2023 : Thoughts, Inspiration, and a Mantra
Posted on December 28, 2022
As 2022 winds down, I started to think about what a strange year it was.
For me at least. it seemed like I was enveloped in a mantle of fog. On a fundamental level, I acknowledge the passage of time and seasons, but I’m not exactly sure how January 2022 metamorphosed into where we are now, at the end of another year. Sometimes time moved too swiftly, other times it seems as if the tick of the clock too slowly moved to the next minute.
I’m not smart enough to explain all of that, but I’ve learned to radically accept things as they are. At the end of the day, at the end of this odd year, the only constant is love; to love and be loved. Despite the inexorable and merciless movement of time, I’m bound by that belief.
Do you make resolutions? I don’t — too much pressure — instead I like the idea of manifesting a happy and healthy new year.
“You have to breathe through the heart. And once you’re in that space — and it’s a very big space — once you’re in there, you’re in a completely different space. You’re in the space that can heal anything.” Dolores Cannon
From His Holiness the Dalai Lama (whom I had the incredible honor of meeting and speaking with a couple years ago…)
“As you breathe in, cherish yourself. As you breathe out, cherish all beings.”
In my opinion, this is still the best and most relevant mantra, again from the Dalai Lama: Om Mani Padme Hum
He says this mantra has the power to…“transform your impure body, speech and mind into the pure body, speech and mind of a Buddha.”
Tibetan culture tells us that to deeply know this phrase — to bring it into the very depths of one’s being — is to attain enlightenment.
Here’s what each syllable means:
OM
The first, Om is composed of three letters. A, U, and M. These symbolize the practitioner’s impure body, speech, and mind; they also symbolize the pure exalted body, speech, and mind of a Buddha.
All Buddhas are cases of beings who were like ourselves and then in dependence on the path became enlightened; Buddhism does not assert that there is anyone who from the beginning is free from faults and possesses all good qualities. The development of pure body, speech, and mind comes from gradually leaving the impure states and their being transformed into the pure.
MANI
Mani, meaning jewel, symbolizes the factors of method — the altruistic intention to become enlightened, compassion, and love.
Just as a jewel is capable of removing poverty, so the altruistic mind of enlightenment is capable of removing the poverty, or difficulties, of cyclic existence and of solitary peace.
Similarly, just as a jewel fulfills the wishes of sentient beings, so the altruistic intention to become enlightened fulfills the wishes of sentient beings.
PADME
The two syllables, padme, meaning lotus, symbolize wisdom, just as a lotus grows forth from mud but is not sullied by the faults of mud, so wisdom is capable of putting you in a situation of non-contradiction whereas there would be contradiction if you did not have wisdom.
There is wisdom realizing impermanence, wisdom realizing that persons are empty of being self-sufficient or substantially existent, wisdom that realizes the emptiness of duality — that is to say, of difference of entity between subject an object — and wisdom that realizes the emptiness of inherent existence.
Though there are many different types of wisdom, the main of all these is the wisdom realizing emptiness.
HUM
Purity must be achieved by an indivisible unity of method and wisdom, symbolized by the final syllable hum, which indicates indivisibility. According to the sutra system, this indivisibility of method and wisdom refers to wisdom affected by method and method affected by wisdom.
In the mantra or tantric, vehicle, it refers to one consciousness in which there is the full form of both wisdom and method as one undifferentiable entity.
In terms of the seed syllables of the five Conqueror Buddhas, hum is the seed syllable of Akshobhya — the immovable, the unfluctuating, that which cannot be disturbed by anything.
The six syllables, om mani padme hum mean that in dependence on the practice of a path which is an indivisible union of method and wisdom, you can transform your impure body, speech, and mind into the pure exalted body, speech, and mind of a Buddha.
His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama is considered the foremost Buddhist leader of our time. The exiled spiritual head of the Tibetan people, a Nobel Peace Laureate, Congressional Gold Medal recipient, and a remarkable teacher and scholar who has authored over one hundred books. https://www.shambhala.com/snowlion_articles/om-mani-padme-hum-dalai-lama/
