Q. I understand you use chanting a lot in your own practice and in working with others. How do you use chanting for awakening? Which chants should I use and how?
G. Chanting has enormous ability to awaken, with many different approaches for use in non-dual awakening. Although Ramana Maharshi's teachings are steeped in meditative inquiry, Ramana gave some wonderful guidelines for awakening using chanting. As i discuss in my book, Happiness Beyond Thought, Ramana got his name from some guidance he gave for using chanting for awakening.
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| Ramana Maharshi |
Ramana, whose original name was Venkataraman, also known as Brahmanaswami, had been living
in silence for 11 years in Virupaksha cave on a sacred mountain, Arunachala, in south central India.
Ganapati Muni, a master of Sanskrit and non-dual philosophy/advaita Vedanta, had spent many years
visiting sacred places, performing ascetic practices, memorizing texts, reading
extensively, arguing Vedanta philosophy, and performing mantras and
invocations. He had resolved to reform Indian society, eradicate "all the divisive forces in society" and had chosen mantra, as the ancient rishis had done, as his vehicle for this transformation. Devoted followers gathered around him. Ganapati Muni had supposedly chanted a famous Sanskrit chant, Shikvapankshakshari, and written the name of Shiva a "billion" times.
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| Ganapati Muni |
However, even that great effort was not fruitful, as he still could not grasp the true meaning of his mantra japa practice, still had not awakened. During a major festival in November 1907, filled with despair, he rushed up the hillside
to see the sage, who was now 27.
Ramana was sitting alone on a rock. Ganapati Muni
fell at his feet, clasped them in his hands and said
"I have studied all that has to be studied. I have learn Vedanta sastra (teachings) completely. I have performed mantra-japa to my heart's content. But till now I have not been able to grasp what tapas really means. I have now approached you to know what it is. Please enlighten me on the nature of tapas (spiritual practice)."
Ramana looked at him silently for about fifteen
minutes and then said simply
"If you enquire and observe where this I-thought arises from, the mind gets absorbed in it. That is tapas. While performing mantra japa, if you enquire and observe where the sound of the mantra arises from, the mind gets absorbed in it. That is tapas."
Ganapati Muni was overwhelmed and awakened by
this insight, and in recognition of this renamed the sage, Bhagavan Sri Ramana
Maharshi.
Our chanting is focused on this simple guideline. Ganapati Muni focused on the chant itself, but even after repeating it a "billion" times, had very simply missed the point. Watching where the chant arises and where it disappears, was where the "action" was, where the "truth" was to be found. Such a simple shift of focus, but a profound one. The same approach with meditative inquiry; see where the I-thought comes from, and where it disappears into.
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| Russill Paul |
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With Russill Paul at
Ramana's Ashram |
The chants in Happiness Beyond Thought, whether they are ancient Vedic chants that i learned from my chanting teacher, Russill Paul, the author of The Yoga of Sound: Tapping the Hidden Power of Chant and Music (with whom i spent a month traveling around south India two years ago), or ancient teachings like Shankara's Nirvana Shatakam, or the Bhagavad Gita, draw upon this same approach.
An example, from Happiness Beyond Thought is one of the Vedic classics, "Asato Ma".
Asato Ma
| Asato | ma | sat | gamaya |
| Non-being | to | being | lead me |
| Tamaso | ma | jyotir | gamaya |
| darkness | to | light | lead me |
| Mrtyur | ma | amritam | gamaya |
| Ignorance | to | eternal bliss | lead me |
This chant is an asking to be led from the non-being of ignorance to the being of realization, from the darkness of ignorance to the light of understanding, and from the death of ignorance to the eternal bliss of knowledge.
Classically, this request was made to your guru, God, etc. In this work it is your personal "I" asking for help to awaken, your "self" beseeching your Self. This chant can be a powerful surrender, a recognition that you can’t do it all by yourself.
| Te | | | mah | | | mah | |
| He | | tho | | | gah | | yah |
| Ha | Ahsah | | | sadh | | | |
| Te | | | mah | | | gah mah | |
| He | | sew | | | theer | | yah |
| Ha | Thah mah | | | yo | | | |
| Te | | | mah | | | gah mah | |
| He | | your | | | tham | | yah |
| Ha | Mreth | | | ah mree | | | |
The "Te", "He", "Ha" are different focal points in the body for the three different tones used in many of these chants. "Ha" is the hara, the belly area below your ribs roughly corresponding to the Third Chakra. "He" is your heart, roughly the Fourth Chakra. The "Te" is your Third Eye, roughly your Sixth Chakra, on your forehead just above and between your eyes. A recording of "me" chanting Asato Ma is on the Happiness Beyond Thought website, www.happiness-beyond-thought.com. On that same page, you can also find "Upadesa Saram" (Ramana's magnum opus), "Nirvana Shatakam", and other Vedic chants, also downloadable as (free) mp3s. BTW, net profits from Happiness Beyond Thought go to kids in south India.
These Vedic chants are ancient, some over 3,500 years old. They have been phonically tuned in Sanskrit, arguably the root language for most Indo-European tongues, and have a great impact on the mind. Some of these chants have been chanted by millions of people over thousands of years.
Chanting is more effective if your breathing is focused as to how each inhale and exhale is done. Inhales are most effectively done from the “bottom up”, i.e. first using the diaphragm, then the ribs, then the upper chest. Exhales are most effective done “top down”, i.e. first using the upper chest, then the ribs, and then the diaphragm. This breathing approach gives a longer, smoother, more even chant. It is how opera singers breathe.
The meditative impact is strengthened
if each line is chanted on one out breath, followed by a silent inhale. An alternative approach for deep work is to
chant a line on the exhale and then whisper the next line on the inhale so that
the chant goes on continuously. Another
powerful routine is to move sequentially inward with more and more subtle
chanting on subsequent rounds, first chanting out loud, and then whispering,
and then finally chanting internally in silence. These chants are classically done a minimum of three times, but can be
done as many times as you are moved to do.
And remember, watch where the chant comes from and where it goes to, so you don't have to do a billion chants and miss the point. Watch the space around the chant, the space it comes into. As Miles Davis reportedly said, like Ramana Maharshi, it is all about the space around the notes.
How long does it take to chant the shikvapankshaksuri? Based on the YouTube video, it seems unlikely that one could do it much more that a half dozen times a minute for a long period. At that rate, it would take at least a few hundred years to do a billion repetitions. Even just counting to a billion would be extremely difficult to do in a lifetime, and would result in a life that consisted of little else. One must assume that the description of Ganapati Muni's effort was metaphorical.
ReplyDeleteRon, the "billion" was pondered before the biographer's statement was used in the blog, as it seemed as just a fantastic exaggeration.
DeleteThere are some other things to consider:
a) the rate of chanting the shikvapankshaksuri in the YT video is not pertinent. Experienced, trained chanting folk can chant a chant they know, astonishingly fast, to the point of unintelligibility. At one time, i could say the Greek alphabet in 6 seconds - every letter was pronounced but it was unintelligible to most folk. That wouldn't account for all of the difference, but it would cut it many fold.
b) There is the question of which language was used by the biographer in describing a "billion" times, as some languages have difficulty with large numbers - i know one language that only has "1" and "many" for numbers. Ganapati Muni asked the question in an unspecified language, and Ramana, so the biographer says, responded in Tamil, his native tongue.
As the word "tapas", a Sanskrit word was used, the question might have been given in Sanskrit, or not. "tapas" was/is such a well-known spiritual term in south India, where many folk are multi-lingual, that it transcends a particular language, like "karma", so that is not definitive.
In Sanskrit, and in Tamil, there are different words for each multiple of 10, whereas English only has a new word for each multiple of a 1000. A thousand millions (our billion) is not a Sanskrit billion. A Sanskrit billion is 10 hundred thousand millions. Sanskrit is like English, somewhat, up to 100 million, but then it diverges. In Tamil, their system works like English, i.e. 1,000 million is a billion.
If the biographer was using a Sanskrit "billion", which is likely as the folk around Ganapati Muni were skilled in Sanskrit, then it could only be taken as metaphorical. If Tamil, then it is a large exaggeration. As a "billion" seconds is 31 years, it is logically impossible, no matter how fast you chant. A million, even many millions, is certainly possible, even likely, given Ganapati Muni's devotion. It is still a lot of chants, whatever the number, and the point is not lost that Ganapati Muni missed the point, no matter how many the actual number was.
Tks for the question.
stillness
BTW, Poonjaji, a famous Indian advaitin/nondual guru (1910 - 1997), did 50,000 chants/day as his standard practice for many years. That is about 18 million chants/year. he chanted every day from 2:30 am to 9:30 am, and then after work until he fell asleep. Like Ganapati Muni, Poonjani's practice changed when he met Ramana and realized that he should have been asking "Who Am I?" all along.
Delete