ཨོཾ་མ་ཎི་པ་དྨེ་ཧཱུྃ
Om mani padme hum
During my last visit to Nepal I had the opportunity for a private audience with my teacher, Tokpa Tulku. He’s a Tibetan Buddhist monk and has risen to the rank of Khenpo - a designation earned after thirteen years of post-secondary school study. The designation of Tulku indicates that he’s a reincarnation of a realized monk. He was identified as such when he was nine years old and has been in the monkhood ever since. He’s quite a unique person in that he speaks good English and has a keen interest in Western culture, and he’s into interior design.
Anyhoo, during our discussion I asked him about the mantra printed above. It’s long been of importance to me and I even have it tattooed on my forearm. I mentioned this to him and he said “oh good, very good, this mantra is right for you.” He then went on to discuss its meaning.
He said that the “Om” represents the body, speech and mind of a Buddha - the result or goal of the practice being to reach buddhahood. This is what Buddhists believe, that each of us is progressing through many cycles of birth, life and death (samsara) in many different types of bodies until we develop spiritually and reach the awakening experienced by the Buddha himself. We all have that potential and we all have within us this capacity or “buddha nature”.
He then described “mani” as compassion and more specifically, bodhicitta. Bodhicitta is the aspiration to attain complete enlightenment (buddhahood) in order to be of benefit to all sentient beings trapped in samsara.
He said that “padme” represents wisdom and more specifically, emptiness. This is the understanding and acceptance of the impermanence of all things. We are part of a material world and by its nature it’s all changing and subject to decay and death/destruction. Clinging arises when we fight against this and freedom and happiness comes when we don’t -- when we accept that it’s not who we ultimately truly are.
Finally, he described “hum” as an affirmation. A commitment to stay on the path to developing a balanced, complementary level of mani and padme. To do so takes strong conviction and the hum provides an exclamation point to firm up one’s resolve.
In the Yogasutras (1.20), Patanjali provides five key ingredients to staying the course and one of them is shraddha, meaning faith or conviction. I started to write here that ‘conviction doesn’t come easily’, but actually, maybe it does. It seems there are many events transpiring these days in our chaotic world that spark conviction. Take the recent Black Lives Matter resurgence due to George Floyd’s horrifically unjustified and unnecessary murder. Conviction has flared up around the country and even the world. Now, the key is to cultivate and sustain that conviction. Turn it into faith and enshroud it with compassion and wisdom.
When we make our practice about others —when we turn it into an offering — a selfless act of service in hopes of offering love and compassion — then the conviction takes hold.
Turning to Sharon Gannon’s Jivamukti Focus for July, we find support in this endeavor:
“As a person exercises compassion, as a practice, they get better at it and the result is that they grow into humility—a direction away from selfish ego concerns. To be humble is to be close to the Earth, unpretentious, to bend like a blade of grass to serve rather than expect to be served. It is possible to let go of the demands of the ego but it does take practice. The yogic nature is one of being a servant—to others and to God, rather than self-serving. As a servant you do your best while not being concerned with controlling the outcome of your actions. You do your best and let God do the rest—meaning that you act without selfish motives, trying to manipulate the outcome. This involves vairagya, the yogic virtue of non-attachment. The Bhagavad Gita speaks of yoga as the perfection of action. If we want to act perfectly in a time of crisis we cannot allow negative emotions like anger, sadness or blame to motivate our actions, because if we do our actions will be imperfect and result in future suffering.
At this time of crisis all those who are acting selflessly, responding to the suffering of others with compassion and humility are coming closer to yoga—to the remembrance of who they really are—to the reconnection with the atman (the eternal divine presence within.) Through service we understand that we cannot “help” anyone we can only serve. As we become a channel for service, the understanding of the yogic teachings that mysteriously speak of God as the doer begins to dawn. Through compassionate service the presence of God is revealed. When this encounter occurs it is felt as joy and with it comes the realization of grace and the only response is one of gratitude—grateful to the crisis for providing the opportunity to serve. This awakening to the joy of serving is what my friend, the catholic priest, Father Anthony Randazzo calls, radical servant-hood, where you become a channel and are serving from the core, from the root of your being—from your soul, rather than your ego. The more you serve in this radical way the more fulfilled you become and the more able to serve you become. When you tap into the well of compassion you discover it is limitless—as it is the loving nature of God. As God spiritually activates you with compassion—your activism becomes for rather than against and you become clear, steady and joyful in the midst of crisis, able to uplift the lives of others.”