Tips for Mantra Meditation
- Remember, meditation is never a wasted endeavor. Even if you cannot practice according to the ideal conditions, the endeavor itself will help you to refine your life-style in favorable ways. Eventually, you will find a completely favorable situation if you just keep at it without losing hope.
- Practice, Practice, Practice.
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There are a multitude of good mantras to chant. Some of the most effective:
- "Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare Hare, Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare". Sometimes referred to as the "Hare-Krishna Maha-mantra", this is considered by Bengali Vaishavas, to be the supreme mantra of all mantras. This is spoken in the Vocative, so one is calling out to the names of Vishnu or Radha-Krishna (the all-attractive Supreme Divine Couple) Hare is the vocative of Haraa, the feminine divine or supreme energy/possibilities, whilst "Krishna" and "Rama" are vocative of the masculine divine or the very form of supreme existence, wisdom, and bliss. A web image search for images of Radha-Krishna, or Rama, turns up many blissful, divine icons to help in meditation, though in mantra meditation, it is generally considered best to just listen rather than look.
- "Haum Mani-Padme Om" This is a popular Buddhist mantra. It can be taken as asking the Buddha (the divine) for favorable life conditions or enlightenment, i.e., the extirpation of material desires.
- "Jay Shree Krishna Chaitanya, Prabhu Nityaananda, Shree Adwaita, Gadaadhar, Shreevasaadi Gaura-bhakta-vrinda": This mantra invokes the compassion of God in five forms, and is good for developing a devotional attitude toward the personalities of Godhead. In Bengali Vaishnavism, this is chanted once at the beginning of each 108 mantras (and does not count toward the total number of mantras chanted) in order to evoke auspicious conditions for the mantra chanting. It is like chanting for the sake of good chanting.
- "Kyrie Eleison". This is a popular Russian Orthodox mantra, also used by Catholic monks. It means "Lord Have Mercy", and can be quite a purifying chant.
- Pay submissive attention to the sounds. Proper submissive reception to the sounds will cause rapid revelation of their transcendental character. Be patient if it doesnt happen right away. Break the mind of its learned habits of wandering, and teach it to focus. If you are determined, enthusiastic, and patient, results will almost automatically follow.
Warning:
Do not expect, be attached to, or even contemplate immediate results. Doing so will likely lead to frustration and loss of determination. The desired results come as a product of proper exectution of the method, and this most often takes practice. Meditation of any kind is a long-term process. It can take from years to decades to refine. Anything worth having is worth making an investment in. Nonetheless, if one is engaging in the method correctly, there will be some sense of progress, even short-term. If one is not experiencing this, go back over this how to. Try and see if there is some facet of the process you could improve on.
