Nine Stages of Training the Mind - Lecture 1 , by #Venerable Guan Cheng ; Published with permission by The International Buddhist Temple.
https://youtu.be/TMJnPtZg5ik?si=CNq5siMAvwnRMGWC
The only country in the world which has devoted all its genius to the inner exploration is Tibet. Its findings are of tremendous value. Om Mani Padme Hum is one of the most beautiful expressions for the ultimate experience. Its meaning is “the sound of silence, the diamond in the lotus.”
Silence also has its sound, its music…although the outer ears cannot hear it, just as the outer eyes cannot see it. We have six outer senses. In the past man knew only that we have five outer senses; the sixth is a new discovery. It is inside your ears; hence people failed to recognize it. It is the sense of balance. When you feel giddy or when you see a drunkard walking, it is the sense of balance that is affected.
Just as these six senses are used to experience the outer, exactly the same six senses exist to experience the inner – to see it, to hear it, to feel its utter balance, its beauty. It is invisible to the outer eyes but not to the inner. You cannot touch it with your outer senses, but the inner senses are absolutely immersed in it.
Om is the sound when everything else disappears from your being – no thought, no dream, no projections, no expectations, not even a single ripple – your whole lake of consciousness is simply silent; it has become just a mirror. In those rare moments you hear the sound of silence. It is the most valuable experience because it not only shows a quality of the inner music – it also shows that the inner is full of harmony, joy, blissfulness. All that is implied in the music of Om.
You are not to say it. If you say it you will miss the real thing. You have to hear it, you have to be utterly calm and quiet and suddenly it is all around you, a very subtle dance. And the moment you are able to hear it, you have entered into the very secrets of existence. You have become so subtle that now you deserve that all the mysteries be exposed to you.
Existence waits till you are ready.
In the East all the religions without exception agree on this point, that the sound which is heard in the final, highest peak of silence is something similar to Om.
The word Om is not written alphabetically in any language of the East because it is not part of language. It is written as a symbol; hence the same symbol is used in Sanskrit, in Pali, in Prakrit, in Tibetan – everywhere the same symbol, because all the mystics of all the ages have reached to the same experience, that it is not part of our mundane world; hence it should not be written in letters. It should have its own symbol which is beyond language. It does not mean anything as far as mind is concerned, but it means tremendously much as far as your spiritual growth is concerned.
All music, particularly the classical music, has been trying to catch the sound of silence so that even people who have not entered into their beings can experience something similar. But the similar is not the same, it is a very faraway echo. Even the greatest musician has to use sounds, but howsoever beautifully he arranges them, he cannot be absolutely silent. He gives gaps of silence in between; the whole play is between sound and silence. Those who don’t understand hear the sounds, and those who understand hear the silence, the gaps between two sounds.
The real music is in the gaps.
It is not created by the musician – the musician is creating the sounds and leaving the gaps as a contrast, so that you can experience something of what happens to the mystic in his inner world.
Om is one of the great achievements of the seekers of truth. There have been cases which are absolutely unbelievable, but they are historical….
When Marpa, a Tibetan mystic, died, his closest disciples were sitting all around him…because the death of a mystic is as tremendously valuable as his life, perhaps more. If you can be close to the mystic when he is dying, you can experience many things, because his whole consciousness is leaving the body – and if you are alert and conscious, you can feel a new fragrance; you can see a new light, you can hear a new music.
When Marpa died he was living in a temple. And all his disciples became suddenly surprised – they looked all around – from where is the sound of Om coming? Then finally they realized that it was not coming from anywhere – it was coming from Marpa! They heard it by putting their ears to his feet, to his hands, and they could not believe it – inside his whole body there was a vibration creating the sound of Om. He had been hearing that sound for his whole life since he became enlightened. Because of his constant inner experience of the sound, the sound had entered even into his physical cells. Every fiber of his body had learned a certain synchronicity, the same wavelength.
But it has been experienced with other mystics also. The inner starts radiating, particularly at the moment of death when everything comes to a crescendo. But man is so blind and so utterly unintelligent: knowing that the mystics experience the music of silence within them and they name it om, people started repeating om as a mantra, thinking that by repeating it they will also be able to hear it.
By repeating it you will never be able to hear it. Your mind is functioning when you are repeating it. But perhaps I am the first person to tell it to you; otherwise for centuries people have been teaching: Repeat om. That creates a false experience, and you can be lost in the false and you will never discover the real.
I say to you not to repeat it but simply be silent and listen to it. As your mind becomes calm and quiet, suddenly you will become aware: like a whisper, the Om is arising within your being. When it arises on its own, it has a totally different quality. It transforms you.
Modern physics says that everything in the world is constituted of electrical energy. According to modern physics even sounds are nothing but electric waves. The physicists have been working from the outside.
The mystics say just the opposite, but I don’t see that they are contradictory. They say the whole existence is made up of the soundless sound Om. And even electricity or fire are nothing but a certain condensed form of the sound.
In the East it has been known: there have been musicians who could create by their music a flame on an unlit candle. As the music falls over the unlit candle suddenly the flame arises. It was a test in the ancient days, that unless a musician could create light, fire, flame, with his music he was still amateur. He was not recognized as a master.
The explanations of physics and the mystics look different, but perhaps there is some deeper source which can withdraw the contradiction and opposition. Perhaps it is only a different interpretation, because the mystic is coming from the inside and the physicist is looking at the outside. What the physicist feels as electricity, the mystic feels as the music of the whole existence. They are both saying the same thing in different languages. And if there is a choice, I would choose the mystic, because he is experiencing it in his very center. His experience is not just an experiment on objects, his experience is an experiment on his own consciousness. And consciousness is the very cream of existence.
This mantra has many secrets in it. The first wordless word is Om, and the last is Hum. The first is the flowering and the last is the seed.
The Sufis don’t use the whole name of Allah – that is the Mohammedan name for God. They simply use Allah Hoo, and slowly, slowly they change Allah Hoo into simply Hoo, Hoo. They have found that the sound of Hoo strikes exactly at the life source just below the navel. You were connected with your life, with your mother, from the navel. Just below the navel is the source of your own life.
Just try: when you say Hoo the hit is below the navel. That’s what we are using in our Dynamic Meditation. It is a Sufi discovery, but it can also be done in the Tibetan way. Rather than Hoo – Hoo seems to be a little harsh – Hum seems to be a little softer. But the softer will take a longer time to wake up your energies. It is possible that in the particular climate of Tibet, the softer was perfectly good. They did not need such a harsh sound in order to hit the life source. But in the harsh desert of Arabia where Sufi mystics started using Hoo….
I had a choice when I was working on the Dynamic Meditation, whether to use Hum or to choose Hoo. I tried both and I found that perhaps in India, Hoo is better than in the colder heights of Tibet where things are bound to be different. Just Hum is perfectly right for them.
Hum is the hit to create Om in you.
If you hit the seed of your life it starts disappearing in the soil and green leaves, sprouts start growing. Between the two – Om and Hum – is Mani Padme. I don’t think anybody has been able to express the ultimate experience, the ultimate beatitude, better than Mani Padme. You have to visualize it. The lotus flower in the East is the most beautiful, the biggest flower. And if you put diamonds on the lotus flower in the early morning sun, you will have a tremendously beautiful experience…the lotus flower with diamonds.
This mantra Om Mani Padme Hum has a whole philosophy within it. Start with Hum, the last word, and the first will arise on its own accord. And when your inner being is filled with the sound of silence, you will also have the beautiful experience of seeing a lotus with a diamond in the early morning sun. The diamond is radiating. The lotus is so soft, so feminine, so delicate – it has no comparison in any other flower."
from comments:
