Assimilation

A Few Introductory Prayers

This morning, while going about tidying my apartment, I took it on myself to light a candle.

To do this, it was necessary to walk up to a closet in an upstairs room to procure a box of matches.

As I entered this closet in the darkness, a chant I learned with the Lakeside Sangha came to mind.

Lighting the candle, I realized that there was in it a single word of magnificent significance — “Buddha.”

This word means, literally, “to awake,” or “awakened one.”

As I have been practicing Catholicism, the chant is technically contrary to my aspiration to “make the path straight” and align myself to one particular tradition.

Except it isn’t. “Jesus” or “Y’shua,” means “to rescue, deliver, or save.”

Maybe also “to awaken.”

I placed the word “Jesus” in the chant instead and, as my mind’s ear still heard the also-disyllabic word “Buddha,” the rest of the chant took on an even more marvelous order than the one it already did.

Chant is an important practice for me which I do not practice often enough.

Breathing very deeply into my belly, my elongated bass intonations open my mind and relax my body, caressing anxiety into a state more at peace with the world.

And, after chanting my four-fold mantra thrice, I then intoned thrice a chant from the Vedic tradition (also consonant with Christian thought) OM SHANTI SHANTI SHANTI — oh eternal Being, source of all reality, peace, peace, peace.

Lead us from the Unreal to the Real

Lead us from Darkness Unto Light

Lead us from Death to Immortality

OM Peace, Peace, Peace

Couching my soul in the marriage of these traditions creates for me a kaleidoscopic consciousness that brings different levels and modes of symbolic knowledge into divine harmony.

I hope these thoughts may be of use to you in your day.

With much affection and acceptance, I am 


Yours, Appropriately, 

Aaron