Tag: śūnyatā

ॐ, buddhism, Cause & Effect, Magic, Mantra, Rāja yoga, Yoga

Using Mantra and Sound

In the previous post the mantra below is translated.

gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā

I think of it as being:

gone, gone, gone beyond, gone beyond the beyond, hail the great awakening.

It is perhaps the mantra of a Tathāgata.

This from Wikipedia

“Tathāgata is a Pali word; Gautama Buddha uses it when referring to himself or other Buddhas in the Pāli Canon. The term is often thought to mean either “one who has thus gone” (tathā-gata), “one who has thus come” (tathā-āgata), or sometimes “one who has thus not gone” (tathā-agata). This is interpreted as signifying that the Tathāgata is beyond all coming and going – beyond all transitory phenomena. There are, however, other interpretations and the precise original meaning of the word is not certain.”

Together with AUM it is one of my favourites. It seems to me the mantra par excellence for shifting awareness a long way from the day to day drama of physical plane life. I have chanted it in my version of Tibetan Deep Voice very many times and it acts as a “key” to change jhana or state of awareness. I always do this with eyes closed.

One of the great things about living here is that one can really let rip with the chanting without fear of upsetting the neighbours. This means I can play with tone and volume. Have a listen to my recording of Gayatri which I made a couple of years after I found I could do this. This will give you a low sound volume idea.

One can roll the chant around one’s mouth and apply torque to the sound “pāra”. As one ramps up the volume and the intent coming out of the diaphragm control one takes conscious / awareness a long way. And then when you stop chanting there is a sense of complete stillness, emptiness and perhaps, a glimpse of śūnyatā.  There is utter silence after the sound.

As with all meditations one needs to take care that one can get back in into the body. The torque is what unscrews the Sahasrāra in the crown, lifts it and enables one to start to exit awareness by stretching the Antahkarana and Sutratma. If I may phrase it thus the quietness outside in deafening. Time and space cease to have their usual meaning and there is / can be a controlled contact with what Toltecs call the void. {I may elaborate on this another day} Because time is not, it can feel that one is “there” for a very long “time”, yet when one comes back to earth time only tens of minutes have passed.

What I am doing in this is high volume chanting whilst visualising the sound twisting the Sahasrāra “manhole cover” open. Then using the sound to elevate the cover so that I can take my awareness the other side of the cover.

I can now do this with out the need to chant.

One “exits” slowly. And when one comes back it must be done at exactly the same pace. If you imagine an elastic band stretched it needs a controlled relaxation otherwise it will “ping” and that is dangerous.

As described here this is a raja yoga visualisation using a Buddhist mantra chanted in something like Tibetan Deep Voice…

From my experience if you trust your intuition, you will find the appropriate notes yourself.

The mantra works on four levels

gate gate   —-   pāragate —- pārasaṃgate —- bodhi svāhā

Each level is further from the mundane and the hurly burly. The repetitive steps take you “out” of day to day mind.

Coming back is done by controlled intention, step wise. Slowly one materialises back in the head.

I always do some purification om ah hum as an act of sanctity, respect and of thanks. Before I open my eyes, I clap my hands three times to feel really grounded back.

I have just clapped….

This is an example of synthesis…

buddhism, Cause & Effect, Magic, Mantra, Quotations

Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya

From the Compass of Zen

By Zen Master Seung Sahn

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From Wikipedia

In the {full} sutra, Avalokiteśvara addresses Śariputra, explaining the fundamental emptiness (śūnyatā) of all phenomena, known through and as the five aggregates of human existence (skandhas): form (rūpa), feeling (vedanā), volitions (saṅkhāra), perceptions (saṃjñā), and consciousness (vijñāna). Avalokiteśvara famously states, “Form is Emptiness (śūnyatā). Emptiness is Form”, and declares the other skandhas to be equally empty—that is, dependently originated.

Avalokiteśvara then goes through some of the most fundamental Buddhist teachings such as the Four Noble Truths, and explains that in emptiness none of these notions apply. This is interpreted according to the two truths doctrine as saying that teachings, while accurate descriptions of conventional truth, are mere statements about reality—they are not reality itself—and that they are therefore not applicable to the ultimate truth that is by definition beyond mental understanding. Thus the bodhisattva, as the archetypal Mahayana Buddhist, relies on the perfection of wisdom, defined in the Mahāprajñāpāramitā Sūtra to be the wisdom that perceives reality directly without conceptual attachment, thereby achieving nirvana.

The sutra concludes with the mantra gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā, meaning “gone, gone, everyone gone to the other shore, awakening, svaha.

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Written by

Richard Hayes
Religious Studies
McGill University
Montreal, Quebec

gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā

The key word is BODHI, a feminine noun in the vocative case, which means awakening. All the other words are also in the vocative feminine and therefore modify BODHI.

GATE means gone.

PARAGATE means gone to the further shore and is a stock Sanskrit expression used by Jains and Buddhists to refer to arahants. (The word PARA means the bank of a river opposite to the one on which one is presently standing.)

PARASAMGATE means completely gone to the further shore. (The prefix SAM is intensive in meaning: completely, thoroughly, altogether.)

SVAHA is an indeclinable particle from Vedic Sanskrit. It is said to be the name of the wife of Agni, the god of fire. It is used at the end of a recitation that accompanies a burnt offering made at a Vedic sacrifice (rather as “amen” is used at the end of a prayer in Christian liturgy). It cannot really be translated, since it is a performative word rather than a word that conveys meaning.

The whole mantra, literally translated, comes out a bit like this: “Oh awakening that has gone, gone, gone to the further shore, gone completely to the further shore. Amen.”