The Light That Stays

11. Mantra — A Sound to Come Home To

Some days the mind is a hummingbird. It can’t sit anywhere for more than a second; thoughts whip past so fast you can’t even tell what they’re about. On those days, even sitting in good posture and watching your breath might not be enough — the breath is too quiet, and your mind is too loud to land on it.

For days like that, people across just about every contemplative tradition on earth have found something that works: a mantra. A short sound, or a short phrase, that you repeat — silently, or under your breath — over and over, gently. The mantra becomes an anchor. When the hummingbird mind goes flying off, you don’t chase it. You just come back to the sound. It’s small. It’s steady. It’s always there.

This isn’t unique to any one religion. Christians have prayers they repeat with beads. Muslims have dhikr, the practice of remembering by repeating a sacred name. The Jewish tradition has lines repeated for the same purpose. Hindu and Buddhist traditions have many. The shape of the practice is the same everywhere: a small, sacred sound to come home to when the mind has scattered.

It even shows up outside religion entirely. Transcendental Meditation — the practice you may have heard people like Jerry Seinfeld and Ray Dalio talk about — also uses a mantra. Each TM student is given their own particular sound by their teacher, kept private. I don’t know what those sounds are, because I never took the course. The basic idea, though, is the same one we’re working with here: a small, steady sound to come home to.

For this book, I’ll give you one. Just one. It has been recited for more than a thousand years by more people, in more countries, than any other mantra on earth.

Om Mani Padme Hum

It is: Om Mani Padme Hum.

Say it slowly: Ohm — mah-nee — pahd-may — hoom.

Six syllables, originally from Sanskrit. The literal translation is something like the jewel in the lotus, but mantras aren’t really about literal meaning the way a sentence is. They’re more like songs of the heart. The way “amen” or “hallelujah” carry weight far beyond their dictionary definitions — that’s how mantras work. Each of the six syllables is traditionally connected to a quality of kindness and clear seeing. Together they point at something like: the awake, kind heart is right here, even in the middle of the mud. (You’ll recognize the lotus from the last chapter. Same image.)

And there’s one more piece worth knowing. This mantra belongs, in the tradition, to the great figure of compassion herself — known in China as Guanyin, in Tibet as Chenrezig, in Sanskrit as Avalokiteshvara. Across the Buddhist world, for more than a thousand years, people have turned to her in moments of trouble — asking for kindness, for healing, or simply for someone to be with them in their suffering. You don’t have to believe in any of it for the mantra to help you; that isn’t the point of saying it here. But knowing whose mantra it is gives you a sense of what it carries: an enormous, ancient river of human longing for kindness, flowing through six small syllables.

How to Use It

Sit in your seven points. Take a few slow breaths to arrive. Then, silently in your mind, begin to repeat: Om Mani Padme Hum. Om Mani Padme Hum. You can sync it to your breath if you like — half of it on the in-breath, half on the out. Or you can just let it go at its own slow pace, like a quiet heartbeat in the background.

When your mind wanders, don’t get frustrated. Just notice that you wandered, and come back to the sound. That coming-back is the practice — every return is a small bow toward your own steadiness.

You can do this for two minutes or twenty. You can do it silently on the bus, while waiting in line, lying awake at three in the morning when your thoughts won’t stop. Nobody around you will ever know.

One Last Thing

If Om Mani Padme Hum doesn’t feel like yours, any short, kind phrase can do the same job. “I’m here.” “Peace.” “All is well.” A line of a poem you love. The point is not the magic of the particular words; the point is having one small, steady thing to come back to when everything else is spinning.

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