A Gift From Our Sangha
We – Terry and Josh – wish to thank the members of the River Bird Sangha for their practice and support. It is their supporting membership that allows us to offer this free introduction to a bead-based devotional meditation practice.
If you enjoy this practice, please consider joining our Yin-based community of practitioners where lives find their flow and hearts take flight. Practice along with us with a free two-week trial.
We thank you for your support,
Terry + Josh
Seeds + Beads (suggestions for practice)
Overview. In working with bead-based mantra practices, we encourage you to explore an open-ended approach to find the language, sounds, syllables and rhythm that evoke your deepest spiritual inclinations. This takes time and is a trial and error process.
In our recorded practice (below), we explore the Buddhist mantra, Om Mani Padme Hum. Probably the most famous mantra in all of Buddhism, but it is by no means the only mantra to explore. We like to consider mantras as essentialized scripture, and scripture – whether in a sutra, sacred poem or prayer – requires a special kind of consciousness to unlock its artistic vitality.
Inspired by Karen Armstrong’s powerful book The Lost Art of Scripture, we suggest considering three interrelated elements of bead-based mantra practice:
- Embodied Devotion. When we hold our beads in our hands, and when we chant syllables that regulate our breath and send vibrations throughout our body, we “incorporate it physically,” the first element of bead-based mantra practice.
“A work of art, be it a novel, a poem or a scripture, must be read according to the laws of its genre and, like any artwork, scripture requires the disciplined cultivation of an appropriate mode of consciousness… when reading scripture, people would often sit, move or breathe in a way that enabled them to incorporate it physically.” (Armstrong, LAOS, p. 13)
- Right (Yin) Hemisphere Perception. When we chant a mantra with beads in hand, we activate the right hemisphere of the brain. In general, the left hemisphere’s perception is involved with isolating parts from the whole, compartmentalizing and reductionism; the right hemisphere is less certain, perceiving interconnection and holism. If we seek knowledge (gnosis) of the mysterious Divine, we need to perceive from the Yin (right) hemisphere, and bead-based mantra practice is the oldest and simplest way to do just that.
“Scripture was usually sung, chanted or declaimed in a way that separated it from mundane speech, so that words – a product of the brain’s left hemisphere – were fused with the more indefinable emotions of the right. Music, born of the right hemisphere, does not ‘mean’ anything, but is, rather, meaning itself.” (Armstrong, LAOS, p. 11)
- Improvisation. Just as jazz musicians learn and memorize hundreds of canonical songs, called standards, we suggest approaching the world’s mantras as a canon of spiritual “standards.” Unlike jazz musicians, we need only find one or a few that suit our heart’s orientation. Search around, try out different mantras and prayers. Work with the sounds and articulations that you are drawn to. Once you find one to work with, we recommend a pattern of practice that includes a call and response, where using a timer, practice the bead-and-mantra for 3-5 minutes ( the “call”), then sit silently, holding your beads and listen to what stirs within you during a 3-5 minute silent interval (the “response”). Alternate back and forth a few times between chanting with beads and sitting in silence, allow the essence or “spine” of the mantra’s message to settle in your body and heart, then listen to the personal resonances and recompositions that it activates in relation to your life.
“They had memorized these texts so thoroughly that they had become building blocks of their thinking process; like jazz musicians, they were improvising with material that had become integral to their very being and devising new texts that spoke directly to the present.” (Armstrong, LAOS, p. 25)
Om Mani Padme Hum, a mantra to start with…
Om Mani Padme Hum is sometimes translated as “praise to the jewel in the lotus,” where the lotus symbolizes awakening and the jewel represents the essence of compassion within the process of awakening.
This mantra is closely associated with the bodhisattva of compassion, Avalokiteshwara (and Kwan Yin).
Other Tibetan teachers attribute spiritual significance to each syllable, whereby:
Om represents generosity
Ma represents ethics
Ni represents patience
Pad represents diligence
Me represents renunciation/concentration
Hum represents wisdom
These six qualities are a short list of the same qualities known as paramis, or perfections of heart, that we are exploring together in the River Bird Sangha for all of 2024.
For more on Om Mani Padme Hum, click =====>> HERE
For more on Avalokiteshvara and Kwan Yin, click =====>> HERE
For a Spotify playlist of different ways of chanting the mantra, click =====>> HERE
We hope this outline is helpful for your practice and we wish you all the best as you explore this bead-based journey of the Heart.
One final quote from Karen Armstrong:
“These scriptures prescribe different ways of living in harmony with the transcendent/immanent, but on one thing they all agree. To live in genuine relation with the unknowable ‘ultimate,’ men and women must divest themselves of egotism. What the Greeks called KENOSIS (the “emptying” of self) is a central scriptural theme. Furthermore, the scriptures all insist that the best way of achieving this transcendence of self is to cultivate habits of empathy and compassion, which are products of the right hemisphere.” (Armstrong, LAOS, p. 13)
The Practice: Seeds + Beads | The Art of Embodied Devotion
In this two-hour Extended Practice, Terry will guide you through a thirty-minute embodied practice that creatively weaves elements of Yoga and Qi Gong. Josh will then guide you through a “call and response” pattern of working with beads and mantra.
Join our practice community, where lives find their flow and hearts take flight: River Bird Sangha
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