How does Mantra meditation work?
Mantras are rather mysterious. They are said to be “sound symbols”, sounds that in some way correspond to and evoke the spiritual forces that can be represented in visual form as Tara, Avalokiteshvara, etc. We can easily see how an image of a particular figure can have symbolic value, but quite how a sound does this it is not possible to explain rationally. Perhaps it’s best to think of mantras as being a cross between poetry and magical incantations. Many mantras don’t make any real, rational, sense, even in Sanskrit, and so they can’t really be translated in the same way that a normal sentence can. The mantra of Tara, for example, Om tare tuttare ture svaha, is a play on her name, which means “savioress” or “star” or “she who ferries across.” But it doesn’t make any kind of statement about Tara, beyond giving us some rather evocative sounds. Mantras often contain syllables like Om, Ah, and Hum (approximately pronounced hoong), which have no literal meaning whatsoever. There are vario
