Some days I wake up and I’m all Mum business. I’m getting the porridge and giving cuddles and helping little people put their clothes on.
And other mornings, I sneak out before anyone else is up and go down to the beach and sit on the sand and marvel at the sun hitting the water and the tiny sparrows playing on the wind and the patterns in the sand and forget even for long moments that I even have kids and how old I am and other stuff like that.
And sometimes I am wrapped up in the business of life and mundane matters of ‘what’s for dinner?’ and ‘where are the drink bottles?’ and ‘will we go and see your family for Christmas?’ and sometimes I’m lying in savasana feeling beyond the boundary of my skin.
Sometimes I’m completely identified with my personality and sometimes I’m like ‘What is this body and this Earth?’ And ‘Who is this inside this body, who walks upon this Earth, who at times feels joy and at times feels sorrow?’
Are you like that too? I guess it’s sort of par for the course for yogis to be wondering about such things as the nature of reality. From time to time, I do wonder.
Meditation practice, is a way of not just sort of wondering, but deliberately trying to experience the nature of reality, as it is.
I find mantra a powerful tool for meditation. One of my teachers, Anandra George, who is a nada yogini (that is the yoga of sound) taught me that each syllable has it’s own Shakti, it’s own power. And I experience chanting as stepping into a particular energy stream. It’s like, rather than just popping your kayak in any old body of water, you are choosing a particular river to take you to the ocean of Consciousness.
With Anandra I learned a mantra that is sometimes simply called the ‘Purnamadah Mantra’. I heard it chanted at Aarti on the banks of the Ganges when I visited Rishikesh and sometimes I’ll play it as I cruise about but also, it seems to visit me of it’s own accord, from time to time, just popping up in memory.
Here is the mantra:
Om Purnamadah Purnamidam
ॐ पूर्णमदः पूर्णमिदं पूर्णात्पूर्णमुदच्यते ।
पूर्णस्य पूर्णमादाय पूर्णमेवावशिष्यते ॥
ॐ शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः ॥
Om pūrṇam adah pūrṇam idam ।
pūrṇāt pūrṇam udacyate
pūrṇasya pūrṇam adāya
pūrṇam -eva vasiṣyate
Ōṁ, śānti, śānti, śānti ||
Om, That is Full (complete, perfect, whole), This is Full
From Fullness arises Fullness
When the Fullness appears to be taken from that Fullness
Only Fullness remains
Om Peace, Peace, Peace
This mantra comes from The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad and I own that I’m no great scholar, or reader of the Upanishads, which are ancient texts containing great wisdom about Consciousness, written in Sanskrit.
My reflection on this mantra, comes from no academic or other kind of authority but humbly from this place of wondering and feeling into this whole human experience we’re having…
In this mantra I feel that I am being reminded that this great mystery of which we are a part is whole and complete in itself and is always so, no matter how fragmented it may feel.
And though we experience times of great heartache, grief, loss, sorrow - things being taken away - the fact remains that we are always whole. The ache of loneliness, despair, sorrow is the ache of change.
As poet Jaiya John reminds us:
”You are okay, dear soul.
Every living thing aches as it changes”
And that is the wonderful paradoxical thing about being human. We are always at once both unchanging Awareness and Nature - that which changes. Or to use the terminology of Kashmir Shaivism, Shiva and Shakti.
The best metaphor that I can think of to illustrate this, is the relationship between the Sun and the Earth.
Isn’t it so, that the sun is always shining? Up there in the cosmos, the great ball of gas that we know as the sun, is burning bright and has done so for millions upon millions of years. And yet, here on Earth it feels as though the sun rises and sets. Some days, the sun is obscured by cloud. What’s more, we orbit the sun and experience seasonal changes - sometimes we might not experience much sunlight at all. And so it is to be human. The light of our Awareness is always present, we are Conscious and yet, we often experience ourselves as asleep, awake, dreaming. And we also experience ourselves as growing older and changing in our physical appearance, our roles and relationships change, our personalities change and moment to moment our sensations, emotions, thoughts change.
This mantra reminds me that the Sun exists, always.
That there is part of me that is unchanging and it remains ever so, even when things appear to change.
Sometimes spiritual practice places great emphasis on connecting with the part of us that is unchanging… the Soul or Spirit - in my metaphor, the sun. Perhaps to balance out our tendency to live so thoroughly in the material world.
And indeed, without the Sun, life on Earth would not exist. If we did not have Consciousness would we even know that we are alive?
But equally, what is the sun without the Earth?
The Earth gives the Sun a place to express. The energy of the sun brings life. Sunlight permeates all living things in one way or another.
And so yes, we practice to remember that we are Consciousness, the sun, but also we are the Earth. And the Earth is real and what we experience is real. The weather is sometimes stormy. Summer turns to Autumn turns to Winter turns to Spring turns to Summer. Things come together, they fall apart. We hurt. We connect. That’s the great mystery of which we are a part. This beautiful experience of being human and all that comes with it, the “gritty Earth gifts” as Mary Oliver puts it, are part of the Whole. And while these experiences are innately changeable, that is the nature of Nature, they are nonetheless being witnessed by a part of us that is unchanging. Just as life on Earth is forever in relationship with the sun.
We are the Sun and, we are the Earth. We are Spirit and Matter. Shiva and Shakti. And we can use the mantra to remind ourselves of how whole and complete we are, as we live this human life, full as it is of change.