Get Ready, Rama’s Coming! Diwali Mantras
Let the lamps guide Rama to your home
Rama’s homecoming
Diwali occurs on Wednesday 26th October. It signifies Rama’s homecoming and popularly celebrated through the celebration of light and its ability to lead us through the darkness.
Whilst its now a hugely commercialised festival in India and worldwide, it is important to remember it as a powerful time for mantra sadhana.
The mantras for Diwali
The advised method of tapping into the power is to write Rama Nama. Click here for a prior article.
Alternatives include the Vishnu Sahasranama – a stotra (hymn) to Vishnu, extolling Him through his most popular 1,000 names. One may write a treatise on the Vishnu Sahasranama alone, but its power stems from its Divine origin (composed by Veda Vyasa). It was taught to Bhishma, the great Grandfather of the epic Mahabharata, who revealed it to the world in the presence of Sri Krishna, Avatar of Vishnu. Click here to hear it.
Kick off the Financial New Year with a flying start!
Finally, some Hindus also pray to Lakshmi, the Goddess of Wealth. The reason is that in some calendars, Diwali also coincides with the financial new year. Hence, old accounts are closed and a new year of business begins post Diwali.
Click here for the details of the Shreem Mantra, and click here to read about the Kanagadhara chant of Adi Shankarcharya to Lakshmi.
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Lakshmi’s Compassion Manifests as Golden Rain!
Channel the Power of Lakshmi through your life with the Kanagadhara chant
Are you lacking something?
There are times when our financial situation struggles to meet our needs. For the vast majority of the readership living in the Western World, this is not an immediate problem – but there are those who do need help.
For such needs, I would greatly recommend the Kanagadhara Stotra, a powerful hymn spontaneously composed by the Adi Shankaracharya himself to plead with the Goddess Lakshmi herself to help those in need.
The Story of Golden Rain
The story is very moving. The Adi Shankaracharya comes to the house of a poor widow when begging for biksha (alms). The widow is embarrassed that she has nothing for the acharya so gives him the only thing she has – a gooseberry from the tree outside her house.
The Shankarcharya is moved by this; despite her extreme poverty she finds it within her heart to give him everything she had. He spontaneously composes a rousing hymn to Lakshmi, pleading the Goddess to take pity on her daughter and shower her with blessings. As the great acharya prays, the Goddess herself appears, again moved by his pleading. The result is a shower of gold: the gooseberry tree outside the widow’s house rains gold gooseberries!
Give to receive
Click here to find the YouTube clip of the stotra sung by the great MS Subbulakshmi by clicking here.
Chant or listen to this everyday to see your financial situation dramatically improve!
Once your have benefited from it, don’t stop – keep going! Why? Because there are always those less fortunate than you; ‘paying it forward’ has untold benefits in terms of good karma.
A perfect complement is the Shreem mantra – see my prior posts for further details.
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Get Ahead: Mantras for Investment Banking Professionals
A difficult time
Bankers face a difficult time at the moment. The global economy is under pressure and world is against them!
Banking, in the public’s eyes, has grown into a culture of distrustful, deceitful behaviour based around a never-ending thirst for greed and power. Yet it has also been the backbone of global trade and attracted the best and brightest individuals to strive to better themselves and test their limits. In short we need bankers! But not the negative associations.
This post is not intended to be party to playing the blame game, but will attempt to be part of the solution: to encourage the simultaneous development of character along with ability.
So how can we derive the positive benefits without the negatives?
The solution is surprisingly simple! Pray to Maha Lakshmi!
But isnt Lakshmi the Goddess of Wealth? Surely, bankers are all already rich!
The downturn has undoubtedly highlighted that a culture of excess is prevalent in banking. But wealth should not be equated to just money and greed. The abundance one attracts through the Divine is much greater than just the material kind: Lakshmi is also the Goddess of Virtue and wealth of Character!
More than Money
There are 16 kinds of wealth one can attract through praising the Divine. They are enumerated in a prior post (click here to see it), but they include: Courage and Strength, Morality and Ethics and Higher thinking.
The mantras
The wisdom locked in ancient mantras is relevant even in today’s complex world. Here are a set of mantras that may prove helpful to banking professionals at a time of great uncertainty and difficulty:
- Ganesha Gayatri – click here. For foresight to aid us in understanding the longer term repercussions of our actions than the short term effects.
- Lakshmi Gayatri – click here, or simply Shreem. Invoke Lakshmi to grant you the character required to acquire and sustain wealth.
- Narayana Gayatri, or simply: Rama. Why praise Vishnu as Narayana or Rama too? In the opening verses of the Vishnu Sahasranama, Vishnu is extolled as the King of Dharma (righteous conduct and behaviour). Such valour and knowledge of what’s right and wrong is a natural complement and pre-requisite to wealth accumulation. In his incarnation as Rama, he established a powerful precedent of how the ideal King (or any person of significant responsibility) should behave – in virtually every test. Understanding this by meditating on the name of Rama is therefore also an excellent method of character development.
From Money to Moksha: The 16 types of wealth
Lakshmi - the provider of 16 types of wealth
The Goddess of Wealth: provider of everything you need!
For most, Lakshmi is associated with Goddess of Wealth, Money, Prosperity and material abundance in general. However, Her remit stretches far beyond!
A wealth of character, culture and knowledge
There are 8 forms of Lakshmi (I will not go through them but provide a link – click here) and 16 types of wealth that Lakshmi is associated with.
There are various lists, but the underlying point is the same – a highly diverse set of virtues, possessions and values to make one truly rich in every sense of the word! In the Shri Sukta – a Vedic hymn to Lakshmi, as Shri (as the embodiment of auspiciousness or the revered one), She is said to provide Moksha itself (liberation from rebirth).
- Fame
- Knowledge
- Courage and strength
- Victory
- Children
- Valour
- Gold, precious stones, valuables
- Grains
- Happiness
- Bliss
- Intelligence
- Beauty
- Higher goals, thinking and meditative states
- Morality and ethics
- Health
- Long life
The mantras for Lakshmi:
I have addressed the following mantras in prior posts:
Find links to the audio files online by clicking here.
A deeper understanding…
As characteristic of all spiritual paths, there is always a subtler dimension to all forms of worship – even those than initially appear shallow and selfish. By continuing to chant the mantra, envisioning the very deity through the mantra and accepting the deity as your Guru (spiritual teacher), one can attain the highest levels of spirituality.
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Today is Friday! T.D.I.F!!
Thank God its Friday! Or as I like to say - Thank Devi Its Friday! (TDIF!)
Today is Friday!! What does Friday mean to you?
The end of the week is finally here! What does Friday mean to you? No more work (for some of us!)? Time with the family? A weekend getaway?
I personally love Friday. It is a prime day for Devi Worship. Moreover, during Navaratri, our prayers are amplified by magnitudes we cannot comprehend – don’t miss out on this opportunity! – T.D.I.F. (Thank Devi It’s Friday!)
How to Pray:
Prior posts have covered a multitude of mantras and sadhanas for all but today’s focus is Lakshmi.
Fridays are incredibly auspicious for Lakshmi, the Goddess of Abundance and Wealth. I would greatly recommend the following courses of action – whether you need to fix something lacking in your life, out of pure devotion or as part of a larger Navaratri routine, these two technologies are incredibly effective at pushing you toward your goals:
See my associated posts by clicking on the links above. I would also highlight my articles on how to make your prayers heard even faster – click here to see my post on Super-charging your ability to attract abundance.
Don’t miss the incredible opportunity that is Navaratri!
The Shreem Mantra
Transliteration:
“Shreem“
(Semi-literal) Translation:
None. Shreem is a Bija mantra.
Purpose:
- Attraction of wealth
- Attraction of abundance.
- Dr. Pillai, formerly Dattatreya Sivababa, has some excellent YouTube videos on the topic.
- You can take his video introductions as an effective upadesh (ie Guru initiation into the mantra).
The Original Mantra: the Pranava - OM
Swami Mantra Yogi 