“ONE SITS AND BEATS AN OLD TIN CAN, LARD PAIL.
ONE BEATS AND BEATS FOR THAT WHICH ONE BELIEVES.”
Everyone has heard the words to thine own self be true, even if they’ve never read a word of Shakespeare. Not everyone has heard the words sat nam, which mean true self, even if they’ve done plenty of yoga. Shakespeare is remembered because he got human nature right. Yoga is practiced because it helps make human nature right.
Real life often means caving in to peer pressure instructions tropes status group think. Even bounce house for sale though trying to fit in can make you temporarily insane, herd behavior is a longtime humankind habit. It can be a bad habit. The yoga life is about being stouthearted enough to be your true self.
You are what you eat. You are what you do possess believe say so. You are everything that has ever happened to you. The hidebound say you are what you were before the clock started ticking. Things are more like they are today than they’ve ever been. The pioneering say the best way to predict the future is to make the future, which is another way of saying that creating opportunities is creating you.
You are your life’s energy, one breath at a time, which is why yoga puts a premium on breathing. It is why breath control is one of the eight limbs of the practice. When you stop breathing you get stuck in time.
Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam…
What is the self?
Philosophers psychologists psychi-atrists say self-awareness is what leads to awareness, to consciousness, the difference between you and me. Is it your brain engaged in self-reference? “I think, therefore I am,” said Rene Descartes. Is it your private self, public self, better self? Are you your ego self or your observing self?
Society tells you to find yourself be yourself then tells you what to do. Is that what happens when you lose yourself?
What do self-respect, self-control, and self-confidence have to do with it? Were you yourself at two, as a teenager, and your good old self as you are now? Is your self your self-image? Are you only yourself when no one’s watching?
“You are your life, and nothing else,” said the existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre.
That is a Western view, the ‘I’ as an autonomous ego. In the East the self is often defined in its relation to others. You can’t be a self by yourself. In the West the self has been atomized. In the East who you are depends on where you are.
The philosopher Thomas Metzinger claims the self is an illusion. It’s all in your head. It’s just your brain and its neural activities, and nothing else. You are your genes. There is nothing about you that transcends the physical. There is no higher-order beyond the body and brain.
The question remains up in the air. Who are you? Make up your mind.
Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam…
What is a mantra?
It’s simple enough, a sound or a word repeated to aid in meditation. The mantra of Main Street is bigger is better, the mantra of Wall Street is nobody goes to jail, and the mantra of D. C. Street is build a strong brand. Those aren’t mantras. They’re statements repeated ad nauseam to make you think they make sense.
There is meditation and then there is mantra meditation.
Mantra meditation is the act of repeating a sound, a few words, or a short phrase over and over. Sometimes again and again stops at 108 times, which is how many prayer beads there are on a string of them. It gets you into a frame of mind.
A mantra means ‘man’ which means mind and ‘tra’ which means vehicle. A mantra is a vehicle for the mind. One translation is “to be free from the mind.” It is the Magic Bus whose engine properties and sonic vibrations put you on the road to meditation.
In the same way that asanas on the mat are exercises for the body, mantras are exercises for the mind. Mantra meditation clears the decks of the mind of stress. It helps align the left and right sides of the brain. It connects the critical thought part of us with the creative side of us.
Breath and sound, energy and rhythm, help boost immunity, reduce anxiety, and release neuroses. Who wants to be nailed to the cross of their disturbed mind? It’s free and easy, too. All you have to do is show up and it works. No one needs to be an expert at busting out a solo. The world of mantra isn’t a stage. All you have to do is bust the breath from your belly and your heart.
Mantra is old stuff, from back in the day of campfires, the mother of meditation.
Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam…
Why chant sat nam?
When you’re grooving on sat nam you’re getting back into the groove. Finding your groove is finding your balance. Chanting a mantra like sat nam is getting down with the original yoga rhythm section.
Sat nam is pronounced like but mom.
There are Sat Nam Fests at Joshua Tree and in the Berkshires, lots of yoga, lots of music, lots of chanting. “We thrive in tribes,” said Azita Nahal, a Kundalini teacher and author who spearheads workshops at the festivals. “Our bodies are the way in, our awareness is the way through.”
Sat nam is the seed mantra of Kundalini Yoga, a practice popularized by Yogi Bhajan in the 1960s. It is a synthesis of several traditions designed to bring to life the life force at the base of the spine. Kundalini Yoga is sometimes known as the yoga of awareness. Its method is in its physical postures, breath work, mantras, and meditation.
Sat means ‘true’ and nam means ‘identity’, more-or-less. Whatever it means, chanting sat nam means making an experience of your own consciousness. Consciousness is energy at its basal basic basement level. It also means having an experience of consciousness in general, of getting past the separateness.
“Truth can be stated in a thousand different ways, yet each one can be true,” said Vivekananda. What’s truer than true is that only you can be you. When in doubt be yourself, don’t be the other 999 guys, which is the best way to be a stand-up guy or gal, to tell the truth.
You can’t be free if you’re not truthful, at least to yourself, even if not to the truth of the matter. Who wants to meet themselves behind the wall of illusion, in the hall of mirrors? If you can’t find the truth within yourself, where do you think it might be? Is it in what somebody on their soapbox is saying? Is it in the flag-waving crowd? Is it in the great big spider web of the rest of the world?
Trying to find it there would be a mistake.
God knows we all make mistakes. Only God has never made the same mistake once. Although it’s true that mistakes can teach us something, the only mistake in the offing you don’t want to interrupt is the one an immediate mortal enemy is making.
Trying to find yourself outside of yourself would be a mistake because it isn’t about finding yourself somewhere out there, it’s about creating yourself from the inside out. After all, everybody has their own one and only genetic identity. What’s better than being able to say I have my own selfhood and my own style?
It’s better to be a dead ringer of yourself than a knock-off of somebody else.
Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam…
Why chant sat nam 108 times?
“By practicing chanting, breath work, or asana in rounds of this sacred number, the ancient yogis believed we could align ourselves with the rhythm of the creation,” Helen Avery wrote in “108: Yoga’s Sacred Number”.
When it comes to yoga, malas are made of 108 beads, breath work is often done in cycles of 108, and doing a traditional 9 rounds of the 12 sun salutations makes 108.
“Exactly how the yogis arrived at 108 we don’t quite know, but it seems to be a number that connects us to our place in the cosmic order.”
There are 54 letters in the Sanskrit alphabet. Since each of them has a feminine and masculine aspect, there are 108 letters. Chakras are energy lines in the body. It’s believed there are 108 energy lines that converge to form the heart chakra. There are said to be 108 stages on the journey of the Atman, or soul.
Many Buddhist temples have 108 steps leading up into them, meaning there are 108 steps on the path to enlightenment. The Mayans built their temple at Lamanai to be 108 feet high. The Sarsen Circle at Stonehenge is 108 feet in diameter.
The big picture is that the distance from the earth to the moon is 238, 800 miles, just about 108 times the moon’s diameter. The diameter of the sun is just about 108 times the diameter of the earth. The distance from the earth to the sun is just about 108 times the diameter of the sun.
“It serves as a reminder of the wonder and interconnectedness of the universe,” wrote Helen Avery.
Why not chant sat nam 108 times when there’s wonder in it?
Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam…
Why a mantra? Why use it as a tool in the first place? Sometimes it can seem like a broken record. Why not just meditate? The reason is because it’s a kind of white noise, muffling the commotion hubbub chatter.
“A mantra has the power to drown out both the surface noise and eventually even the quieter undercurrent of thoughts until all that is left is the repetition of a neutral mantra and the serene state of natural awareness which starts to emerge naturally,” wrote Chad Foreman in “Why Repeating a Mantra Is So Powerful and How to Do It”.
Some of the oldies but goodies are om, om namah shivaya, and om mani padme hum. Many of them have the word om in common, the sound of life and death. It’s been called the sound of the universe.
Aaaa-Uooo-Mmm.
It’s close enough, although sound waves can’t and don’t travel through the vacuum of space. Electromagnetic waves can, though, and they can be recorded by spectrographs. Quasars sound remarkably like the spitting image of om.
Sat has sometimes been translated as ‘existence’ and nam as ‘to bow’. In other words, bow to existence. We are part of the universe. The universe is in us. “He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe,” said Marcus Aurelius more than two thousand years ago.
Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam Sat Nam…
The arc of the horizon bends at sat nam, the seed mantra. In a universe that created itself out of nothing, a universe made out of energy, a universe that works from within outwards, making the vibration of sat nam with your breath is a simple way of making your way in the universe.
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