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Track Running Order

Lapis Blue

These songs have developed gradually over the past 10 years and each one in its own way has been of great significance for me. They are all based on powerful healing mantras. The four spiritual traditions from which they arise are those I have immersed myself in throughout my life.

In essence these mantras have been some of the most important messengers for the healing of my own heart. A good friend after listening to this music wrote, “I realize, over and over and over, that it is the music of the heart which opens the heart.” May they also be a healing blessing to the ears of your heart.

1. Bhairava

Bhairava Bhairava Bhairava, Om Shri Bhairava Namaha. Bhairava is an aspect of Lord Shiva symbolising Consciousness, the underlying intelligence behind all of creation; the universal principle that allows us to know and experience life. Literally the name means the Reality that frees us from fear. The Vigyana Bhairava Tantra, an ancient text from Kashmir, offers 112 ways to “open the invisible door of consciousness.”

Popularised in the book Zen Flesh Zen Bones by Nyogen Sensaki and Paul Reps these methods were my first introduction to spiritual practice as a youth. They have been with me ever since. In the Vigyana Bhairava Tantra, whoever constantly repeats the word Bhairava becomes one with Shiva.

2. Medicine Buddha Mantra

Tayahatha Om. Bekendzay Bekendzay Maha Bekendzay Randza Samugate. The short form of the mantra with the Tibetanised pronunciation. Possible translation: “In this way: Healer! Healer! Great Healer! Infinite Source of Healing! So be it”. The Medicine Buddha has been a concentration practice for over thirty years. In terms of healing for others this is invariably the mantra that first comes into my awareness.

3. Allaha Ruhau    

Allaha Ruhau.  From the Aramaic language as spoken by Jesus literally meaning “God is Breath”. It can easily be said that the path of spiritual development is also the path of breath development. As my breath has changed over the years so has my life – for the better.

4. Haymanutkhi Ahaytkhi       

Haymanutkhi Ahaytkhi. Words attributed to Jesus in the Aramaic language. The usual translation is Your Faith has made you whole or your faith has healed you. Directly from the Aramaic it could be rendered “Your own energized trust has opened the door for healing life force to flow through your whole being.” For me this is the key to all healing.

5. Om Shri Bhairava Namaha

Om Shri Bhairava Namaha. Bhairavi Bhairava, Shakti Shiva Shakti. Om.

Bhairavi and Bhairava. Goddess and God. Shakti symbolizes cosmic energy out of which has arisen the whole of creation and Shiva symbolises the underlying intelligence underlying all of creation. Only when Shiva and Shakti combine can the life of movement and creation arise.

6. Om Triambakam

Om triambakam yajamahe sugandhim pushtivardanam urvaukamiva bhandanat mrityor mukshiya mamritat. This is known as the Maha Mritunjaya Mantra, the great healing mantra, invoking the healing power of Lord Shiva. It can be understood as: OM. We worship and adore you, O Three-Eyed One, O Shiva. You are sweet gladness, the fragrance of life, you nourish us, restores our health, and cause us to thrive. As, in due time, the stem of the cucumber weakens and the gourd is freed from the vine, so free us from attachment and death, and do not withhold immortality.

7. Crescent and Heart Zikr   

la illah il’allah hu. Zikr is a Sufi practice to realise the moment to moment remembrance of the One Being that can be translated as “There is no Reality except Unity.” Having an additional concentration in the zikr feeling the crescent moon in the heart among other things brings one calmness and peace and increases the light from within.

8. Ishq Allah Ma’abud Lillah 

Ishq Allah Ma’abud Lillah. Words in Arabic. A translation that Murshid Samuel Lewis, the American Sufi mystic, gave is “God is all aspects of Love.” Murshid also wrote something that springs to mind that made a deep impression on me. “This is to be repeated until learned: What the heart gives it has, what the heart keeps it loses.”

9. La Wassellatee 

La wassellatee illah anta ya Rassoullillah. Words in Arabic with the translation “No helper except only you, O Prophet” given by the Sufi mystic Hazrat Inayat Khan as a remedy to alleviate any troubles in worldly affairs, sorrowful situations and for those who may be miserable for any reason. As Inayat Khan said through this practice “The reciter can experience unexpected results that could never have been imagined.”

10. Medicine Buddha Dharani 

Namo bhagavate bhaisajyaguru-vaidurya prabha-rajaya tathagataya arhate samyak-sambuddhaya tadyatha. Om bhaisajye bhaisajye bhaisajya samudgate svaha. In the mid 1980s a Buddhist Monk gave me a copy of the Sutra on the Merits of the Fundamental Vows of the Lapis Lazuli Radiance Tathagata. Thus began my exploration of this Buddha’s “realm of Pure Lapis Lazuli.”

This longer form of the Medicine Buddha mantra in the original Sanskrit can be translated as: Master of Healing, the Lapis Lazuli Radiance Tathagata. Arhat, Perfectly Enlightened One, Perfect in Mind and Deed. Well Gone. One who knows the World. Unsurpassed Being. Tamer of Passions. Teacher of Devas and human beings. Buddha and Lord.

According to the Sutra simply hearing the names of the Medicine Buddha can be enough to heal us at the deepest and most profound level.

All voices, acoustic and electric guitars, lavta, bass guitar, harmonica, harmonium, tanpura, drums, bells, gongs and percussion by Philip O’Donohoe.

Recorded at Conversion Studios, Milton on Stour, Dorset. Summer 2015.

Engineered with additional production by Josh Parker.

Produced by Philip O’Donohoe.

Cover design and artwork by Emily Zarb.