A Passage for February

To tie into Jan’s lovely blog post from last week, we thought that Shankara’s passage, "Thy Holy Name", would be an appropriate choice for this month’s passage. In Jan’s post, he writes about singing mantrams for the elderly and those close to death. This passage deals directly with this ideal: the prayer that the last thing we do be to repeat the mantram. Easwaran made repetition of the mantram the second point in his eight point program of passage meditation, and tells us that the more we remember to repeat the mantram in our daily lives when things are going well, the more likely we will be to remember to call on it when we need it most.

Join us this month in memorizing (it’s nice and short!) or adding into your passage rotation "Thy Holy Name", and may it inspire us to increase our collective mantram use! As always, we love to hear from you. What are your thoughts about how this passage inspires you?

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Thy Holy Name – Shankara

I do not ask Thee, Mother,
Riches, good fortune or salvation;
I seek no happiness, no knowledge.
This is my only prayer to Thee:
That as the breath of my life forsakes me,
I may chant thy holy name.