On Jan 26, 2011, at 11:33 AM, sparaig wrote:
BTW, how do you know what I mean by "mantra" in the first place?
The assumption I was making was that you were referring to the
practice of TM.
Are you sitting in my head, evaluating my thinking process, judging
how refined or not refined it has become?
I sometimes get the impression that for you, "mantra" is this
sacred mental phonetic thing that is always well-defined or at
least hemi-semi-demi-well-defined.
Where do you draw the line between thinking the mantra, thinking
some "other" thought, or simply being? I often find that the
distinction between mantra and other thoughts becomes less and less
obvious. Likewise, as with making a distinction between thinking
and not thinking, it easily becomes irrelevant.
Again, it seems to me that you have a need to categorize everything
into nice, neat categories. This may be the source of your
frustration with TM, you know.
I really never had much or any frustration with TM. I simply went to
another teacher and learned the full chain of my "TM mantra", her
dhyana-vidhi (visualizations) and how to use her yantra and do the
necessary yagyas. So rather than frustration, I felt fulfillment, as
I reached a point where I did not have any more questions.
It actually wasn't I who categorized mantra-shastra, it was the sages
who developed mantric science or mantra-vidya. Every fluctuation or
variation of mantra practice has already been examined and their good
points vs. bad points evaluated and passed down, from realizer to
realizer. Now whether or not you think that is important or not is up
to you. Anyone's mileage may vary.
