The True Mantra

Art: Anastasia Dimitricheko, 11, Russia

A young man wanted to learn how to meditate. 

He walked through forests, crossed rivers, and climbed hills to reach a monastery. The wise monks at the monastery told him to practice the Buddhist mantra – a set of words to be repeated to help him concentrate. 

The mantra was: 

Om Mani Padme Hum

After several years of concentrating on this mantra, the young man felt that he had gained enough knowledge to begin teaching.

He taught the mantra successfully for a few years. 

Then he heard about a famous old hermit who lived on an island in the middle of a lake far away. The young man’s curiosity was aroused and he had a desire to meet this hermit. He crossed rivers and forests till he reached the lake. There he hired a boatman to row him across to the island. 

On finding the hermit, the young man respectfully touched his feet and introduced himself. The hermit welcomed him with some herbal tea. With a great deal of curiosity, the young man asked,

“Venerable Sir, kindly tell me more about your spiritual practice.”

The old hermit gently smiled at the young man, patted him on the back, and replied,

“I don’t have an elaborate spiritual practice that I can tell you about.”

Surprised, the young man said,

“But surely, Venerable Sir, you must have a method.”

The hermit drank a sip of his herbal tea, and said,

“I only say the Buddhist mantra over and over again.”

The young man was pleased to know that it was the same mantra that he had himself learnt and taught to several pupils.

“Venerable Sir, please can you say the mantra out loud for me to hear just once?”

The old hermit  folded his legs in the lotus position, closed his eyes, made his body very still, and in a powerful reverberating voice, slowly uttered the six syllables of the mantra:

Om Mani Pemme Hung

After a long time, the hermit opened his eyes to see the young man’s jaw dropped in shock and a horrified expression in his eyes.

“Is there anything troubling you, my dear young man?” he asked.

The young man’s words fell out of his mouth haltingly.

“I...I...I am so...so...sorry to say...,Venerable Sir, that you are not saying the mantra correctly. And you have wasted your whole life saying the mantra wrongly.”

The old hermit was perplexed. He said,

“I see. That is a big mistake. How should I say it correctly?”

The young man was pleased to teach him the correct pronunciation.

The old hermit was grateful and asked to be left alone in solitude so that he could start practicing the mantra the right way. 

The young man hopped onto the boat and as the boat left the island, he thought to himself, 

“At least the old hermit will now practice the mantra correctly for some years before he dies. It is fortunate indeed that I came along to teach him.”

When the boat had almost reached the shore, the young man saw the boatman’s eyes bulging out of their sockets at something he saw. When he turned to see what the boatman was looking at, he was astonished to see the hermit standing on the water next to the boat. 

The hermit respectfully asked the young man,

“Please can you repeat the correct pronunciation of the mantra? I have forgotten it again.”

The young man gazed at the old hermit as if he was a vision, joined his hands together, and said, 

“O Venerable Sir, you do not need it.”

But the old man stood calmly on the surface of the water and persisted in his polite request until the young man relented and told him the correct way to pronounce the mantra. 

The old hermit repeated the mantra very slowly as he took gentle steps on the water to walk back to the island. 

(Retold from a Tibetan story)

Note: Research shows that this mantra originated in India. With time, it moved from India into Tibet and the pronunciation changed because some of the sounds in the Indian Sanskrit language were hard for Tibetans to pronounce. However, if the mantra is chanted with concentration, both variations have the same uplifting effect.