| |
heights of Tibet where things are bound to be different. Just hum is perfectly right for them.
Hum is the hit to create OM in you.
If you hit the seed of your life it starts disappearing in the soil and green leaves, sprouts start growing. Between the two -- OM and hum -- is mani padme. I don't think anybody has been able to express the ultimate experience, the ultimate beatitude, better than mani padme. You have to visualize it. The lotus flower in the East is the most beautiful, the biggest flower. And if you put diamonds on the lotus flower in the early morning sun, you will have a tremendously beautiful experience... the lotus flower with diamonds.
It is very difficult to say anything about the ultimate experience, but Tibetan mystics have tried the best. Many things have been said about it, but "diamond in the lotus" seems to be the best expression -- because it is the greatest, most beautiful experience, and they have chosen two of the most beautiful things of the ordinary world, the lotus and the diamond. It is just a visual expression of the beauty that you come to see within yourself.
This mantra om mani padme hum has a whole philosophy within it. Start with hum, the last word, and the first will arise on its own accord. And when your inner being is filled with the sound of silence, you will also have the beautiful experience of seeing a lotus with a diamond in the early morning sun. The diamond is radiating. The lotus is so soft, so feminine, so delicate -- it has no comparison in any other flower.
It became so important to the mystics... you must have seen Gautam Buddha's statues sitting on a lotus. They are showing symbolically that he has reached the ultimate; his own inner lotus has flowered. And not only the lotus has flowered, the diamond hidden behind it, inside it... as it opens its petals, you find a Kohinoor. The diamond has a quality -- that's why it has been chosen. It is symbolic of eternity. The diamond is for ever, it knows no death; it is immortal. The experience is beautiful and eternal.
But unfortunately, Tibet has fallen into a darkness. Its monasteries have been closed, its seekers of truth
|
|
|