Mantra Yoga

Jim Tarran

As we delve in deeper to yoga through our practice and study, we find that surrender runs like a golden thread through its practice techniques and philosophy on many levels.

On the road to surrender, one needs to develop ethics (yama), refinement (niyama), posture (asana), pranayama (intimacty with the breath), pratyahara (sense withdrawal or ‘centering’), dharana (concentration), dhyana (absorption built from ‘relaxed concentration’, and samadhi (surrender to emptiness or infinite creativity).

The dual struggle of concentration and release
In our modern social climate, expectations are high, we are conditioned to believe that we should have so many things. We should be pursuing happiness (US constitution ‘That there are certain natural rights… pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety’.) We should be healthy, we should look good and so on. These are just a small fraction of all the shoulds that effect us, there are many more particular to our age, nationality, gender, upbringing and so on. While there is no need to judge these pressures by adding another should to our list (we should have no pressures!) it is important to recognise that we are often pulled in many directions at once.

A sense of being fully attentive, fully receptive can be quite a struggle for many of us.

Mantra then, is a powerful ally in the effort to gather and centre one’s energies in one place. Mantra is highly attractive, as it affects body speech and mind.

In the Siva Samhitha, yoga aspirants are divided into four: mrdu (mreedu), or feeble; madhyama, or average; adhimukha (adimookha), or superior; and adhimatratama (adhimartrattama), the supreme one. The list that characterises the mrdu seeker runs as follows; they are unstable, cowardly, ill, dependent, are in the power of women (or men!), speak harshly have weak characters and lack virility. If you where chuckling and nodding at some or all of these character traits, then Mantra yoga is recommended for you!

What is Mantra Yoga?
Putting it simply, Mantra Yoga is the chanting of sacred words, syllables or phrases. The Sanskrit word ‘man’ means to think, to contemplate, to bear in mind, and ‘tra’ points at integration. It is, therefore, important to know what the mantra you are chanting means, or what it is pointing at, and to find ways to reflect on it, and to and connect to it. This is sometimes possible through direct translation into English or through picking up the feeling tone being alluded to through the Mantra’s connection with a chakra, deity, archetype or place.

Mantra as Yoga
We can see from above how mantra is very definitely a form of yoga, because it encourages integration and union through relationship. Here, the relationship is both with the physical vibrations of the sound, its auditory quality and its meaning. It is these qualities with which we (in all our cowardly, unstable, dependent colours) relate.

Satya in Mantra
It is therefore essential that we bring honesty (Satya) into our practice from the start. For this, we need relaxed attention and all the supports to this attitude that we can bring, such as humour, kindness, spaciousness and compassion.

Surrender in mantra
When we come to practice mantra, we don’t need to try too hard, we can ‘trust’ in the mantra. This is a way of opening up which take us beyond the limiting confines of our personal story and opens us to the wisdom that exists beyond our conditioning. Here then using a well known mantra is an example of how one could practice.

And now have a go!
Find a comfortable place to sit where you know that you won’t be disturbed. Make yourself comfortable as for seated meditation.

Practising the mantra Aum
This Sanskrit sound, often used in both Hindhu and Buddhist practice, is often used to annouce, proclaim or introduce a sutra. It is a sort of summoning to witness, a gathering of energy and is traditionally endowed with all sorts of meanings and significance. Because of it’s gathering qualities we can think of it as connectivity, as a unifying sound, that helps us sense the connections that all things have to one another. It can be pronounced legitimately in Sanskrit as Om, Ohme or a more drawn out Aum. Let us take it for this practice as Om.

Beginning to chant
After sitting comfortably and choosing your mantra, sit quietly for a moment and contemplate your intentions. As the Zen saying goes, if you want your ship to sail North, point your ship North:

You could summarise your intentions as: honesty, listening, relaxing and surrender…

* Take a deep breath in, on the exhale allow the exhale to form into the sound Om – let it be as short, long, steady or shaky as it is naturally.
* Take another breath in and repeat. ‘Allow’ both the sound and your feelings to be the way they are.
* Repeat a third time and recollect what the Mantra is pointing at – in this case the real connection that all things have to one another.
* On the fourth repetition, relax your body and mind and really ‘feel’ the sound.
* Repeating once more, let the sound fall out of you, without any need to push it.
* Repeat again, allow all the elements to come together. Keep a particular focus on listening.
* Continue in this spirit, relaxing your expectations, and allow yourself to feel the sound and the meaning.
* Repeat until you have completed around thirty rounds or until you feel that your mind has relaxed into what it is doing.
* Sit quietly in the ‘clean silence’ that you have evoked.

Listening
Really listening to the sound, just as it is, involves not just the ears but the whole the body. (It is not possible to be really listening and to be on the outside thinking about the experience as well. So the practice takes you very quickly beyond thought, into the experience behind it. Even the profoundly deaf can experience music by absorbing vibrations.)

Clean silence
The term clean silence, points to the fact that we have bought awareness into experience. When the body/mind is unaware, we sometimes presume that there is nothing going on. But the body/mind is always enmeshed in its conditioning, this could be described a kind of shape that is imprinted onto the nervous system. We could describe the body of muscles and bones as the gross body and this body of compulsion and unconscious habits and drives as the subtle body. When the ‘subtle body’ is ignored, repressed or denied, through haste, sloth, over indulgence, fear or repressive thinking, the subtle body becomes stuck or frozen.

It’s a bit like when adults tell their children not to pull a face saying that the wind will change and it will get stuck that way. Well the wind does change, and if we are not aware, the body/mind holds a pattern that has not adapted to the changes around us. It is one of the reasons why we rub up against life, rigidly defending views and opinions, with aggressive zeal, in spite of the facts.

Bringing up the way we feel (recognition) and allowing it to be that way (relaxation) allows it to be refreshed, loosened and return to a more fluid condition (release). We then find that the silence is a clean one as the nervous system has been cleansed.

Practising with others
Practising Mantra with others is a whole new level of practice, which offers a potent platform to release the practitioner’s heart with dependably positive effects.

Mantra sangha
It is best to have a leader for this, someone ready to put their foot forward and hold the space. The leader introduces the mantra and leads without the other members of the group for a round or two to set the tone. Then they can instruct the group to join with a cue like ‘take a deep breath in’ whereon the group begin the chant together on the exhale.

Practice in a group is basically the same as one’s own apart from these basic additions.

* Start as you would on your own. Through the stages listed above

Then…

* Expand your listening to include others in the group. This can feel really connective and the tension (and suffering – klesha) from attachment to a rigidly defined separate self begins to dissolve.
* After a while, listen to your own sound in the context of the group.
* Listen to the sound the group make together.

You can refine this by…
• Listening for the area in the room where the ‘group sound’ seems to be located most richly.
• Relaxing into the sound, recognising its energy as something more than the sum of its parts.
• Allow yourself to give and receive from that energy as it grows.
• Notice other elements harmonising with the sound, like the vibration from window pains or other sounding boards (sometimes even the birds will ‘sing along!’)

The practise of chanting in a group is incredibly unifying and brings people together really deeply and with ease.

It is a way to feel other people’s energy directly, without some of the complexities that other kinds of intimacy can bring.

Chanting in a group is not always done in this way, some groups will chant together without aligning the mantra, sounding more like singing in rounds, which can also have a unifying effect.

Internal/external mantra
Mantra does not always need to be enunciated externally, for although there is more to connect with for the less subtly minded, there are also many benefits from keeping the mantra on the inside, quite apart from the fact that circumstance is not always conducive to chanting aloud.

In its internalised form, mantra is often included in certain types of meditation practice. In the mindfulness of breathing, one can chant ‘Bud’ on the in breath and ‘Ho’ on the out, thereby repeating ‘Budho’ or ‘awake’. If one resonates better with the English, that can be used instead.

Mantra is often included in Tantric (a spiritual renaissance movement started in the Indian Middle Ages) visualisation practices, which may also include hand gestures (mudras-lit-seals) and the taking up of symbolic implements such as drums, bells and prayer wheels. Sometimes the practice will include ‘seeing’ the mantra in certain colours with a particular Buddha, Bodhisattva or deity.

Some people will use a mantra internally (or quietly muttered), at times of stress, anxiety or confusion to provide reassurance guidance and support.

All of these are useful ways of incorporating mantra into more areas of life

Aids to mantra
Many people find that having something they can touch as they chant very helpful in deepening the effect of the practice. Mani beads are very popular and can help to discipline the mind to stay focused. They will commonly consist of a string of beads some of which will have the occasional ‘mindfulness bead’, a bead of different shape or size to he others to remind you to bring yourself back to what you are doing, and an end of cycle bead, with a tassel to tell you that you have completed one round (typically this will be 108 mantras).

Throughout Northern Buddhist countries there are prayer wheels of many different shapes and sizes from the convenient hand size to really large ones that are meant for you to walk around, with the wheels to your right turning each wheel as you go, chanting a mantra with each wheel turned.

Prayer flags are also commonly seen in these Northern Buddhist realms. These flags commonly have, amongst other things, mantras printed on them. As each flag flaps in the wind the mantra is released to all beings, further highlighting the mantras link with unification.

Quotes

Question: ‘I’m trying very hard in my practice but don’t seem to be getting anywhere.’

Answer: ‘This is very important. Don’t try to get anywhere in the practice. The very desire to be free or to be enlightened will be the desire that prevents your freedom.
You can try as hard as you wish, practice ardently night and day, but if it is still with the desire to achieve in mind, you will never find peace. The energy from this desire will be a cause for doubt and restlessness. No matter how long or how hard you practice, wisdom will not arise from desire. So, simply let go. Watch the mind and body mindfully but don’t try to achieve anything. Don’t cling even to the practice of enlightenment.’

— The Venerable Ajahn Chah