The "Dharma Gaia Mantra" is a ten-breath guided meditation that has become the centerpiece of my practice, and the seed of the Dharma Gaia Circle I hope, in the coming year, to create. Divided into three parts, here it is:
1. Reclaiming the Present Moment: Breathe, Observe, Let Go.
2. Reclaiming the Day: Be Well, Do Good Work, Keep in Touch. [with gratitude to Garrison Keillor]
3. Reaffirming our Life Agenda: Learn Gaia, Teach Gaia, Heal Gaia, Create Gaia.
So where and how did this formula for practice originate?
Some time around 1997-1999 (I forget exactly when), after I had become a disciple of the Vietnamese Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh, and had read many of his books and immersed myself in his wise and practical distillation of Buddhist teachings, I started mulling over ways I could impart his wisdom to my students at Hampton University, a historically black institution in southeastern Virginia. The vast majority of my students were devout Christians, along with a few Muslims, who might be quickly alienated if I introduced them explicitly to Buddhist teachings. So I started developing techniques to teach Buddhism without the "B" word--that is to translate the wise and practical teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh into a language free of religious or cultural references to Buddhism. And so I started working on a set of "axioms for clearing the mind" as a sort of digest of Thich Nhat Hanh's teachings. After several tries, here are the axioms I came up with:
1. The present is all there is; the past is gone, and the future hasn't happened yet.[An essential teaching, often revisited by Thich Nhat Hanh]
2. That that is, is. [originally, a parodic line from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night that encourages us to accept what we cannot change and to let go of the past subjunctive]
3. Nothing you've done, suffered, or failed to do in the past has any necessary effect on what you choose to do in the present moment. [This helps to overcome self-doubt, which often plagues young people in college classes]
4. There are only two states of mind: mindful and distracted.
5. Therefore, there are only two ways of doing anything: mindfully ("doing it in order to do it") or distractedly ("doing it in order to get it done").
6. Everyone gets distracted, all the time.
7. Therefore we all need some useful techniques for moving from distraction to mindfulness.
8. Here is one such technique. Try it to see if it works. If not, improvise.
My "technique," of course, is the Mantra, which I then explicated in brief on a handout I gave them at the start of every semester, entitled "Axioms for Clearing the Mind," and aimed toward college students.
This handout was so popular that some students even slid it into the transparent envelope on the front of their three-ring notebooks, so they could refer to it as needed. And no one knew or cared that these teachings were "Buddhist."
Since then, this mantra has repeatedly demonstrated its worth in my own practice. As I explored its implications, I came to see how it reflected all the essential Buddhist teachings, as I elaborate in my "Dharma Gaia Manifesto" posted here entitled "Dharma Gaia: Spiritual Practice for a Finite Planet."
As time has passed, I have developed a variety of techniques for using the Mantra in my practice. These include the following short and long variants:
I. The Three-breath Practice: On three long breaths, combine the following injunctions:
Inbreath="Breathe, Observe, Let Go."
Pause="Be well, Do Good Work, Keep in Touch
Outbreath="Learn, Teach, Heal, Create"
Pause: "Abide..."
II. The Thirty-Breath Practice:
1. Contemplate (the importance of)...breathing, observing, letting go...
2. Practice (in the present moment)...breathing, observing, letting go...
3. Vow (for the rest of your life)...to breathe, ...to observe, ...to let go...
III. The 108-breath practice (best used with a Mala). For this one, you add the injunction "abide" to the first two triads--e.g. "Breathe... Observe...Let Go...Abide... and you associate these with the four Brahma-Viharas or immeasurables: Benevolence, Compassion, Joy, Equanimity. So rather than 10 breaths, you have a total of 12 breaths for each repetition of the mantra. These, repeated 9 times, equal 108--the number of beads on the mala, and a sacred number in Hindu and Buddhist traditions.
I have personally found this mantra to be immensely useful at stabilizing my mind and clarifying my purpose in life, whenever I slip into any kind of "blue funk." I hope that anyone who reads this will likewise find it useful. But remember: mantras are like training wheels. They can be discarded when you no longer need them to support your practice.
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