ENTER MANTRA
The monks lined the golden walls of their narrow temple, ready to cut out their egos for the next few hours with mantra. The lights of dancing candles made the monks look even more still than they were as the incense swirled around them like a dragon's breath. Then their voices rose up in unison to sing their ancient slogans of life and truth through their closed eyes and their single throbbing voice.
Repetitive and meaningful, the whole point of chanting mantras is to support meditation, meditation being the mental effort to attain higher states of inner peace and wellbeing by dismantling the ego, which can be a fight.
WHAT’S THE EGO AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT?
The ego isn't just the stubborn and arrogant part of us. It's also the indisputable sense that we are individuals. And in relation to meditation and wellbeing, the ego is that part of us that judges everything as good or bad. This means to strengthen meditation a meditator learns to judge less as a way of breaking down the ego.
The first time someone recognizes how ruthless our minds are is usually an eye-opening and shocking moment. Its a splash of cold water and it wakes us up to the fact that on a deeper level we are not fully aware of or in control of how or why we think and behave the ways we do. Meditation reminds us we are impulsive mysteries, corrosively judging the world to better know ourselves.
In meditation try not to judge judgment itself. It's an easy trap to fall into while meditating but judgment is just another impersonal phenomenon to observe, no different than clouds or birds. It’s all emotionally validated opinions that work like propaganda to emotionally charge us up for life all to break it into two; right and wrong, good and bad.
It’s also good to know that judgment is inevitable because thinking itself is inevitable. Realizing this, ancient meditators developed mental techniques to train the mind to stop thinking as best they could, so they could repress their judgment, to dismantle their egos, so they could eventually experience the profound clarity and peace that comes from stopping the inevitable mind, or at least slowing it down.
A SIMPLE TECHNIQUE
Mantra is one of these thought supressing techniques. Its the first domino in a line of dominos and when it’s practiced the dominos of judgments and opinions all fall one by one. The consequence is mental silence. That leads to clarity and once the world is seen clearly it is known to be deeply peaceful.
Mantra is the mix of an affirmation and a spell. It utilizes the rhythmic repetition of monotonous phrases like self-hypnosis. The meditator repeatedly blasts the mind with the same message over and over again until two things happen: 1) Thoughts are minimized and 2) the idea or mantra becomes real and can't be forgotten.
For me, mantra is also a way to take back control of the messages my mind is being fed. Our minds are encircled by outside ideas all the time. Nothing is biased or without ulterior motive, even in nature every detail has its reason and is attempting to influence the world according to its own prerogatives. The world is branded with messages that orbit tightly around politics, corporations, and nature. Messages of buying things, obeying the law, and being morally good and responsible (which is subjective) intwine with older messages that come from within. Every cell tries to influence us, too.
Then, there’s the impact of our personal and immediate spaces and relationships. We move through multiple layers of influence all the time and carry the goals, fears, and loves of the people and spaces that we are nearest to most as if they were our own.
All of this messaging is more material for our minds to judge like kindling for a fire. So the ego becomes stronger as it interacts with life. All of it, however, constipates the mind and by practicing mantra, a yogi momentarily both empties the mind of unnecessary content and repopulates their mind with ideas that are actually of their choosing, profound, and indisputably good. Mantra is that intangible laxative for the psyche.
The root of mantra is man. It means to think, while the word itself means protected or secret speech. As a practical tool that boosts mental capacity, it increases focus, memory, and presence through the repetition of specific words or phrases. It's a good set up for meaningful meditation experiences. To practice mantra, I'd say find a nice rhythm and repeat it sincerely aloud or internally while relaxing the body and sitting still. The key is sincerity and endurance. Endurance meaning the mantra is repeated without losing attention for increasing periods of time.
Its also a form of contemplation training, so it’s alright if you start to think about what the mantra might mean. Let the mind define it but then when it’s been long enough (that’s your choice) return to hypnotically repeating the phrase because it is primarily a way of suppressing thoughts. Simple.
Here are 4 awesome mantras I’ve chosen that work to specifically disrupt the ego.
1) THIS WILL NOT LAST
Impermanence is a big deal. We all know life is always changing because it must. What that means is that nothing lasts forever. This is a beautiful and scary truth that hits us all differently depending on where we are in our lives and hearts. For the ego, it’s scary. The ego is that part of us that clings desperately to life. If we can get over death as a big deal our level of peace in life increases because now there’s no tragedy at the end.
By meditating on impermanence through this mantra you'll learn to feel impermanence as neither bad nor good but rather just a fact, an astonishing and bewildering fact. Once the perspective shifts, the ego has nothing to say about the matter. It simply is.
The thought process goes like this: First the ego is desperate to live because it finds out it’s actually scared to die. Once it’s no longer scared to die it becomes less critical of the life it has. This mantra leads to the more humble and fluid idea that we are only alive for a moment and then we're gone like a flame in the wind. It dissolves desperation and permits a stronger bond to the present moment. (It’s all about presence in meditation)
When we truly feel that none of this will last and embrace that we all return to non-existence, as we came from non-existence, anything and everything that does exist alongside us now is seen as a serendipitous rendezvous with creation itself. Brothers, sisters, fellow beings, and reality itself are all a family but for only a split moment of time.
This mind-opening mantra teaches a meditator to stop fearing death and recognize life’s true and fleeting wonder. Like a shooting star, there’s really only enough time to be surprised that it’s gone.
The mantra leads to an expansive gratitude for everything that does and does not exist right now.
2) I AM THE SAME
There's a part of us that doesn't change. To feel it, think back to when you were a little kid. Most of us can feel the kids we were still inside us as living memories. That special part of us remains unchanged as if life and time didn't happen to everything. Nesteld deep inside, I always think of Robin Williams when he played Peter Pan in Hook. The lost child can always be remembered, it is an archetype of the psyche and it is timeless.
As people and as animals we are respectfully mystified by anything that does manage to outrun time in any sense, whether it's someone aging well or the pyramids in Egypt. To yogi's that unchanging drop inside each of us, this timeless child, is the soul itself and they respected that unchanging spec of their own identity more than anything because that was their proof of an internal divinity.
When you use this mantra it compels you to recognize this unchanging part of who you are and have always been. Once the feeling hits there's a sense of authenticity and safety as if you found your way back home to a place where your walls can come down.
This mantra leads to empathy. The reason for that in yoga is because the soul is one and the same in all of us. When we know this space well within ourselves we can see it more easily in others. The surface differences between these two souls is nothing compared to the reality of pure, unchanging spirit within.
What it takes is an ability to see beyond surface differences.
3) NETI NETI
Meditation is also the exploration of absence and nothingness so it involves questioning our desires to possess "things" in general. We possess more than homes, clothing, and cars. We possess our friends, partners, identities, beliefs, and even our traumas because they all give us identity. The possession of even our names and bodies (in abstract ways) is questioned in serious meditation.
Underneath our need to possess is the need to be recognized and succeed because, in our minds, the more we achieve and own the more successful and special we become. Meditation is the antithesis. It is the will to become invisible and meaningless.
Neti, Neti means "Not this, Not this" in Sanksrit language. It is a time-honored answer to the super-deep question, "Who are you?" The yogi says, "Not this, not this," inferring they are nobody and therefore achieve and possess nothing. But even the most devout yogi, who is working to become egoless, is not immune to egoism and all egos are grasping for something. We might grasp for money or pleasure. A yogi grasps for enlightenment and for them this mantra is a reminder that whatever they think enlightenment is it's "not that, not that."
One of the trickiest things about meditation is the fact that you are doing nothing. With that, you might also be looking for some sort of special experience that you secretly hope might transform you in some way. But, if you are nothing how can you transform? And if you are doing anything at all, even contemplating, how are you nothing?
By repeating “Neti, Neti” you'll understand that the goal of meditation is not whatever you think it is or want it to be because whatever you want or think is not nothing.
4) OM
We all want to connect more to life and, in truth, that's all we can do. OM is the first and last mantra in yogic philosophy. It’s also the sound that created reality. It’s also reality itself. The yogis’ theory is if you want to connect more to life all you have to do is connect to the sound that generated it and if you can suspend disbelief for a second and play along, it makes sense in the context of their assumptions. Of course, what matters more than the coherency of concepts is the quality of the experience and that is the OM’s strength.
It all started with a bang in the west and an OM in the east! Both are the birth of experience itself. This Mantra is a phonetic representation of whatever made life happen in the first place and chanting it, in all its simplicity, connects yogis to nonverbal-nonconceptual knowledge of all existence.
The OM mantra is supposed to induce a physical feeling versus a thought. As that feeling builds during meditation, which depends on the caliber of the yogi’s practice, that feeling is understood to be what life actually is; a unified and rippling vibration of invisible things coming to the surface of awareness in different forms of sensation.
To use the OM mantra sing the sound in a single tone for 5-10 seconds. Then feel your body vibrate. That’s it. Focus only on the resonance in your chest and face.
As that happens, consider that life, as epic as it is, is just a vibration of moments, people, places, and events, stacked on top of nothingness and moving through time. And while nothing stays the same, life itself continues forever. But, you and I are only echoes singing back the song of life for a mote of its infinity.
There are countless Mantras out there. On one hand, it's a way of reducing the noise of your thoughts and on the other, it's a form of sincere contemplation that can lead to beautiful epiphanies. Both are good things.
Until next time. Namaste.
