In the introduction to my upcoming book, Love and Suffering: A Spiritual Guide for Helpers, Healers, and Humans, I tell the story of the incredible princess Miao Shan, who became the Boddhisattva of Compassion, Quan Yin. Also known as Avalokiteśvara and described as “The One Who Hears the Cries of the World,” she is often pictured with many arms, representing the open heart of compassion that reaches out in all directions to help all sentient beings who are suffering in the world.
The life of Miao Shan perfectly exemplifies the idea that nothing is more important than the cultivation of compassion. Our spiritual practice is cultivating the capacity to bring a loving, open-hearted presence to this world and help to alleviate the burden of suffering. While we are tempted to shy away from pain and suffering and seek to eradicate it, finding the courage to face pain is key to spiritual transformation. We can, to paraphrase Dr. James Finley, become a healing presence in a traumatizing world.
But, how exactly does one go about cultivating these qualities of the heart? While there are countless spiritual and religious practices to choose from, few are as powerful as japa mantra: the gentle repetition of sacred phrases.
From mala necklaces to prayer wheels, the repetition of sacred mantras is a practice utilized all over the world. Mantras are like pure water that we use to cleanse the impurities of hatred and judgment from the mind. Repeating them, over and over, every day, is like watering beautiful flowers in the garden of our heart. Eventually, they blossom into radiant colors, and our heart shines light into the darkness of the world.
There are five mantras I introduce in the book. I offered brief translations of each of them, but for the sake of brevity, I didn’t expand further. So I’d like to offer a deeper explanation of the meaning and translation of the mantras here.
lokah samasta sukhino bhavantu
lokah samasta sukhino bhavantu is a very popular mantra nowadays, with most translations as “may all beings everywhere be happy and free.” It is a beautiful prayer for universal well-being, and reflects the sentence structure of a metta meditation, where one repeats, “May you be free, may you touch peace, may you find joy and natural peace.” Beginning any blessing with the word “may” reflects the desire, wish, and intention for the positive circumstance to happen.
In this mantra, Lokah refers to “the world.” When Lokah and Ishvara (another name for God) combine, it becomes Lokeshvara according to the Sanskrit rules of grammar (the same goes for the maha in Maheshwara, another name for Shiva).
Samastah comes from the word sam, meaning “coming together” or “complete”. It is the same “sam” for the word Sanskrit in actual Sanskrit, samskritam, meaning “put together well.”
Next, we have another crucial word for all aspiring spiritual practitioners to know, sukhino. This comes from the Sanskrit word sukkha, an adjective meaning happy, free, or at ease. It is one of the crucial words in Patanjali’s sutra 2.46: sthira sukham asanam. One of the few sutras that specifically references yoga poses, Patanjali says our posture must find a balance between effort and ease.
Sukkha, or happiness, is the opposite of dukkha, suffering or dissatisfaction. Many of our attempts at sukkha only create more dukkha, like the headache after a night of drinking. This is another key theme in Love and Suffering.
Lastly, we have bhavantu, a word that comes from the root bhu, meaning “to be.” Bhavantu puts it into the imperative, so its meaning in the mantra is more like “coming into being.” Just as we wish for an apple tree to come into being from the seed, we wish for happiness for all beings to come into existence. It’s closely connected to bhava, which can reference any feeling, emotion, mood, or state of being, and is linked to the deep feeling that music or art invokes in us (there is even a company called Bhava that manufactures harmoniums). Bhavana is another word for Buddhist meditation, and it refers to the cultivation of positive mental qualities.
David Lurey has a beautiful rendition of this mantra:
om mani padme hum
Another widely known mantra that you will find on prayer wheels and prayer flags. One of my most favorite mantras, its beauty is in its simplicity. Six simple syllables symbolize the entirety of our spiritual practice. It might be translated as “the jewel in the heart of the lotus flower reflects the indivisibility of wisdom.”
While I could explain it, I think His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama does a much better job than I ever could:
The meaning of the six syllables is great and vast… The first, Om, symbolizes the practitioner’s impure body, speech, and mind; it also symbolizes the pure exalted body, speech, and mind of a Buddha. The path is indicated by the next four syllables. Mani, meaning jewel, symbolizes the factors of method: altruistic intention to become enlightened, compassion, and love. The two syllables, padme, meaning lotus, symbolizes wisdom. Purity must be achieved by an indivisible unity of method and wisdom, symbolized by the final syllable hum, which indicates indivisibility.
See the video here:
om gate gate parasamgate gate gate bodhi svaha
This powerful mantra comes from The Heart Sutra, also known as the Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya or “The Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom.” One translation is, “Gone, gone over, gone fully over. Awakened! So be it.”
You will notice the word “gate,” pronounced gah-tay, six times in this mantra! Essentially meaning “gone” from the root gam, to go, this mantra tells us to go, go, go, go beyond any attachments and conceptual thinking to discover our innate Buddha Nature. We all have the capacity to awaken, and this mantra tells us to keep going until it happens.
Often, Buddhas are referred to as Tathāgata, meaning “one who has thus gone,” and can also mean one who has discovered the truth.
“Bud” means to awaken; thus, the Buddha is the awakened one, and Bodhi is our arrival at wisdom and awakening. This is the same Bodhi as in Bodhisattva.
You will see the sacred exclamation swaha or svaha at the end of many mantras, which is kind of like a good ol’ “amen!” to reinforce what was just said. During a ceremony, when this word is chanted, it is a signal to toss an offering into the sacred fire, as an act of letting go and non-possessiveness.
The group Wah! has a wonderful version that I often play during Savasana:
aditya hridayam punyam sarva shatru vina shanam
Commonly translated as “All evil vanishes in life for he who keeps the sun in his heart,” this is a mantra I first heard from Ram Dass.
Aditya is another word for Surya, the Sun God. During surya namaskar, or sun salutations, I remind my students to be grateful for the sun. While science might reduce our sun to a ball of fusion gas, we can also recognize that the sun is the giver of all life. All life forms on this planet use the energy of the sun, whether the plants that absorb it or the animals that eat those plants.
Hṛdayam is another word for heart. Did you notice it at the end of Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya from earlier?
Punya means good virtue or karma. Sarva means “all” and is a common word to use in mantras, such as in another way to say the first mantra of this post, Om Sarve Bhavantu Sukhinah.
Finally, shatru means enemies, and vina shanam means destruction, which references the mental enemies we must conquer to find peace and love. When my students read the Bhagavad Gita for the first time, they are often surprised that a story that takes place on a battlefield is often cited as a guide for nonviolence. That is because the battlefield is a metaphor for our own mind, and we must conquer the demons of greed, fear, hatred, and delusion and let love, compassion, and kindness become the victors.
namo kuan shi yin pusa
And finally, a mantra for Kuan Yin Herself. This final mantra includes both Sanskrit and Mandarin Chinese, which is why you will find transliterations like Guan Yin or Guānshìyīn. You will find “Namo” in many Sanskrit mantras that praise someone, like “Om Namah Shivaya” or “Om Namo Gurudev Namo.” It is the same word found in Namaste and Namaskaram.
Pusa, or Púsà, is the Chinese word for Boddhisattva.
Hopefully, this explanation of the mantras gives you an idea of their profound meaning and significance. But now, it’s time to put that into practice by actually chanting the mantras. Intellectual understanding can only get you so far; now it must be applied. I wish you well on this beautiful journey.
If you liked learning about these incredible mantras, definitely check out Love and Suffering, available for pre-order now and coming out officially on September 1st.
What mantras do you enjoy? Let me know in the comments below.
(Photos by Tim van Kempen, Hiroshi Tsubono, and Ksenia Makagonova on Unsplash)
