Awakening the Buddha Within _ Eight Steps to Enlightenment - Lama Surya Das [85]
METTA PRAYER
May all beings be happy, content, and fulfilled.
May all beings be healed and whole.
May all have whatever they want and need.
May all be protected from harm, and free from fear.
May all beings enjoy inner peace and ease.
May all be awakened, liberated, and free.
May there be peace in this world, and throughout the entire universe.
The Buddha himself said that if you repeatedly practice this meditation and recitation—with a forgiving, loving heart, while relinquishing judgment, anger, and prejudice—great benefits will definitely ensue: You will sleep easily, wake easily, and have pleasant dreams; people will love you; celestial beings will love you and protect you; poisons, weapons, fire, and other external dangers will not harm you; your face will be radiant and your mind concentrated and serene; and you will die unconfused and be reborn in happy realms.
Through the karmic laws of cause and effect, praying for peace will certainly help bring peace about. We pray for peace for the sangha and the community of all beings, but we recognize that peace begins with oneself; thus we also pray for our own outer and inner peace as a member of that sangha. In this way we learn to better love, forgive, and accept ourselves; the prayerful phrase “for the benefit of all beings” should not exclude ourselves.
USING A MANTRA TO FIND
YOUR OWN VOICE
Mantras are sacred words of great power and blessings. In most Asian countries, including Tibet, mantras are still typically chanted in the original Sanskrit language, which is considered the language of the gods. The word mantra is literally translated as “something to lean the mind (manas) upon.” And that’s what a mantra can do. Mantra practice can be relied upon as a quick, effective, and powerful way of focusing, stabilizing, and freeing the mind. Mantra practice can help inculcate constructive states of mind; reinforcing mind-training, it enhances our basic intelligence, wakefulness, concentration, and present awareness.
There are different kinds of mantras: healing mantras; wisdom mantras; compassion mantras; awareness mantras; purification mantras; wrathful mantras (used to dispel obstacles); and peaceful mantras. We sometimes hear short one-syllable mantras such as “Om” or “Ah.” These are known as seed syllable mantras. Like the seed of a beautiful plant, the single syllable carries within it all the teachings, mysteries, wisdom, and realizations of the final fruit or flower of awakened enlightenment.
Mantra practice, a highly effective centering skill, can legitimately be regarded as a tool of transcendence or a kind of technology of the sacred. We also combine mantra with other centering devices. For example, while we chant the mantra, we concentrate on breathing, hold a visualization in our head, and hold a rosary (mala) of beads for centering as well as a way to keep track of the number of recitations. Mantra meditation can alter the atmosphere and effect swift transformation, both externally in the world and within ourselves.
OUTER, INNER, AND INNATE REASONS
FOR CHANTING MANTRAS
On an outer level, we use mantra to consecrate or bless each activity. For example, as an exercise, chant or say to yourself the cosmic, all-sounds-in-one seed mantra, “Om,” each time you enter a room to heighten your awareness of what you are doing in that very present moment. This is a very good mindfulness practice in daily life.
On an inner level, we use mantras as concentration devices when we meditate and as a way to transform our ordinary perceptions into purified perceptions. One day when we were discussing meditation practice, the enlightened Dzogchen master Dudjom Rinpoche told me that when he was distracted he would chant the one-hundred-syllable purification mantra to, as it were, return to himself. In Tibet, mantras such as Om Mani Pedmé Hung, the divine mantra