As you recite your mantra continuously try and recognize all outer sounds as mantra. Focus your mind just on this as you continue to recite the mantra. Then as you habituate to that, all the movement of your breath and all external perceived sounds become like a natural sound re-sounding of the mantra. When you hear all sounds as mantra, you will not engage in grasping at thoughts about those sounds. Then when you do not grasp at sounds, not even the most subtle thoughts of attachment and aversion can tie you down.
Normally when a thought arises in our mind we instantly react and we say something, or we hear something and then we cling, grasp at these thoughts that combine or conflate words and meaning, so when you do not grasp at these words then you recognize that these words are like illusions, and then even though words are being said there’s no grasping. That does not mean, however, that when you hear something that you just don’t even understand anything, that you don’t perceive it like an animal. You hear it and you know it but there is no grasping. You see it all as illusory and so that is the empty nature of sound.
The Buddha had said that all sounds are empty by nature. So, when you do not grasp at sound, then the sounds that you hear will not place a karmic imprint into your mind. So then as all sounds become the mantra and you keep reciting the mantra in your mind and verbally, then instead of placing further imprints into your mind, actually, the mantra purifies the mind of all these imprints. When you visualize the form as the deity and there’s no grasping at form, then the physical are purified and when there is no grasping at speech, then the speech obscurations are purified, and when there is no grasping at sights or sounds then the mind remains naturally pure.
~ Garchen Rinpoche
Michael Gregory 💎🌹