Many people know about using the rosary to keep count of prayers. Indian swamis are frequently pictured using what looks like a necklace of beads, running it through the fingers of one hand. What looks like a necklace is called a japa mala. You can buy them now all over the Web made of everything from sandalwood beads through every kind of semi precious and precious stone. But even the cheapest one is a very efficient machine to enable the seeker who meditates to get on with seeking. My first one was a loop of cord with 27 knots in it.
Japa means ‘ repetition.” A japa mala then is an instrument designed to help you repeat prayers, mantras, or sacred scriptures using beads or seeds to do the automatic keeping of the totals. The important thing is that it gets the body involved in what might otherwise be a purely mental activity.
So, why is a mala needed at all? Well one of the major reasons is that whenever any beginner tries to meditate there is something that doesn’t want to cooperate. It’s called the ego/mind complex. As soon as a beginner sits down to meditate, the mind begins to race.
Aches and pains and itchings suddenly appear in the body as if they had been waiting for just this moment. Why the ego-mind complex is against meditation, and the thought-free state is explained in great detail in my monograph Meditation: the Bridge from the Apparent to the Real. How a mala helps to counter this problem is illustrated by the ancient Indian story of the seeker and the genie. Details vary according to the practices of the guru telling the story, but the basic details are as follows.
A beginning meditator discovered a casket hidden among the roots of a tree when he sat down to meditate. When he managed to pry open the metal bands that held it shut an imprisoned genie emerged.
“I’m going to eat you.” it informed its rescuer. “ But as a favor for releasing me I make this bargain with you. I can perform any task and any magic except getting out of that box. So I will do, make, or produce anything you want. But when you run out of things for me to do, as you eventually will, I shall eat you. So what do you want first?”
The beginner was delighted. Initially he saw no problems in that situation. He said, “Well first of all I would like to have a wonderful palace built for me, right here in the jungle.”
The genie immediately set to work. In a matter of a couple of hours there was a typical Indian palace made of marble, with fountains, pools and ornate decorations. It had bowers and shady pathways and was very beautiful.
“What now?” demanded the genie. The astonished, though still delighted novice said. “Make sure that the treasury is filled with gold and gems of every kind.”
“Done,” said the genie, waving his hand. “You aren’t delaying my dinner much if that’s the best you can do.”
“ There aren’t any people here yet.” said the novice, beginning to sweat a little. “ Fill it with beautiful women servants and courtesans, and all the supplies they need to look after each other, the palace, and me.” Meditation, the original reason he sat under the tree, had obviously slipped a few places in his priorities.
Immediately the palace became alive with astoundingly beautiful women in magnificent silk saris, all moving gracefully around, performing obviously appointed tasks around the palace. What now?” demanded the genie. “If you can’t keep me busy I’m going to eat you, remember.”
The now desperate novice hastily thought of a couple of modifications to the palace, and the erection of a temple and some gardens. But the genie accomplished these miracles effortlessly and speedily.
“You’re out of ideas aren’t you.” said the genie. “You had better start running. I shall be ten paces behind you, running at exactly the same speed. And when you stop through exhaustion I will eat you, and I never get tired.”
The now terrified novice began running aimlessly through the jungle with the genie following effortlessly ten paces behind and taunting him all the time.
When he was nearly on the verge of collapse he came out of the jungle by a small hill that had a cave in it. He recognized it as the cave where a neighboring guru lived and ran towards it.
He threw himself into the cave. The genie stopped dead outside the door. “You can’t stay there for ever.” it said. “And when you come out I’ll eat you.”
In the cave was a guru. He was completely aware of what had happened. It wasn’t all that unusual in his experience of beginning meditators. When the novice had recovered his breath a little he beckoned him forward and whispered advice in his ear.
Then he gave him some food. The refreshed novice began to leave the cave and the genie looked very pleased.
“There’s a couple more things for you to do before you can eat me.” said the novice. “Tell me, and get it over.” said the genie, “You can’t hold out much longer.”
“I have another task for you to do at the palace, so get us both back there as fast as possible.”
In a moment they were both back at the beautiful and very busy palace. “Build me a strong metal column right here, about fifteen times as tall as you.” In a moment it was done.
“Now climb up to the top and then come down again.” said the novice. The genie did so. “Keep doing that,” said the novice, “until I tell you to stop.” Then the novice went off to his palace and had a very good time being waited on hand and foot by beautiful women for a couple of days.
Then he went back to the column. The genie was still climbing up and down, and begged to be allowed to get on with his own thing on condition that he left the novice completely alone without any negative results. You can finish the story yourself.
Now the genie, as is probably obvious, is the mind. It always wants to be busy, and is usually confined in a box made of programs. You finish a project that has taken you two years and it says, “What’s next?” It never gives you time to enjoy anything. It desperately tries to keep you involved in the future, because finding out who you really are can only be done in the NOW. And when you know who you are in the now, the temporary phenomenon of the ego/mind takes a very back seat.
The first thing to do then is to be in charge of the mind, instead of the other way around. The way recommended by the guru in the story is to give it something to do that it will always revert back to whenever you stop deliberately using it to think.
Usually the mind just picks up thoughts from all around you, lets them in and treats them as yours. Someone drops a tune into your head and you can’t get rid of it all day, for example. Or the thought, “What would happen if......?” enters in and you follow it into all kinds of possible disasters and begin feeling more and more depressed.
The ego/mind complex follows any negative thought with great energy, and watches approvingly as you step into the misery spiral and keep going down. It has NO interest in your being happy. It is only interested in being in control. And all those mind trips take you out of NOW.
And your mind is usually busy all the time with other people’s stuff from the public energy field, from ads, from radio and TV and millions of other negative sources. It never normally deals with NOW.
Sometimes when an emergency arises, like an apparently imminent car accident, the mind switches off, an odd sense of timelessness arises, and the Inner Self takes over. The absolutely perfect actions occur without any thought and all is well until the surprised ego/mind complex switches on again. During that period the person concerned was not even aware of their current identity. They were just a channel for the life being lived through them. That’s what being in the NOW is like. There are no problems, only solutions.
So the yogis say “Here is a mantra. It is a sentence or phrase that experience has found to be useful. You don’t even need to know the meaning of it, if it has one. Repeat it many times a day. Whenever you are not actually doing something that requires your full attention, repeat the mantra. And to practice that in the beginning you use a japa mala. The body then also has something to occupy it.”
Some people really need to have the radio on, or some music playing before they can concentrate. The noise or music is not a distraction to them. It is an aid. Similarly, some people cannot sit down to meditate without being immediately bombarded with dozens of thoughts. If however they walk in circles, or around a labyrinth, then the energy that kept pounding in the thoughts is drained off by the physical activity, and moving meditation can occur without the mind interfering. With a japa mala the walking is done by the fingers, with the same result.
The ancient Greeks had a school of philosophy called The Peripatetics because the members didn’t sit down to think; they walked around in large circles discussing the problems of the day. Doing this ran off the superfluous energy that might have filled their minds with unwanted thoughts.
This is one reason that using a japa mala is such a help in meditation. The mind is busy on a simple and repetitive task and doesn’t interfere with the real work, just as the genie climbing up and down the pole didn’t interfere with the activities of the novice.
But if you actually do this properly, then much more occurs than merely giving the mind something to do. Deeper levels of being are accessed. Power behind the superficial mind becomes available, and things mental, physical, and spiritual can be re-worked or newly created by using this simple string of beads.
We know that japa means repetition, and it is through repetition that we form or break mental or physical habits or connections.
Mala means ‘garland of flowers.’ This gives us the concept that using a japa mala we can choose, in our garden of life, what it is we want to have, and do, and be. We needn’t make do with the weeds that others are pleased to give us, or have already planted in our minds as programs, that to us are “just the way things are.”
Robert Gass, whose group On Wings of Song have produced many spiritually based CD’s tells a story about his grandmother. He heard that she had begun doing yoga, as people say, like yuppies do lunch. When he went to see her she was in great spirits and showed him how to do a headstand. Obviously whatever she was doing had benefited her a great deal. So he asked her about it. She told him that it all started when she began to meditate. “How did you meditate granny?” “Well, I was told that all I had to do was think of an Indian word and say it over and over. I did and everything got better.” “What was the Indian word you used?” She replied,“Cheyenne.”
Any word will quiet the mind and produce results, as it did for granny to whom Indian meant Native American. To produce specific spiritual, magickal or habit changing results you need to use special words that have been tested over the centuries. That’s where the science of mantra, the combination of feminine vowels and masculine consonants, and the effect of using different fingers of the hand to run the mala comes in. More on this later if anyone shows interest.
