Accurate pronunciations of mantra

Take for example that you saw a friend of yours in a distance across a river. His name is John but you can't recall it at that moment. So you started calling to him: "Harry!", "Tom!", "James!", etc, etc. In fact, you tried every name you know except John. Do you think your friend will respond? You maybe sincere and determined to call him but without shouting the correct name, how can you get his attention? Similarly, without reciting a mantra correctly, how can you expect to get a respond promptly from the Bodhisattvas and gods? So you think that with sincerity alone and a mouthful of gibberish, you can invoke deities? Think about this.......

Based on the arguement that accurate pronunciation is not important, can we assume that chanting Om Mani Padme Hum BACKWARDS will have the same merit? Hum Me Pad Ni Ma Om, Hum Me Pad Ni Ma Om, etc, ... If this is true, mantras and dharanis will serve no purpose. Then why do we bother to preserve them?

Yes, I do agree that there are cases of people reciting their mantras incorrectly but still achieving some power with it. But can you imagine the greater effect they can acquire if these people were to use a more precise pronunciation?

The Four levels of Sound

Extract from David Frawley's book:

These Yogas of sound are not concerned merely with the gross articulated sounds. Four levels of sound are recognized in Vedic and Puranic literature. The Rig Veda (I.164.45.) states, "Four are the levels of sound. Three hidden in secrecy cannot be manipulated. Mortals speak only with the fourth". These four are called Vaikhari, Madhyama, Pashyanti and Para. Vaikhari dwells in the throat and is our gross, articulated sound. Madhyama dwells in the heart and is our mental pattern or idea behind the sound. Pashyanti means seeing. It dwells in the solar plexus.
It is the essential meaning behind the sound, its archetypal content. Para means the transcendent. It is the essence of all sounds. It dwells in the root chakra. (Note that the powers of sound dwell in progressively lower Chakras. This is not because they are progressively lower powers but because they have the power over progressively deeper and more difficult parts of our nature.)
Hence the Yoga of sound is meant to take us back from our gross sounds to their idea content to the perception they represent and ultimately to the pure being behind that perception. It is not a process of merely saying sounds or thinking about words but tracing the origin of sound and meaning back to awareness itself by the power of meditation.
Sanskrit is the language of mantra, of spiritually empowered sounds. Its usage is to bring our minds back to the consciousness and power of mantra. Mantra is not just concerned with sound but with meaning. According to the view of the Yoga of sound, there is only one meaning in life, which is the Divine or our own Self. Each thing ultimately means all things. Each object is a symbol for the universe itself. Words represent this universal meaning broken down, fragmented and compartmentalized. To cognize any individual object we must first recognize its ground of being, which is the Divine. Yet we fail to notice this as it is immediate and before the activity of our thought and choice. If we hold to this primacy of being as the meaning of all objects, all things become doorways to the infinite.
While ordinary language seeks more precise and differentiated meanings, spiritual languages seek an expanded and integrated comprehension until one is all and all is one. They aim to free meaning from its imprisonment in words and their arbitrary conventions. In reality, all things are meaningless in themselves, or each thing means the entire universe. It is only the universality of meaning which allows for specific meanings to occur. This inquiry into meaning is the essence of the Yoga of sound. It involves freeing our mind from its attachment to particular sounds and to the tyranny of names.
All learning involves the energization of the mind. It is by the power of attention, the concentration of the mind that one comes to know anything. As long as we are distracted or our minds are wandering, we cannot come to really see anything. Hence the real object of learning is not to learn anything in particular but to gain the mastery of the mind through the power of attention. Then we can find truth in all things.
This energization of the mind is the true purpose and meaning of mantra. Whenever we have a deep insight or profound realization in life that thought has a special power. The empowered thought is mantra. Hence the more deeply we can think and inquire into things the more our thoughts become mantra, the greater our power of observation, the more mantric force enters into our minds.

The importance of chanting in Sanskrit

Why bother to learn the Sanskrit version of all the mantras and dharanis?If we are to look at how the Sanskrit language came about, we will surely understand why we should chant the mantras and dharanis in their original form.Sanskrit is the language of the Vedas. The Vedas are probably the earlier literatures written by Man and were the holiest texts regarded by the Hindus. It originates from the rishis, who were spiritually refined saints. During their deep meditations, the rishis tuned their minds inwards on the subtleties of their body. As a result of different levels of attainment and focus, the rishis could hear and feel the corresponding vibrations in the body. By vocalizing these vibrations, the fifty letters of the Sanskrit language were formed. Each of the fifty letters corresponds to one petal of the lotus flower residing in the seven chakras in our body. Reciting a letter will bring a respond from the related chakra, which is why chanting in Sanskrit is so important. This sacred history of the language is seldom mentioned in books until recently, in Deepak Chopra's book 'Sychrodestiny' in which he gave a short account of it. To emulate the vibrations closely, the tongue and mouth positions are greatly emphasized, making it the only language devised according to where in the mouth the sounds are made. It is therefore a language greatly dependent on its vibratory nature. Being a language of sacred origin, Sanskrit has more words for the Divine and more precise terms for defining consciousness and meditative experience than any other language. As a result, it is rarely used in conversation but for religious verses and texts, both Hindu's and Buddhist's.Sanskrit mantras are primarily found in Hinduism but due to their power, the Lord Buddha too used the language extensively, especially in the mantras and dharanis. From the origins of Sanskrit, we realized that other than the emphasis on the depth of our sincerity, the pronunciations are equally important and not to be overlooked in order to fully manifest the mantra’s or dharani’s power.Remember, a mantra is like a bird and one’s sincerity and accurate pronunciation are the two wings of it. Without either one, the bird cannot soar into its actualization.

Happy to meditate? Or meditate to be happy?

Watched a documentary on Discovery channel yesterday about happiness and its relation with the brain. In the show, a Caucasian monk who lives and meditates for years in Tibet was invited to the United States to help scientists in the study of the brain and emotions. They discovered that his (the monk) part of the brain that is linked to the sense of wellbeing and happiness is always turned on. Despite being bombarded with visual and audio multimedia stimuli of inhumane and violent acts, the monk's mental serenity remained unwavered. Through years of meditation, he is able to control his emotions absolutely and thus stay in a perpetual state of bliss. The scientists cannot help but declared the monk to be one of the happiest person in the world. This is the power of meditation and gradually modern science is beginning to give the practice a second look.

Quote of the day:
It is important to enjoy meditation, or else one will inevitably begin looking outside for enjoyment. - Venerable Chandako

Hallucination at the Subaru Challenge

A contest is going one now at Ngee Ann City. It is the The Subaru Challenge in which the contestants must put their hands on a car and keep it there for days until there's only one left. The last person standing will win a Subaru car. So many of these participants were sleepless for days and all of them started to hallucinate. Some of them started seeing flowers on the car whileone participant could not recognise his own family members. Another hallucinated seeing a spongecake on the floor. There's also some who began speaking nonsense to the people around them. To these people, the hallucinations are real but to we the onlookers, we don't see shit man. Til this day, scientists are still perplexed by the actual functions of sleep, as well as one of its component, dreaming. Through recent studies on sleep deprivation done on rats, scientists came to know that animals that have been deprived of sleep for 4-5 days or more will go insane. Thus, sleep is a biological need animals cannot do without, including us humans. According to Tibetan Buddhism, dreams are linked to our karma in certain ways. Nevertheless, the above phenomenon is a implication that the world is nothing but an illusion and what we see, feel, smell so real it's just a reflection of our own minds. Even Quantum physics have proven that everything that is real to us is a simply a matter of relativity and perspectivism. Deprived of the ability for our mind to function properly, the world will warped before our very eyes.

Just reached 30580 times of the Lakshmi mantra.

Not many people know what's the Sanskrit name of Wang Shen Zhou. It is Sukhavati Vyuha Dharani, which means the Chant of the Western Paradise. Too long to translate into Chinese so we simply called it Wang Shen Zhou.

Secret of Mantra Efficacy

The correct method of mantra recitation must be done in the same spot, at the same timing daily with full sincerity and concentration. By practising at the same place, the energy residue of the mantra recited in the place previously will help reinforce the next recitation. The ability to concentrate will also help propel the mantra into materialization much faster. I just learned that if we recite the mantra while doing our daily chores or travelling or working (this practice is called San Nian Song or Unfocussed Recitation, the strength of the mantra will be reduced by threefold due to the lack of focus behind it. Thus, three recitations will only have the power of a fully focused mantra. So if you are the kind that practice the mantra throughout the day while going about your daily routine, you will have to chant two times more on top of the number you need to do to get the mantra siddhi.