Mantra

The third Infinity Jukebox button brings you to the Tibetan rendering of the 'Oh Mani Padme Hum' mantra. This mantra is scrawled all over Tibet, like the countryside is one big box car. Or at least it was, before the Chinese overlords started setting up subtle and not-so-subtle incentives for millions of ethnic Chinese to carpetbag into Tibet.

The loose rendering of the phrase in English is "the jewel is in the lotus", although when you look at the sources, each word in the phrase has almost endless elaboration. What you would expect from a good mantra! 

The stories about famous yogis have them setting their apprentices tasks like going to a famous temple and repeating a mantra 200,000 times. At least Roger is just setting us the task of looking at the mantra and contemplating it at leisure.

Until we go to the last Infinity Jukebox button, I will leave you to contemplate your mantra, and the saying that the Comtese de Zazeenia set for Casbah Kelly, as filtered through Fatma Tajhem (see Moon Over Morocco).