Clearly hopelessness has at least as much to do with what we bring to life as it does with what life brings to us... The challenge of hopelessness is the challenge to re-enter the human race, to take our part in it knowing that it is as much our responsibility to shape life as it is for life to shape us...Hopelessness calls us beyond quitting what we cannot quit, to learn how to do what we have been born to do. Even if this means doing one thing while waiting to do another.
Some time ago, I was at a concert and listening to the orchestra beginning to tune up. It was the most discordant sound I've ever heard. Each instrument was playing in its own way, in total disharmony. Then the oboe, a quiet little instrument, began to play and all the other instruments turned in on its note. And gradually, all the disharmony began to calm down. Then there was silence, and the concert began. It seems to me that the mantra is very much like that little oboe. In meditation, the mantra brings all the parts of our being, one by one, bit by bit, into harmony. And when we are in harmony, we are the music of God.