Mantra Meditation

Bhakti yogis carefully control their senses and minds by engaging them in service to Krishna and Krishna's devotees. The control is not the white-knuckle restraint we tend to imagine when we hear the word discipline. It is, instead, the quieter and more lasting work of giving the senses something better to do.

"Thus practicing constant control of the body, mind and activities, the mystic transcendentalist, his mind regulated, attains to the kingdom of God by cessation of material existence."

— Bhagavad-gita 6.15

Constant, not occasional

The Gita's word is constant. Not heroic, not occasional, not reserved for the dramatic morning. The senses are practiced the way a musician practices scales — daily, gently, without spectacle. The mind, after long enough, learns the new song.

And so the small interior weather of the practitioner begins to change. The room of the chest, once crowded, becomes a room one can return to. The senses, once scattered, begin to point in the same direction — toward the holy name, toward the service at hand, toward the next quiet hour.

There is no spectacle in this. There is only, slowly, a life that has become its own steady practice.

Once, while working on a deadline, my computer caught a small persistent virus. The same alert kept reappearing, no matter how many times I dismissed it. Eventually a friend who knew the system walked me through running the right cleanup program, and the machine returned to itself.

The Yoga Sutras describe the mind in terms not so different from those a computer engineer might use. The impressions we absorb through our senses — the vrittis — settle in the mind the way small viruses settle in software. Left alone, they begin to disturb the system. We call the result anxiety.

The mantra as a clearing program

Mantra meditation, in this image, is the cleanup. The holy name, repeated patiently, does not so much wrestle the mind into stillness as gently sweep its accumulated noise. What remains is the calmer field that was always underneath.

"We are not upset about what happens to us; rather, we are upset about what we think is happening to us."

— Epictetus

Studies suggest that nearly half of adults in the West live with high levels of stress, much of it tied to work and money — and stress, untreated, gradually unravels both health and the simple ability to enjoy a day. Mantra meditation will not change the conditions of one's life overnight. But it will, slowly, change the room from which those conditions are met. That is its first quiet gift.

Adapted from a reflection by Vaisesika Dasa.