Saturday’s Online Workshop. Easwaran has a clear message for us. “The effect of the mantram is cumulative: constant repetition, constant practice, is required for the mantram to take root in consciousness…” He is suggesting that we must persist in the repetition of the mantram to gain lasting benefits.
In the previous couple of weeks we experimented with repeating the mantram both in routine times and in difficult times. This week let’s focus on extending the time we repeat the mantram a little more. Just hang onto the mantram in various situations a little bit longer. Here are some examples:
At night as you lay down to go to sleep, start repeating the mantram. Play with how long you can keep it going.
Repeat the mantram for as long as possible while taking a walk. If you realize you have forgotten the mantram just pick it up again.
Repeat the mantram while brushing your teeth. Try to keep it going from start to finish.
Do you have other times when you can challenge yourself to keep the mantram going?
We’d love to hear from you about what you are trying out this month.
Even if you do not get a chance to join the Online Workshop, please feel free to consider trying a simple exercise to emphasize your use of the mantram this month.
The excerpt below is from the book The Mantram Handbook, by Eknath Easwaran.
There is nothing miraculous about the power of the mantram. When you repeat the holy name you are calling on the Self in your own heart, and that Self will give you access to your own deeper resources.
This is not something you do for two minutes one day and then give up if results are not immediately forthcoming – although even a little repetition of the mantram is helpful. If you call on God long enough and sincerely enough, he or she cannot help responding. I saw a graphic illustration of this once when my wife and I were walking in Berkeley near the campus and chanced upon the final scene of a lover’s quarrel. The young lady must have given her boyfriend his hat, told him that she never wanted to see him again, and pushed him out the door. He stood there on the sidewalk and began to call her name: “Cynthia, Cynthia.” He shouted it louder and louder and soon the whole block was echoing with “Cynthia! Cynthia! Cynthia!” Passersby were staring, the neighbors were coming out of their houses to see what was going on, and dogs began to howl. Finally Cynthia opened an upstairs window and told him, “All right! All right! I’m coming down!” In just the same way, sincere and systematic use of the holy name can bring a deeper power, a divine presence, to play in our own lives.
Instead of just saying the mantram once, the way we say hello at the beginning of a conversation, the idea is to repeat it over and over again, and to use every chance throughout the day for repeating it more. In all the great religions there have been mystics who have become so established in the mantram that they would be plunged into a deeper level of consciousness by hearing the holy name just once. But this is not likely to happen when we are just beginning to use it. The effect of the mantram is cumulative: constant repetition, constant practice, is required for the mantram to take root in our consciousness and gradually transform it, just as constant repetition makes the advertiser’s jingle stick in our minds. This may sound tedious, but it is far from that. The mantram soon becomes a familiar friend of whom we never grow tired.