INDIA NAMES, CHINA COUNTS: OF MANTRAS AND COUNTING MEDITATIONS
Most of the effective ways to meditate include some way to maintain a focus on your breathing. Why? Because it’s a way to stay aware of what you’re thinking, feeling, sensing, and/or doing rather than being completely identified with your action or experience. And that’s part of the essence of meditation—being aware, moment by moment, of what you’re doing rather than being completely caught up in it.
The two most popular ways to stay aware of your breathing—which in turn helps you stay aware of whatever else you’re doing—are mantras and breath counting. A mantra is most effectively used when silently repeated in rhythm with your breathing. For example, silently speaking the mantra on your inhalation and noticing whatever else you’re aware of during that in-breath and then emptying both the mantra and everything else out of your mind on the outbreath.
Breath counting is similar. Count one number on the in-breath and notice whatever else you’ve become aware of (thinking, feeling, sensing, and/or doing if you’re not sitting silently while you meditate. Then empty the number and everything else out of your mind on the outbreath.
There’s more to it than just described with both mantras and breath-counting, and we’ll come back to that “other” in just a minute. But first, an adventurous little journey to India and China. In India we find that people name the days and months just as in most of the West. “Sunday, Monday (think Moon Day), Tuesday, . . . etc.” Likewise with months of the year: January, February, etc.. Just like in the rest of the Indo-European language family. Now let’s jump over to China. Those names are nowhere to be found! Instead the days and months are counted. The days of the week are called Day One, Day Two, Day Three—and so on. And the months? Well of course, they’re Month One, Month Two, Month Three—right on up to Month Twelve. (Could that constant counting in everyday conversation have something to do with why many Chinese seem to be so good at math? Or maybe it’s the other way around—that mathematical aptitude is why they count the days and months instead of naming them. All just guesses.
In Japan, just for the record, the days are named after elements rather than planets as in the West. Except Monday, which is the day of the moon there too. Tuesday is the day of fire, Wednesday of water, Thursday of wood, and Friday of—yes–gold! Saturday is the day of earth. As for the months—well, there it gets a little complicated. In modern Japanese they’re counted, just as in China. But in the old days they had names. Sometimes the old names are still used in poems and novels.
At this point your inquisitive mind probably wonders, “What about Southeast Asia, which is sort of between India and China?”
Moving your token to Thailand, you’ll find that the days of the week are named after astrological signs from India and Sanskrit. But in Vietnam, closer to China, they count them.
But if you really want everything turned on its head, in English we count the years but in China they have names for them. As the Japanese would say, “Ah, so!”
Now, back to the question, “What does all that have to do with meditation?”
The short answer is that breath counting is more popular in China and Japan while mantra meditation is more popular in India. Almost all are derived from the ancient Sanskrit language, which intriguingly enough has a far more extensive vocabulary for diverse personal qualities, states of consciousness, and “higher” states of consciousness than any contemporary language. (Does that suggest highly developed ancient civilizations, such as the “mythical” Atlantis and Lemuria? How else would such a language come into being?) A mantra has the advantage that anyone can learn it. And each mantra has some specific meaning that can influence a person’s attitude and outlook when repeated over and over again for a long period. If there’s a particular quality you want to develop, that feature of mantras can be useful. Some gurus and traditions assign mantras to those who come to them for meditation instruction—and in some cases, that’s your mantra forever! Other traditions allow people to choose their own mantra and to change it when they want to work on developing a new and different personal quality. Kooch N. Daniels and I offer a page of useful mantras in Matrix Meditations (available either in paperback or as an e-book.) If that’s not enough for you to choose from or you don’t want to shell out $13.99 for our amazing and wonderful book you can do an online search for “Sanskrit words” and you’ll find many different sites that offer such terms absolutely free! (but some—not all—will try to sell you all sorts of other things.)
It’s a little easier to maintain your mindful presence and with breath-counting than mantra meditation, but it doesn’t have the same feature of mentally reinforcing some particular quality. Nonetheless, some advanced yogic traditions in India, such as Kriya yoga, favor breath counting. There are beginning breath-counting methods that are almost as easy to do as mantra meditation and advanced methods that require great attentiveness and can develop a high degree of mental discipline.
The one thing that the most effective mantra meditations and both beginning and advanced breath counting meditations have in common is a focus on breathing. Each adds something extra to the most basic breathing meditation of all, which is to do no more than notice and sense as you breathe in and breathe out. In that most basic practice, as soon as you realize that your mind has drifted off to thinking about something—anything—else, then just bring your attention back to noticing breathing in, breathing out, breathing in, breathing out, and no more.
What can be simpler? Or easier? Sound like child’s play, doesn’t it? Why bother with anything else?
Because actually it’s incredibly difficult to keep your attention focused on your breathing and nothing else. (If you don’t believe it, try it for two minutes right now. See?) The washing machine of our mind craves to swish all the zillions of thoughts it contains back and forth and all around—and what was that about breathing? I forget. . . “
That’s why even a basic mantra or breath count with your breathing is useful. It gives you something to hang onto when the storm winds of your mind or emotions want to blow your attention away. More about each of them in exciting future blogs.
How simple or how complex a practice suits you depends on the character of your own everyday ordinary waking consciousness. Some people who have a stoic temperament find that a fairly simple and basic practice is perfect for them. Others who have more of a “monkey mind” that tends to jump all over the place find that a more complex and demanding practice does a better job of helping them focus and stay present, paradoxical as that may sound. More –much more– about both simpler and more complex ways to meditate in other blogs. (Or get them all at one time in one place in the convenient, well organized, beautifully written book mentioned above. )
In the meantime, if you do nothing else, at least tune into your sensations of breathing in, breathing out, breathing in, breathing out —like a swinging door—when you have nothing else to do!
Ciao Bello. Or Ciao Bella, as the case may be. Victor