Let me chant

Some days I find myself being so rattled by reality I can hardly bring myself to partake.

Just not wanting to play whatever superficial game is on offer. It's at these moments, I find myself reaching for my chanting book. I want the big gun. I want Shri Rudram. 

This ancient chant has the ability to calm my mind, to still that choppy surf, down to a ruffling, down to ripples, right down to ""I don't give a proverbial."

I discovered it first living in the ashram. It was the only way I could actually get a handle on my mind. My mind was so disturbed, so tortured by the limitations and challenges I was facing living in the isolation I was experiencing. Shri Rudram basically saved my life.

My biggest challenge was my attachment to my boys. I had left them. Abandoned ship when my marriage ended. And even though they were both young adults, I had never been away from them for any length of time. So it was a shock emotionally and psychologically to be isolated from their presence in my life. My mind and my heart worked together on this. No matter how hard I tried to put things behind me, to analyze my feelings, to meditate and journal, I couldn't get away from the gnawing feeling of loss and grief that underpinned my existence at the ashram.

The first year was the worse. On and on I struggled, thinking that this was part of the journey, waiting for the euphoria to kick in, knowing how lucky I was to even be in such a sacred place. But still when I stopped trying to distract myself, there was this aching need to resume my role, to have things as they were, to reclaim what had already passed into non-existence. Everyday I would find myself face down on the marble floor offering my devotional heart to benevolent Gods, and my prayer would always be the same..."Please take away this pain, help me let it go" I would read the words of Saints, study sutras, journal about my meditations and insights, scrub the floors of the temple and chant. 

I had never heard Shri Rudram chanted until I went to the ashram. It was the most ridiculously complicated chant, I could hardly follow along silently with my eyes on the text. It was a river of syllables, sounds that had no meaning to me, no pattern, no clear break in the verses, just a flow of intonations in Sanskrit. For some of the other students in the ashram, reciting it was a challenge and there were all manner of benefits in doing so. I remember being pretty awestruck when an Indian girl I was doing seva (selfless service) with started chanting parts of it without hesitation or flaw. Honestly I was stunned, it hadn't occurred to me that anyone could just learn it. I began to think differently about Shri Rudram after that. I began to think that a sacred chant that was reserved for times of significant spiritual offering, could be something I could sing, for my own purposes.

I started to learn it in private. I would listen to it on my headphones and try to sing along. I told myself that it would take at least 90 repetitions for my brain to start to make sense of it, so I gave myself time. I kept at it, every day, sometimes several times, listening and stumbling alongside the recording, over the unfamiliar syllables, like a babbling brook bobbing over boulders until after 3 months I was able to chant to the end of the first verse. It was just a matter of time after that, I knew it was possible for me. I dreamed of the day when I could actually chant this river of sacred sound, without any assistance, that I would be able to call out to this ancient force this amazing benevolent energy.

And so, time passed, and I kept at it, day in and day out. I would liken it to putting my mind into a vice grip. It was not allowed to move from the text. The speed and cadence of the chant did not allow for a lapse in attention even for a split second. On and on I would go. Whenever I would find myself beginning to feel sad and moving down that old familiar path of regret, I would rush to my room, get out my book and headphones and go again, and again if need be, to crush my thoughts and bring my mind back under my control.

I'm not sure the exact moment it happened. Maybe after I threw a rupee into the wishing well, but it happened. It was almost like a weight had rolled off me. I became aware that I felt lighter. I became aware that the tender spot in my heart, when I poked it with my mind, didn't hurt anymore. I felt solid. I felt whole. I felt a little lightheaded. I observed all this like an onlooker. 

I sat to chant the Rudram, and instead of clinging to it like a dying man to a raft, I could sing it like a bird singing in the day, like a flower opening to the sun, like the river flowing into the sea. I could sing it like a prayer, like a love song, like an offering to the ultimate Lover.

It was a revelation.

I use it all the time now. Its my 'go to' for any time of stress or frustration. Its a yagna chant. In the Indian tradition a yagna is a ritual for making offerings to the Gods. A sacred fire is lit and offerings of ghee, sugar, oil, and other fuels are made to please the Gods while the Rudram is chanted. The Rudram is like a verbal offering, and so by chanting it, little by little I am offering my limitations my smallness, my petty thoughts and desires to the flames of love within.

It is said that Rudra is the form of Lord Shiva that represent the Fire aspect. This fire purifies limitations and restores the awareness of Oneness with the Divine.

So.. let me chant. Om.