Announcement
We welcome you to join us for our Online Workshop and explore Repetition of a Mantram in the company of other passage meditators. We’d love to share this live satsang with you, on November 16 at 9:00 a.m. San Francisco time. It’s not too late to register for the event, and you can pay on the sliding scale from $0–25. (The standard fee is $10.)
If you’re unable to attend the Online Workshop live, don’t worry – register below and we’ll send you the recording in a few days.
Reading Study
In the reading below, Easwaran shares that with mental repetition of the mantram, “we can transform everything negative in us and make our greatest contribution to the welfare of those around us.”
We look forward to hearing your comments about the following questions:
Have you been able to regain a bit of natural energy, confidence, or mastery by using the mantram?
Let’s take up Easwaran’s advice: in the coming week try to use the mantram in challenging or more difficult situations.
The excerpt below is from the book The Mantram Handbook, by Eknath Easwaran.
All the great religions have produced powerful spiritual formulas which are the highest symbol of the supreme reality we call God. In the Catholic tradition, and many other traditions in both East and West, such a formula is called a holy name; in Hinduism and Buddhism, it is called a mantram. The holy name stands for that supreme power of which Saint John asserts: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” A very simple and devoted man of God, Swami Ramdas, whom my wife and I had the blessing of meeting in India, tells us very much the same thing when he says, “The Name is God.”
The mental repetition of the holy name is one of the simplest and most effective ways of practicing the presence of God, to use the phrase of the seventeenth-century French mystic, Brother Lawrence. It is absolutely practical, and it can appeal to our common sense. When we repeat the mantram, we are not hypnotizing ourselves, or woolgathering, or turning our backs on the world. Repetition of the mantram is a dynamic discipline by which we gain access to our inner reserves of strength and peace of mind. With the mantram we regain our natural energy, confidence, and control, so that we can transform everything negative in us and make our greatest possible contribution to the welfare of those around us.
The mantram is the living symbol of the profoundest reality that the human being can conceive of, the highest power that we can respond to and love. When we repeat the mantram in our mind, we are reminding ourselves of this supreme reality enshrined in our hearts. It is only natural that the more we repeat the mantram, the deeper it will sink into our consciousness. As it goes deeper, it will strengthen our will, heal the old divisions in our consciousness that now cause us conflict and turmoil, and give us access to deeper resources of strength, patience, and love, to work for the benefit of all.
“The mantram becomes one’s staff of life,” declares Mahatma Gandhi, “and carries one through every ordeal.”
So, my advice is simple and direct: when you are faced with an overwhelming challenge or simply a difficult situation, repeat Rama, Rama, Rama, or whatever other mantram you have chosen. Just try it and see.