What is Mantra Meditation? Why should I take it up? What are the benefits?
Good questions. Why should we take up any activity without knowing what the benefits could be?
Mantra Meditation’s benefits are many – and significant.
Mantra Meditation is an ancient, timeless practice handed down over millennia through an unbroken line of fully-realized spiritual teachers.
Mantras are transcendental, spiritual sounds. They are not material sounds – hence their wonderful, attractive, and powerful qualities.
You don’t have to be looking for that when you take up the practice. You may simply be looking for stress relief, something to take your mind off what’s been driving you crazy; something help you relax. Something to help you focus your attention and energy, because you feel scattered, ungrounded. Mantra Meditation will certainly give you all of that, and much more. Stress relief leads directly to improved health, as surely as stress leads to disease. But that’s just the beginning…
The word “mantra” comes from the ancient Sanskrit language, and means “that which delivers (or draws away) the mind”. What is it that mantras deliver, or draw your mind away, from? Its entanglement in the material sense objects.
What does that mean?
Our senses are constantly being bombarded by the temptations of countless objects of material sense enjoyment. Advertisers are waving so many things before us, every one of them promising us enjoyment by gratifying one or more of our material senses. The senses attract the mind to follow, and our body follows our mind – into the bakery, the tattoo shop, the liquor store, the brothel – once captivated, our senses can lead us anywhere, into any crazy activity.
“This will make you happy.” “This will make you more happy than that other thing.” Eye candy, ear candy, touch candy… It’s all bait, and we are the unsuspecting fish. But what’s the hook?
The hook is, that none of these glittering objects of the senses can make us happy. Yes, we can get some flickering, very temporary sense gratification from them. But that doesn’t satisfy us. If material things could satisfy us, it would be impossible for very rich people to be anything but completely content, because they can have any material thing that they wish. But the truth is, such people are among the most miserable, because they think they have everything, yet they know deep down that they have nothing.
How can that make sense?
The simple fact is that material things will never make you happy, because you are not material in nature. You are spiritual in essence, so you have a spiritual need, which no mass of material wealth can ever satisfy. You need spiritual nourishment. The lack of this explains the profound emptiness that so many people feel these days. It’s unnecessary, and unnatural – our true nature is to be blissfully happy. But chasing material things will not and cannot get us there.
This spiritual nourishment is what Mantra Meditation has to offer. The transcendental quality of the mantras is food for the spirit, putting you back in touch with your true, essential nature. The experience is like that of an amnesiac recovering their memory. You will re-discover who you really are.
This is all easy to say, but your own experience is the only real measure of whether or not something really works for you. It’s not a theory to be proven by formula or logic; it’s not book learning. The point of this explanation is to encourage you to give Mantra Meditation a try. It’s free, there’s nothing to join, and the practice doesn’t take much of your time. If you go for it, you will see benefits in short order.