Sangye Menla: My Patron Deity

I was surfing Tumblr for Sangye Menla and I came up with no results. I searched for “Medicine Buddha” and there were so many entries. A great deal of those entries were pictures, type or phonetic versions of his heart mantra. I am very familiar with his mantra.   I came across it six years ago at the beginning of my venture into Buddhism.  I had been doing some pathworking spiritually and had come across the Medicine Buddha and his heart mantra really spoke to me. Through him H.H. the 16^th Karmapa’s dream flag and into Kagyu Buddhism, but that’s another story.

 I read the phonetic spelling of his mantra and the cadence was just there. I can’t explain it but much later, after I felt very close to his mantra I found an audio version of it. I was afraid to listen to it, afraid I was wrong. I listened anyway, I wanted to do it properly and found that I was right. I was uplifted and felt even more connected to him and the mantra. My working with Sangye Menla was really just chanting and trying to understand his mantra. It was early in my pathworking and I was trying to fit it into a “new age” or “pagan” spiritual mindset. It wasn’t working and I was getting a bit frustrated. Buddhism, as a philosophy, can fit easily into any organized religion. It’s a mindset of giving and sacrifice. I was exploring this, but my mind was locked, limited and I didn’t really know that at the time. It’s only in retrospect that I can identify these moments.

Tayata
Om Bekandze Bekandze
Maha Bekandze
Radza Samudgate Soha

I put everything away and lived simply in this mantra. I have seen many translations of it but this is the one that found me and how I came to understand it.

Mantra Meaning:

Tayatha: It is like this (setting intention)

Om: The complete sound of the universe

Beckandze: Request for healing

Beckandze: Request for healing

Maha Beckandze: Request for great healing

Radza: I bow to the King of Lapis Lazuli, great healer

Samungate: lead me to enlightenment

Soha: so mote it be

It was the setting of intention that got me. What is my intention? At the time the tiniest of voices from the middle of my heart said it was selfish, that what I was really after was healing for myself. My health was bad and getting worse. I had an abscess in the root of my eye-tooth but when I went to have the tooth pulled it was gone. It settled in the sac around my heart and caused paricarditus. I was passing out and I was weak and even though I had grown up with illness and limitation this was rock bottom it seemed. I was praying for only myself. I realized this and I chose to listen to that little voice and expand my perspective so I could find my intent, my true intent. As I thought about myself and how sick I was I realized that I was where I was because I procrastinated out of fear. I realized that my mind was my limitation. I thought back to my experience of floating in nothingness and the intent of my life and understood. My mindset caused emotion which lead to physical action. Asking for physical healing wouldn’t help me. I was asking Buddha to heal me in a way which would lead me to more suffering and sickness. I understood.

So I focused on my intention and being as I chanted this mantra. I centered myself (OM) I asked for physical healing for everyone (beckandze) I asked for emotional healing for everyone (beckandze) I asked for healing of the mind for everyone, to break through that blockage (maha beckandze) I was humble before the Buddha, great healer (radza) I asked to be his disciple, to help with healing (Samungate) So let it be (So ha)

From that moment on when I chanted the Medicine Buddha mantra (or any other that I would learn) from the mindset of Universal good. I understood that without the negative circumstance of my health I wouldn’t have been motivated to look for better. I began to chant it with the intention of freeing every sentient being through that same mental shift.  Putting your intention out into the Universe through a higher power is seen as prayer no matter which religious context you put it in. I was praying to Sangye Menla and as I did so I left it in his hands. May they be healed. May they meet their challenge and find their way through. May they know peace that comes from within, from the source which cannot be taken by anyone, by any circumstance. So ha! I prayed and prayed, sometimes for an entire day I would set my intention to serve others. My path lead to Kagyu Buddhism and to studying under Lama Norlha Rinpoche in New York. That is also another story, but my working with the Medicine Buddha would continue. He would lead me to Chenrezig, the Buddha of compassion.  His mantra, Om Mani Padme Hum (pronounced by Tibetans as: Om Mani Peme Hung) would lead me to a complete centering.  He would lead me.

I still chant his mantra. I still pray for the great healing of the world. I pray that we all have our mental walls lifted to show us we had nothing to fear, we were all alike all along; we’re all connected. That always leads me back to Chenrezig and compassion. That was my lesson at this time. I don’t ask Sangye Menla to heal me, physically. I don’t ask for the instruments of my lessons to be lifted. I walk forward and meet my challenges with my arms open wide…. When I don’t have my head in my rear while learning those lessons that is.

Expand your mind. Or as I told my nephew; Pan your perspective back until it’s your choice then choose what you want. We are all responsible for ourselves, that means my physical impact on this world and people, the emotional state I allow myself to be consumed in for the atmosphere it creates, my mindset and intent for they shape my impact here by setting the context of my emotional states and through that my physical actions. And I keep coming back to this quote from the Buddha “The thought manifests as the word; the word manifests as the deed; the deed develops into habit; and habit hardens into character. So watch the thought and its ways with care, and let it spring from love born out of concern for all beings.” I understand this now, in my limited way, and I thank the Medicine Buddha for clearing the cobwebs from my mind and helping me to unfold it.

Namaste