History of Mantras
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History of Chinese Buddhism and Esoteric Practice from India, China and Tibet
Living Buddha Dechan Jueren
Mantic Arts Wellness Center – East Longmeadow, MA
Clear Light Temple
April 17th, 2003
Translated by: Jaliniprabhakumara
Transcribed by: Jordana H.Regarding this question and inquiry, over 5,000 years ago in the East, people already began their research. Asian peoples realized that human life must face many things – such as birth and death, and they must face illnesses and growing old.
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Free themselves from the suffering of having to die, growing old, illness, and having bad luck? Perhaps even change their natural environment, in order that they are able to adapt to their environment, that environment will no longer bring disasters on them. These are the problems, and these are still the problems.
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The ancient people began their inquiry – they wanted to find the solution to the problems. They seek in different ways. They realized that through certain types of practice to work on themselves, they may be able to achieve that. But in the process of working on themselves and practicing different disciplines, they often reach a bottle neck, unable to go any further, to enter into a deeper, profounder state – the reason for that is that they are unable to transcend the ego. In order to go beyond the limitation of ego, you go higher and deeper experience. Some of these practitioners tend to experiment with more extreme ways. The goal is still the focus on how to overcome the ego.
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They realized, people have a lot of desire. Everyone is filled with desires…They would rather take advantage of others because of their desires. It would be a natural desire for them to prefer beating up others rather than being beaten up. They would prefer to torture others rather than to suffer the torture themselves.
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So the experiment was, these practitioners would take extreme measures. They let others beat them up, for example. To give everything they have to others. And to go through the path of self-torturing, allowing poison snakes to bite them and to torture themselves with needles. Through this kind of experiment, and more – probably you can call it dumber – experiments, really something began to take place. Something began to change. Because the practitioners realized, when they suffered all these kinds of pain, it was natural for them to yell out. For example, if you suffer from pain, if you are surprised and suddenly feel some pain, you yell out. So the ancient practitioners, even though they willfully self-tortured themselves and allowed others to beat them up in order to conquer their ego, they will be ready for it (Unclear). Of course a couple of beatings are not going to hurt that much. Keep that up, anyone will begin to feel the pain, and will call out naturally!
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What they realized was, this kind of yelling out was not going to make them feel less pain. But it does provide a certain kind of relief. Some of these practitioners learned this, or took this class. Until today, in India, there are still different kinds of Brahman sects that still follow this practice. With this kind of extreme method, it is possible to make the practitioner conquer the ego in order to enter a deeper meditative state. But there is also a problem with it – it is too painful. So they also realized, through this kind of howling, yelling out, they endured the pain, the sounding out of certain syllables was a certain relief to them. It could change their mind state.
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For example, when we are really tired, sometimes we will stretch to relax, and we feel better. When you stretch your arms it is natural for some people to make certain sounds, and this makes even better relief. Everybody has this kind of experience. You do this all the time. But you are not aware of what is obviously happening. Voicing certain kinds of syllables gives you relief, and improves your circulation. Because people from different regions and different lifestyles speak different languages and different dialects, so they voice different types of sounds. These practitioners realized through different ways of pronouncing different sounds that they can affect a change in the condition of their body. That is how mantras came about, and gradually developed into a system of mantras. Most mantras, special Buddhist mantras, that’s how they originated. With their experiment, and the result, they realized that with all these imitated sound they can also achieve a state of mind, and also a sense of relief.
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Then they experimented further, because in this system it is understood, for certain types of syllables you will need to chant a certain number of times. Or you need to say for how long. And they also realized, whether you make them out loud or just think about them in silence, it has a different effect. So they began to count how many times they had to say a certain mantra, by using their fingers to count. After a while, as they were counting how many time they were counting the mantra using their fingers, they also began to realize they were feeling certain sensations throughout their bodies. And this is the beginning of mudras….>>>>> Read Full Transcript
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