Mantras have an important place in meditation. But the idea has become somewhat prevalent in the West, and in the East to some extent, that the simple repetition of a mantra will eventually cause enlightenment
Initially the student, in some traditions, is given a mantra, a particular word of power to focus on. While thoughts are cascading through your mind during meditation, you should be absorbed in the repetition of a mantra.
Start a meditation session by repeating a mantra, perhaps, "Aum", which is the most powerful of all mantras. Then, after repeating the mantra perhaps a dozen times, focus on a yantra.
Like the practice of breath control, meditation on the forms of God, repetition of mantras, food restrictions, etc., are but aids for rendering the mind quiescent.
It is not a good idea to continually repeat a mantra during meditation. Repeating a mantra throughout your mediation causes you to fixate on a specific level of consciousness.
The practice is enlightenment. Some people find this idea not to their liking. They want to get enlightenment in a flash. This way they become attached to something that doesn't exist. Enlightenment isn't a thing you get.
The West can teach the East how to get a living, but the East must eventually be asked to show the West how to live.
Chanting a mantra at the beginning of your meditation helps you clear the mind and takes you deep within the self. Chanting a mantra at the end of meditation helps you seal the meditation. It helps you bring the awareness of the meditation down into your daily life.
The highest type of meditation is done in silence. In silence there are no mantras. Mantras are not essential, but they can be very helpful.
I think a mantra I always told myself is, "No matter how many times somebody pitches the ball at you, if you swing every time, eventually one of them is going to connect." Being yourself and persistence are two things that became my daily mantras, I suppose.
The word mantra comes from two Sanskrit words man, ("to think") and tra ("tool'). So the literal translation is "a tool of thought." And that's how mantras are used in Buddhist and Hindu practices, as tools that clear your mind of distractions. Because when you focus on repeating that mantra over and over again, soon the noise will die down and all you will hear is your inner voice.
Meditation is not something restricted to times of formal seated meditation; it is most fundamentally an attitude of being-a resting in and as being. Once you get the feel of it, you will be able to tune into it more and more often during your daily life. Eventually, in the state of liberation, meditation will simply become your natural condition.
Because immigrants have always been particularly prone to repetition - it's something to do with that experience of moving from West to East or East to West or from island to island. Even when you arrive, you're still going back and forth; your children are going round and round. There's no proper term for it - original sin seems too harsh; maybe original trauma would be better.
I have become a queer mixture of the East and the West, out of place everywhere, at home nowhere.
As a cultural product of both 'East' and 'West', I do not believe there is a fundamental basis for a clash of civilisations, or that the West is the cause of all problems.
I happen to think that as the Ukraine moves to the West, towards the E.U., eventually towards NATO, it will pave the way also for Russia moving towards the West. Because it will become a logical extension of the same process, and it will eliminate any imperial ambitions.
I think there's beauty in repetition. And that's part of my culture and African culture as well: repeated things, mantra. It's spiritual, it's meditation, it's Buddhism, it's praying, it's all these things.