What Is a Good Mantra for Meditation?

Watch Nayaswami Ananta answer this important question and giving us a deeper understanding of meditation. Sanskrit mantras have vibrational power that connects us to higher consciousness when meditating. Learn how to choose effective mantras to go deeper in practice and the importance of using just one mantra consistently over time for the greatest depth of experience.

Transcript

Question: What is a good mantra for meditation?

The Power of Meditation Mantras

Nayaswami Ananta:

The use of a mantra in meditation can be tremendously helpful. The mantras in Sanskrit, Sanskrit is a vibrational language, it's not spoken anywhere in the world. But the vibration of the syllables is imbued with the consciousness of the states that they correlate to and [of] the masters that gave us the Sanskrit language.

So the Gayatri mantra has the vibration of enlightenment. It also has the grace of the rishis who wrote it, assembled it, and it has the consciousness of enlightenment.

Choosing an Effective Meditation Mantra

So a mantra that would help us to meditate should be a mantra that is aligned with some aspect of the divine, so it would be the eight aspects of God —would all be good candidates; ananda, prem, shanti...these are joy, love, peace, ..., gyana, shakti, calmness, wisdom, power, jyoti, light, om, sound. By meditating on them, with them, we turn the consciousness to that realm.

Of course, Aum is the mantra of eternity. It is the foremost mantra for meditation. The Aum Guru is a very powerful manta because Aum is the creation, preservation, dissolution of the universe, the Divine Mother. Guru is the dispeller of darkness. It is the power to transcend the duality. And so meditation is the effort to transcend duality.

Meditation is the uniting of our consciousness with the Divine. And so Aum is a powerful meditation mantra. Aum Guru is the Aum, the Divine Mother, and the dissolution, so the process of dissolving the barriers between our current consciousness and Divine consciousness, so Aum Guru is a tremendous mantra.

Of course, the name of your guru is a powerful mantra for meditation; Jesus Christ. For a disciple of Yogananda, you have variations, because you have Guru, you have Paramahansa Yogananda, his title. You have Premavatar Paramhansa Yogananda. You have any part of that. You can, just by focusing on that: Prem, Avatar, the incarnation of Divine Love—you add your devotion, your prem to the consciousness of the avatar, the incarnation of Prem that is Yogananda.

Importance of Consistency

I would suggest that you find or pick a meditation mantra and then dive into it rather than switching constantly. Yogananda gave the Hong-Sau mantra for concentration, for breathing exercise, breathing concentration meditation. Even advanced Kriya Yogis still practice that mantra with that technique. By switching mantras too much or too often, you won't go deep into them. The power of the mantra is more subtle than just repeating it once or twice. So pick one and then stick with it for a while. And yes, you can change and you can practice different ones, but eventually you find the mantra meditation that is best for you.

Of course, if you're a Kriya Yogi, then you have the mantras of Hong Sau and Aum, and there's mantras with the higher Kriya techniques. So those are guru-given techniques, so we practice those of course. But even if you're just beginning, chant Aum mentally, or Aum Guru, and stick with it for weeks, months, years, decades, lifetimes, whatever, however it goes, because the depth is there.

The Guru Hears All Languages

And the mantra does not have to be in Sanskrit. I believe it was Brother Bhaktananda came to Master, and his mantra was, I love you, Master. And he would just repeat that as his meditation. And Master one time came to him and said, I love you too. The guru is aware of whatever your language, English, French, Italian, Swahili. God speaks all the languages. He gets it.

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Nayaswami Ananta is a founding member of Ananda Village in California. He and his wife, Maria, directed our Ananda community in Sacramento for over 20 years. They returned to Ananda Village in 2009 and serve the community in a number of ways including running the Ananda Farm and training new Ananda members.

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