om
namah shivaya gurave
sachidananda murtaye
nishprapanchaya shantaya
niralambhaya tejase
So now that we know the experience of chanting in the process itself can be enough, just for fun let’s dive into the Sanskrit.
om – Many have defined ‘om’ as “the primordial sound of the universe”. But what does that mean? First, the symbol of Om that we are all familiar with is actually the devanagari script of the Sanskrit letters of the sound om. The letter ‘o’ is actually a contraction of the ‘a’ and ‘u’. So spelled out it would be a-u-m, the symbol being the combination of those 3 letters. The whole Sanskrit alphabet is a materialization of the creation of sound as it emanates from us. The breath coming up from the lungs, vibrating within the throat from the vocal chords and then more precise articulation as it moves from the back to the front of the mouth. Vowels come first as they are created just in the throat without involvement of the tongue, lips or teeth. Then consonants are made when they are involved. The sounds of each letter are composed as breath moves against the obstructions occur by a contracting throat, lilting and hammering tongue, teeth and lips.
Let’s look at the separate sounds themselves. ‘A’ – think “AH” like when your doctor tells you to open your mouth wide. It is the sound that emanates from us with the least amount of obstruction or contraction of the throat, tongue and lips. Move to any other letter and you will see that you have to firm or close down the throat or lips or move the tongue to make the sound. Consonants are made as the throat constricts and the tongue flexes and hits different parts of the mouth or if the lips come together. Check it out yourself. The most closed sound is of the letter M. So if you sound through A-U-M you move through the different constrictions to the full closure of the mouth with sound still emanating in MMMMMM. Then of course there is silence after the closure. So if the universe is made of a range of densities of vibration, the sound om is sounding out the entire universe through the emanation of the full range of sounds from a totally open throat to the closed lips, infinite in its creative potential.
namah – Namah means to bow or bend. The word bow, as in bow your head, has the same roots as “to bend.” When you think of someone bowing to someone else, there is an acknowledgement, a meeting, giving, bending and yielding. The root of the word “salute,” as in salutations, is the same root as for the word solid, to make whole. In this way, namah is to bend, bow or put yourself with someone in order to join with them in that meeting place. This acknowledgement is a recognition of the other, a yielding and allowing their presence so that they can be in the same place as you are – the act of connecting.
shivaya - When I first started chanting ,except for a few words, I knew no Sanskrit. The words I did know I learned from studying the art of India. I knew, or I thought I knew, who Shiva was – at that point he was simply the third god in the Hindu trinity, the destroyer…who comes after the creator, Brahma, and the sustainer, Vishnu. So when I looked at the translation in the chanting book and it said, “he was the auspicious guru who had taken the form of truth, consciousness and bliss,” and he was me, I was stymied. I could either dismiss this or look deeper. The word shiva literally means auspicious, favorable, happy, benevolent. How “auspicious, favorable, happy” can also be the “destroyer” is a very lengthy discussion for another lesson…so stay tuned. But Shiva is much more than these definitions. Shiva is the underlying, essential potential in everything, manifest and unmanifest. When Shiva is paired with Shakti, the energy of creativity, ‘auspicious’ things manifest. A simple example of this would be a river. Shiva is the water, the flow of the water is Shakti. Neither is possible without the other, but engaged in yoga, like your asana, you ,as Shiva are creating auspiciousness. Now go back to the invocation. The unmanifest essence of your desire would be shiva…the act of putting that desire into words would be the power of shakti, the manifestation, the creative power of the essence of things. Shakti is how that power manifests, infinite in form. Shiva is the upasana, Shakti is the avahana, weaving consciousness into myriad manifest forms.
gurave - this word is a form of the word guru which means heavy, weighty, great, large, venerable, respectable. The guru is the one heavy with knowledge. When you choose to learn something, you choose to learn from someone who is heavy with knowledge, the teacher. Think of the words gravitas , or gravity. So who is the teacher, the heavy? While we get knowledge from others, that knowledge does not ‘sink in’ unless there is something in us that recognizes it and receives it. When learning, we are presented with information, facts, concepts, formulas etc. We then take that information and in receiving it, we teach it to ourselves. We may take in some concepts more than others. We are constantly filtering what comes in and in that way everything we learn, we teach ourselves. We all have so many teachers, people we learn from or places we get ideas from. But the process of actual learning and recognition is dependent upon the degree to which we receive this information, hold it, let it sink in and become heavy with it. There is an endless diversity of gurus in our lives who come and go with different information, but ultimately we are always our own guru. And we are all each other’s teachers. You are a teacher, the one heavy with knowledge. What are you heavy in that interests you? What do you teach?
saccidnanada murtaye. First let’s look at murtaye. Murtaye means embodied form. Something that is murtaye is manifest, has shape. Statues of deities are called murtis in Sanskrit. This verse continues to describe Shiva and how the auspicious teacher, through yoking, or yoga, takes form.
sacchidananda – this one word is a compound of three words. The first is
Sat. When you look up ‘sat’ in the sanskrit dictionary it means ‘pure beingness, truth, true essence’. One way to think about the ‘essence of truth’ is like this: When you tell the truth, you speak what actually “is”. The veracity of your words is resonant with the true essential nature of your heart. The same frequency you feel in your heart is on the same frequency as what you are speaking. There is alignment. The farther you get from the truth in your heart, when you speak, the more dissonant the frequency. Like a polygraph test, the true essence does not resonate at the same frequency with what is in your heart and the distinction can be palpable. But this is also why we have different truths. The truth is what resonates with your heart.
cit. This word is often translated simply as ‘consciousness’. But what is consciousness? In the dictionary, consciousness is defined as, “to be capable of conscious awareness, to perceive, to fix the mind upon, be attentive, observe, take notice, to aim at, intend, care for, to be anxious about, to resolve, understand, comprehend, to form an idea in the mind, to be conscious of, to have the right notion of, to appear, be conspicuous, to remember, to have consciousness of, to shine, to treat medically, to cure.” Wow! The word conscious evolved from the root ‘skei’ which means to cut or split. Being conscious of something is to be able to separate it out from the morass of other things or thoughts, to distinguish one thing from another. This is how we learn. In the same way, to focus on something means that out of your field of perception, you are able to pick out one thing and become conscious of it. Out of the field of what do you perceive, what shines, what sparkles, what are you conscious of?
ananda means really delightful or bliss. This whole phrase, sacchidananda murtaye means the embodied ‘murtaye’ bliss of consciousness and truth. The bliss comes from the yoga of your consciousness mind with truth, your heart. Ananda becomes embodied when you make the yoga, when you weave the relationship between your mind, consciousness and your heart, your truth.
More often this phrase is explained that Brahman, Shiva, or your higher or ‘real’ nature, has a triad of qualities ‘truth, consciousness and bliss’ that need to be realized. But rather than thinking there is this ‘higher’ self and an enlightenment, this is the nature of yourself that is happening all the time. When yoked, cit, your minds consciousness, and sat, your hearts desire, bliss is there in the seam. The playful delight that we experience in myriad manifestations is the blissful dance of Shiva, ananda tandava. Bliss happens when your heart’s desire is woven you’re your consciousness.
nishprapanchaya means never not present. Prapancha is to be broken further into pieces. Most translate this idea of omnipresence as a part of us that self so essential to us that it cannot be broken down, taken away or in any way separated from us. Some call it the witness, the atma, Shiva, that is there no matter what, is never not present. But another way to think about it is this. Nisprapancha meaning unable to break down any further, our ‘essentialness’ is more like the fullness that is you, you cannot break apart. Think of all your emotions, every one. They are all always there. It’s not like you could separate them to not be part of you.
shantaya means full of peace. This goes with the nishprapancha part. So first because all the parts, they cannot be broken off, are Shiva are you. Every part of you is always there. The radical acceptance of your fullness, all of it every thought, action, emotion you have ever felt. When you get that it cannot be broken off, and embrace it all as part of you, this is peace.
niralambhaya – Siva, you, are self-supporting. This does not mean you don’t need anybody! What niralambhaya means is that the universe weaves itself out of it’s own power in the same way that your own body creates itself. Like I always say in class, you may have come here to get bigger or more flexible muscles, but it’s not like you pick them out and have them installed – you create them yourself. This is niralambha The very process of your own being creates and sustains itself. You create you.
tejase means the vital essence of illumination. The word tejas means the sharp edge of a knife, the tip of a flame, the glow or rays that emanate from fire. It means the brilliance of light that is emanated from things that shine. Fire emits light and heat – tejas is the light part of fire. You also burn emitting 98.6 degrees, and tejas! Shine on you crazy diamond!
om – I open up to all that is possible
namah shivaya gurave - I honor the benevolent and auspicious teacher
sacchidananda murtaye - whose form is the bliss of heart and mind aligned
nishprapanchaya shantaya - whose essential nature is peaceful in it’s fullness
niralambhaya tejase – who is self-creative and brilliant!
Yoga has so much to offer. It promises to give us the opportunity to recognize our identity, to cultivate our desire and to empower ourselves in the process of engagement. It freely invites us take in how much ever we want to receive. The invocation is a chance to take a moment in your day to recognize your practice of getting better at becoming yourself.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
The Anusara Invocation Part I: The process of Invocation
om
namah shivaya gurave
sacchidananda murtaye
nishprapanchaya shantaya
niralambhaya tejase
Almost every week an Anusara Yoga student from another part of the country comes to my class. When they say they do Anusara, I’m certain of two things: First, they will know the Anusara principles. Every Anusara teacher has to go through rigorous training in the bio-mechanics of the body. Often I know their teachers personally, but I always know how they have been trained. The second thing I am sure of is that every student of Anusara, no matter where they are from, will know the Anusara invocation. We may have just met, but when we sit down together, our voices will blend – we know the same tune, the same words, no matter how badly we may mispronounce Sanskrit. As we chant we are a collective, part of a worldwide kula, a community, held together in the invocation. But at the same time, chanting the invocation is the most personal, private part of a yoga class. So why do we “invoke” and what do the Sanskrit words mean?
To explore the invocation we will look first at the word ‘invoke’. The very words we use to describe our actions contain a fullness of meaning. Words evolved as human beings assigned meaning to them. Exploring etymologies gives us an opportunity to see how meanings evolved. As we look deeper at the words we are able to contemplate our actions and our participation in them becomes meaningful.
So invoke – invocare in Latin. Literally it means to put into voice – in-voc – voc as in vocal, and as in the word for speech in Sanskrit, vac. More simply, it can mean to call. When you call, you are making a request, giving voice to a desire. But with ‘invoke’ there is difference. We wouldn’t use the word invoke when we are talking about phoning a friend, or ordering at a restaurant. We use the word ‘as’ when we mean material objects or specific actions to manifest. We use ‘invoke’ to mean the summoning forth of the power that enlivens or creates those objects or actions. You invoke the power of your breath to create the actions, the power of the law. And you invoke the power of clarification of ideas to understand the meaning of your actions.
In class, before we chant the invocation we pause and ask ourselves to form an intention, what we want to focus on for the class. We go into our hearts to ask how we want this class, this theme, to be meaningful to us. In this way, we can each have a very personal, individual meaning attached to the same theme, the same class. We then take our focus and bring it into our voice, from head and heart through our breath and into sound. The subtle becomes manifest. We put our own personal meaning into our voice as we chant and call for our intention to be manifest.
We use Sanskrit words as a vehicle for the meaning of our own personal intention. We can’t all call out our individual intentions simultaneously, that would be just a cacophony of noise. We chant together the same Sanskrit words with the same tune and our communal chant allows us each to call out what is privately in our hearts. The personal meanings and desires are carried in our shared voices.
The process of the chant: upasana and avahana
In Sanskrit, avahana is one of the words meaning ‘invocation’. Avahana means to send out for and to bring near. Avahana is the expression of your desire and your call for it to be manifest. As with “invoke,” it is you giving voice to your desire and expressing it from the inside out, asking for it to be drawn toward you. It is the same in our voices as it is in our bodies. Going inside to contemplate is like muscular energy, and then we organically express out with the sound of our voice. The drawing in is called upasana. Upasana is what comes before and after avahana. You draw inside to explore the nature of your desire, upasana, in order to express out, avahana. The avahana then presents the opportunity to muscularly draw in again in -- upasana. Yoga is about doing both, fully. Going inside to recognize what’s in your heart is just half of it. Expressing that desire out then creates a circuit, a connection. The sound in the avahana carries the power of your desire. The energy of your desire is turned into sound or speech, in this case in the form of mantra. So to invoke is to ask, to make a desire known, to initiate a conversation with the energy of your desire.
When I was a child I went to church every Sunday. I had absolutely no idea what I was singing at all. Nothing was ever explained, but the act of singing still had a huge effect on me – it still brought me to a place inside where I could feel my own heart. It was the remembrance of this experience that actually led me to yoga in the first place. The very first time I went to a chant, I was actually looking for a place where I could learn to meditate: I wanted to get back to my heart. A friend asked me to go with her to a chant, and it sounded like a good idea because I had always carried with me the memory of the feeling I got when I sang. I had absolutely no idea what I was chanting that night either. But when I first opened my mouth I went so deep inside. After a while, I was so at rest in meditation I couldn’t chant anymore and I meditated for the rest of the chant, about an hour. There is a power in chanting that has nothing to do with the meaning of the words. Just the desire for more meaning can give you an experience of the heart.
Then sometimes we can’t get in touch with what is in our hearts desire at all, and our invocation feels empty and meaningless. We are just going through the motions of speaking the words. In the same way, sometimes we don’t feel like coming to class, but by just showing up, just by chanting the words and going through the motions, whether it be in chanting or in asana practice, something happens and we are brought to a deeper experience of ourselves – we find the meaning is there waiting for us to recognize it. The avahana can come first and bring us to an experience of upasana. In other words, if you really can’t access the feeling of what it is that you desire, the act of expressing yourself, of chanting the invocation, can take you to your heart’s desire.
namah shivaya gurave
sacchidananda murtaye
nishprapanchaya shantaya
niralambhaya tejase
Almost every week an Anusara Yoga student from another part of the country comes to my class. When they say they do Anusara, I’m certain of two things: First, they will know the Anusara principles. Every Anusara teacher has to go through rigorous training in the bio-mechanics of the body. Often I know their teachers personally, but I always know how they have been trained. The second thing I am sure of is that every student of Anusara, no matter where they are from, will know the Anusara invocation. We may have just met, but when we sit down together, our voices will blend – we know the same tune, the same words, no matter how badly we may mispronounce Sanskrit. As we chant we are a collective, part of a worldwide kula, a community, held together in the invocation. But at the same time, chanting the invocation is the most personal, private part of a yoga class. So why do we “invoke” and what do the Sanskrit words mean?
To explore the invocation we will look first at the word ‘invoke’. The very words we use to describe our actions contain a fullness of meaning. Words evolved as human beings assigned meaning to them. Exploring etymologies gives us an opportunity to see how meanings evolved. As we look deeper at the words we are able to contemplate our actions and our participation in them becomes meaningful.
So invoke – invocare in Latin. Literally it means to put into voice – in-voc – voc as in vocal, and as in the word for speech in Sanskrit, vac. More simply, it can mean to call. When you call, you are making a request, giving voice to a desire. But with ‘invoke’ there is difference. We wouldn’t use the word invoke when we are talking about phoning a friend, or ordering at a restaurant. We use the word ‘as’ when we mean material objects or specific actions to manifest. We use ‘invoke’ to mean the summoning forth of the power that enlivens or creates those objects or actions. You invoke the power of your breath to create the actions, the power of the law. And you invoke the power of clarification of ideas to understand the meaning of your actions.
In class, before we chant the invocation we pause and ask ourselves to form an intention, what we want to focus on for the class. We go into our hearts to ask how we want this class, this theme, to be meaningful to us. In this way, we can each have a very personal, individual meaning attached to the same theme, the same class. We then take our focus and bring it into our voice, from head and heart through our breath and into sound. The subtle becomes manifest. We put our own personal meaning into our voice as we chant and call for our intention to be manifest.
We use Sanskrit words as a vehicle for the meaning of our own personal intention. We can’t all call out our individual intentions simultaneously, that would be just a cacophony of noise. We chant together the same Sanskrit words with the same tune and our communal chant allows us each to call out what is privately in our hearts. The personal meanings and desires are carried in our shared voices.
The process of the chant: upasana and avahana
In Sanskrit, avahana is one of the words meaning ‘invocation’. Avahana means to send out for and to bring near. Avahana is the expression of your desire and your call for it to be manifest. As with “invoke,” it is you giving voice to your desire and expressing it from the inside out, asking for it to be drawn toward you. It is the same in our voices as it is in our bodies. Going inside to contemplate is like muscular energy, and then we organically express out with the sound of our voice. The drawing in is called upasana. Upasana is what comes before and after avahana. You draw inside to explore the nature of your desire, upasana, in order to express out, avahana. The avahana then presents the opportunity to muscularly draw in again in -- upasana. Yoga is about doing both, fully. Going inside to recognize what’s in your heart is just half of it. Expressing that desire out then creates a circuit, a connection. The sound in the avahana carries the power of your desire. The energy of your desire is turned into sound or speech, in this case in the form of mantra. So to invoke is to ask, to make a desire known, to initiate a conversation with the energy of your desire.
When I was a child I went to church every Sunday. I had absolutely no idea what I was singing at all. Nothing was ever explained, but the act of singing still had a huge effect on me – it still brought me to a place inside where I could feel my own heart. It was the remembrance of this experience that actually led me to yoga in the first place. The very first time I went to a chant, I was actually looking for a place where I could learn to meditate: I wanted to get back to my heart. A friend asked me to go with her to a chant, and it sounded like a good idea because I had always carried with me the memory of the feeling I got when I sang. I had absolutely no idea what I was chanting that night either. But when I first opened my mouth I went so deep inside. After a while, I was so at rest in meditation I couldn’t chant anymore and I meditated for the rest of the chant, about an hour. There is a power in chanting that has nothing to do with the meaning of the words. Just the desire for more meaning can give you an experience of the heart.
Then sometimes we can’t get in touch with what is in our hearts desire at all, and our invocation feels empty and meaningless. We are just going through the motions of speaking the words. In the same way, sometimes we don’t feel like coming to class, but by just showing up, just by chanting the words and going through the motions, whether it be in chanting or in asana practice, something happens and we are brought to a deeper experience of ourselves – we find the meaning is there waiting for us to recognize it. The avahana can come first and bring us to an experience of upasana. In other words, if you really can’t access the feeling of what it is that you desire, the act of expressing yourself, of chanting the invocation, can take you to your heart’s desire.
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