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Originally Posted by Vajradhara
What are some good mantras to do? I used to do some like om mani padme hum but didn't know what it meant and Om as well. Also you mentioned visualizations, what do you mean by that?
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There are a zillion mantras. If we recite them, are we not in doership, nurturing conditioned belief? Mind you, mantras do set up a vibration but can we resonate within?
Let the mantra
come to us, is what I’d say. If silence is our ever present orientation, the universe will give us the mantra, should we need it. So we do nothing. We trust that God knows best how the rose will blossom.
Mantras, if just mindlessly chanted do no harm, in fact, it helps focus attention onto one activity. The same applies to any other meditation technique, which is actually not meditation but concentration. Our heart beats by itself, we do nothing, breath flows by itself, we do nothing, why then meditate … unless of course we are agitated and wish to use it as a healing tool, to calm down for a short while?
Having said this, in my experience, the beej mantra (beej means seed) is ‘Ohm’. It arose within, on its own. Several other mantras ‘came to me’ at different times, they play within automatically like the inner sound current. We accept but do not get addicted to any, because life is a flow, after a while there may be no need of the mantra.
Visualisation is also volition, a doing. We imagine a this or that image of God, a light or whatever and then reinforce it. Surely, is it not only a concept we are indulging in? Why should we presuppose what God looks like? Let Him reveal Himself to us the way He chooses. Why should we interfere?
All practices serve a purpose, I do not deny. But in my view, it’s like a crutch we should discard at some point along the way.