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Updated: May 31, 2025
He solaced his soul by murmuring the pious invocation which all pilgrims to the Sacred Mount have perpetually on their lips "Om mane padme om!"
Men who repeat very frequently and devotedly 'Om mani padme houm, escape falling after death into the six classes of animate creatures, corresponding to the six syllables of the formula, and obtain the plenitude of being, by their absorption into the eternal and universal soul of Buddha." One traveller only I have been able to find who mentions the sentence as I have done.
Mystic that he was, he found sure comfort in pious meditations. Present pains of body and mind vanished as with half-shut eyes he drifted into the chill realm where he hearkened to chants of priests, the tinkling of the temple bells, the fervent response of hundreds of pilgrims as meek as himself "Om mane padme om!"
Indeed, it reminded me of the Tibetan lamasseries about Tachienlu, and it is true that thousands of Tibetans find their way hither each spring, and the hillsides reëcho their mystic spell, "Om mani padme hum," only less often than the Chinese, "Omi to fo."
As will be seen by the foregoing extract from M. Klaproth's explanation, the mystic sentence, instead of being as I have represented it, is in reality, "Om mani padme houm," or, in a form of spelling more English, if not more intelligible, "Om muni pudmay hoom," and the meaning, supposing its derivation from the Sanscrit to be beyond doubt, would, as therein translated, be, "Oh the jewel in the Lotus, Amen!"
We were so exhausted and wet that when near the evening we came to an enormous cliff, on the rocky face of which a patient Lama sculptor had engraved in huge letters the characters, Omne mani padme hun, we halted. The gorge was very narrow here.
The larger Lamaseries support one or more Lama sculptors, who travel to the most inaccessible spots in the district, in order to carve on cliffs, rocks, stones, or on pieces of horn, the everlasting inscription, "Omne mani padme hun," which one sees all over the country.
These six classes of beings correspond to the syllables of the formula, 'Om mani padme houm. Living beings by continual transformations, and according to their merit or demerit, pass about in these six classes until they have attained the apex of perfection, when they are absorbed and lost in the grand essence of Buddha.
I divert the idolatry from human worshippers to an unconscious stream which must surely be meritorious." Then I thought of the mystic sentence, "Aum, mani, padme, hum." "What a pity it is," I cried, "I couldn't make them a phonograph to repeat their mantra! If I could, they might fulfil all their religious duties together by machinery!" Hilda reflected a second.
Then Hilda rose and began walking slowly round the big drum in the nave, saying aloud at each step, in a sort of monotonous chant, like a priest intoning, the four mystic words, "Aum, mani, padme, hum," "Aum, mani, padme, hum," many times over. We repeated the sacred formula after her, as if we had always been brought up to it. I noticed that Hilda walked the way of the sun.
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