Meditation is a skill that offers the practitioner many practical tools that can be used for the deepening of our inner self-awareness and also for the betterment of our day-to-day outer activities. In this weeks meditation exercise, Sri Chinmoy offers some pragmatic and very helpful advice on the use of mantra for the purification of the mind.

When our mind becomes pure, we see ourselves and the world around us with a growing clarity, tranquility and confidence. Negative attributes such as fear, aggression, doubt and anxiety begin to diminish in our human nature as our inner divinity comes to the fore and is strengthened by our daily meditation practice. We find ourselves less affected by the turbulence of the world and, slowly but surely, our lives are transformed.

If you cannot enter into your deepest meditation because your mind is restless, this is an opportunity to utilise a mantra. You can repeat 'Supreme' or 'AUM' or 'God' for a few minutes. Also, if you get an attack on the emotional vital plane and wrong thoughts or wrong vibrations are entering into you, you can repeat 'AUM' or the name of the Supreme. In this case try to do it as fast as possible. When you are trying to cleanse your mind of impurities, you must chant as if you were running to catch a moving train. During regular japa, however, just say the mantra in a normal but soulful way, but do not prolong it too much; otherwise, you won't have time to chant the five hundred or six hundred times that are necessary. (Source: Meditation: Man-Perfection In God-Satisfaction)

Question: You said we can increase our purity by repeating 'Aum' five hundred times a day. But for me to repeat 'Aum' five hundred times a day is very difficult. Can you advise me what to do?

Sri Chinmoy: If it is difficult for you to do it at one stretch, then you can do it in pieces. You can do it ten times; each time you will repeat it only fifty times. You know that during the day you want to drink ten glasses of water. But if you drink all ten glasses of water at once, you are afraid it will upset your stomach; so you won't drink them all at once. But if you drink one glass now and then after an interval of an hour or two, another glass, easily you can drink ten glasses of water. So here also, instead of chanting 'Aum' five hundred times all at once, early in the morning you can repeat it fifty times. Then, in an hour's time, you try another fifty. So each hour if you repeat 'Aum' fifty times, each time it won't take you more than a minute or two. Since you can easily spend two minutes in an hour, you can do it. If you have a mantra or incantation of your own, you can easily do it fifty times an hour. It cannot take more than two or three minutes, and everyone can offer three minutes to God. It is not how many hours you can do it at a time that is important, but how soulfully you can do it. (Source: Sri Chinmoy Speaks, Part 5)

Unless we daily and faithfully
Purify the mind,
We will be forced to live
Inside the thick jungle
Of ignorance-night.
– Sri Chinmoy