Mantram

12 September 2014 at 08:10 ·

When I first moved to the village, I used to look askance at the mantrams - as the village people practice them. When for many of my daughter's complaints they used to ask me to go to a vaidudu and get mantrams said, I used to evade, trying to not hurt their sentiments, and also not go. ... it took many years, for some strong urban over-westernized attitudes to shed, and both my daughter and I have had mantrams said.

When Shankaranna prayed with the gilledu (Calatropis gigantica) twigs in his hands facing in turn all the dishas (directions), I could feel the total and intense surrender of his to the gods or the powers that be - before he turned to me and waved the twigs downwards as he said the mantrams.  My pains reduced, and that might he has severe body pains. Slowly I learnt that the village beleifs are vaster than my superficial dismissivemenss.

To try to look for modern scientific validation of our deep traditional wisdom think is a defeated beginning. Also because th paradigms are themselves so different that one is incompetent to comment on the other. Still ...

In later years, a swami taught me a mantram - and the utter stilling of thoughts that that achieved taught me some more humility of the vast unknown areas of thought and wisdom that there are.