[music] Dharma Bites is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for your life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. Thank you, and happy listening. [music] But the form and color symbol is not the only kind of symbol. There is another kind of symbol in this context, in this connection. No less important, and what is that? It is sound, especially "muntric" sound. And this brings us to the second part of our subject. We are concerned not only with the symbolism of colors, but with the symbolism of colors and "muntric" sound. But what is "muntric" sound? What is a mantra? One knows that there are many misunderstandings on this point. Mantra used to be rendered as magic words. Just as mandala used to be rendered as magic circle. Sometimes even now, mantra is translated as spell, which doesn't help very much. The traditional explanation defines mantra as "that which protects the mind." When this is undoubtedly true, of course the mantra, if you recite it, protects the mind. But so does every other spiritual practice, so this doesn't help us very much. Essentially, we may say the mantra is just a sound symbol. This is the figure of a Buddha, or Bodhisattva, is a form and color symbol. A symbol that is to say of a particular aspect of enlightenment, particular aspect of the enlightened mind. Similar particular spiritual experience. Now this sound, this "muntric" sound, is not only external as pronounced by the voice, but internal. In fact, we may say "muntric" sound is more internal than external. Mantric sound is not a matter of physical vibrations. Sometimes, of course, the efficacy of mantras is explained in this way. If you recite, it doesn't just mantra. You produce physical vibrations of say 250,000 a second, and another mantra is 300,000 a second, and so on. So the one that produces 300,000 physical vibrations is more powerful, more spiritually efficacious than the one that produces only 250,000, etc. But this is much to crude and materialistic. And this sort of view of the efficacy of mantras has rightly been ridiculed by Lama Govinda, who says that if mantras were a matter of physical vibrations, all you should do is to get a gramophone recording of mantras in his play over and over again, and get all those wonderful spiritual benefits and effects. But mantra, "muntric" sound, is not a matter of physical vibrations. It is not a question of the actual physical sound of the mantra when you pronounce it. The mantra is essentially an inner sound, an inner vibration. One could even say that the mantra is really an inner feeling. Not that the sound, the external physical sound of the mantra, in your ordinary sense, has no place at all. It is not that mantras should not be recited aloud, but the gross recitation, as it were, is only a means to the experience of the subtle. The relation between the two, the gross external, as it were verbal, repetition of the mantra, and the inner subtle repetition, the feeling of it going on, it is not unlike that between a picture of the Buddha, or Bodhisattva, a painted picture, and the same figure has actually visualised in the meditation experience. In each case, the gross leads to the experience of the subtle or acts as a sort of catalyst. Now mantras, practised with mantras, the recitation of mantras, occupies an extremely important place in the Tantra. In fact, the Tantra was originally known as the Mantrayana, the way of the vehicle of the mantras, and it was so called to distinguish it from the Mahayana, which was known as the Paramita Yana, the way of the vehicle of the practice of the perfections, the transcendental virtues. Now the perfections of the Mahayana, the transcendental virtues practised by the Bodhisattva, as it would say the flame has six, giving, morality, patience, energy, vigor, meditation, and wisdom. The term Vajrayana, as replacing Mantrayana, came into use only much later. Vajrayana representing the more advanced and the radical development of the Tantric tradition. Now progress is said to be more rapid in the Mantrayana than in the Paramita Yana, because people are always interested in rapid progress, in the sense quite rightly so. Now why is this? Why is progress said to be more rapid in the Mantrayana than in the Paramita Yana? The perfections, we may say, represent a complete scheme of ethical and spiritual development, but they are aimed more at the conscious mind, at least in the early stages of their practice. But the Mantrayana on the other hand is directed much more to the unconscious depths. And the Mantrayana aims at contacting the spiritual forces which are latent in those depths, those forces which are ultimately different aspects of the enlightened mind, aspects that are personified or better still crystallized in the form of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and so on. And these forces, these forces latent in the depths, the unconscious depths of the mind, can be contacted according to the Tantra through the joint practice of visualization and invocation. Visualization of form and colour, invocation with Mantric sound. But why just these two? Why just visualization and Mantric sound? Why are colours and Mantric sound so important? We'll come to this in a minute. And after that describing detail, an actual visualization invocation of a particular divine form, and then conclude. We hope you enjoyed today's Dharma Bite. Please help us keep this screen. Make a contribution at freeBuddhistaudio.com/donate. And thank you. [music] [music] [music] [ Silence ]
