Om Mani Padme Hum

Today, we are reflecting on the wild adventure we took on last year.  It seems like years since we were hiking in Nepal and at the same time seems too fresh in our minds to have been a year ago already.  As we ventured deeper into the Annapurna Circuit, we started to really feel the spirituality created by the mystique of the Himalayas and the deeply ingrained daily rituals of the people that live in the many small towns along the way.  I remember reading on our map all the markings for ‘mani wall.’  We soon learned that the trek is dotted with these. Mani walls are spiritual sites with stacks of rocks engraved with mantras or walls containing the prayer wheels that I associate immediately with Nepal.  We came to love seeing the prayer wheels.  We learned that when you give them a spin, it sends the prayers rolled neatly on scrolls inside the wheels into the world on the wind.  

One of the most common mantras on the prayer wheels is, “Om mani padme hum.”  It’s tough to translate- it roughly means, “Praise the jewel in the lotus.”  It’s about deep transformation.  Each person has the potential for wisdom and enlightenment in their nature.  The lotus grows from the mud into a beautiful flower.  That potential was contained within from the beginning- it just needed to be realized much like the path to seeking a higher purpose.

This mantra is written all over.  It’s on the prayer wheels.  It’s chanted in the villages.  It was common for shops to be playing different recorded versions of this mantra on repeat all day long.  The people live this mantra.  We even caught ourselves humming it frequently.  It got stuck in our heads for days.  It was humbling to see all the prayer wheels and colorful prayer flags and take in the beauty of the villages and mountains around us all the while contemplating, “Om mani padme hum.”