• the three worlds - earth, atmosphere, and heaven
  
  Tibetan Buddhists believe that saying the mantra (prayer), Om Mani Padme Hum, out loud or silently to oneself, invokes the powerful benevolent attention and blessings of Chenrezig, the embodiment of compassion. Viewing the written form of the mantra is said to have the same effect -- it is often carved into stones, like the one pictured above, and placed where people can see them. 
  Spinning the written form of the mantra around in a Mani wheel (or prayer wheel) is also believed to give the same benefit as saying the mantra, and Mani wheels, small hand wheels and large wheels with millions of copies of the mantra inside, are found everywhere in the lands influenced by Tibetan Buddhism.
  
  
  The Prayer Wheel: Spiritual Technology from Tibet
  
  It is said that all the teachings of the Buddha are contained in this mantra: Om Mani Padme Hum can not really be translated into a simple phrase or sentence. 
  
  It is appropriate, though, to say a little about the mantra, so that people who want to use it in their meditation practice will have some sense of what they are doing, and people who are just curious will understand a little better what the mantra is and why it is so important to Tibetan Buddhists. We begin in the next section with some information about the mantra itself.
  
  
  The Mantra Om Mani Padme Hum
  
  The Mani mantra is the most widely used of all Buddhist mantras, and open to anyone who feels inspired to practice it -- it does not require prior initiation by a lama (meditation master).
  The six syllables of the mantra, as it is often pronounced by Tibetans -- Om Mani Padme Hum -- are here written in the Tibetan alphabet: 
  
  Reading from left to right the syllables are:
  
  
  
  
  
  Om
  (ohm)
  
  Ma
  (mah)
  
  Ni
  (nee)
  
  Pad
  (pahd)
  
  Me
  (may)
  
  Hum
  (hum)
  

Here's the sound of the mantra,
chanted by a Tibetan refugee: 

Play Mantra
Windows .wav

Play Mantra
Real Audio
download player
The mantra originated in India; as it moved from India into Tibet, the pronunciation changed because some of the sounds in the Indian Sanskrit language were hard for Tibetans to pronounce.
 

Last edited on Tue Sep 30th, 2008 11:33 pm by atomic33