FEATURE STORY

Nirvana Shatakam: What Makes This Timeless Chant So Powerful

There is something very awe-inspiring, almost mysterious about the Nirvana Shatakam. If the reverberations of this chant have intrigued you, here, Sadhguru speaks about its deep significance.

Sadhguru: Music means sounds arranged melodiously. If you get the perfect geometry to the sound, it becomes a chant, a mantra. If you compromise the geometry a little bit and add aesthetics to it, it becomes a melody.

Nirvana means “not this, not that.” “You are this” means you are a certain kind of defined thing. “You are that,” means you are another defined thing. The entire spiritual process is about taking away the definition of what you are because definition is a prison. “I am this!” – that is a containment.

Unfolding into Boundlessness

Yoga means obliterating the boundaries of your individuality. That means the defined structure of what you are is gone – you are a shapeless, formless, boundless being. For that to happen, you have to apply yourself in many different ways. The Nirvana Shatakam is about not being defined by either this or that. It is a very profound chant. It was written, composed, or realized by Adi Shankara over 1200 years ago.

The important thing is to either utter the sound or listen to the sound. Now, if I say a word, it resonates in your mind as a meaning. There is no meaning to the sound as such. It is just that both of us have been taught that a particular sound has a particular meaning. This is an understanding between you and me. In reality, the sound means nothing.

Finding Geometry in Sound

If I say, “tree,” the reverberation of this sound and the form of the tree have no relationship. It is just a word. Suppose someone who does not know English hears the word “tree,” they would not know what it is.

If you utter the geometry of the sound, slowly, it will distance you from your body and your mind.

So, language is just a conspiracy between a group of people. When it comes to the Nirvana Shatakam, you can try to understand the meaning and philosophy, but that is not the important thing. If you utter the geometry of the sound, slowly, it will distance you from your body and your mind. These two instruments of body and mind have in a way distorted your experience of what this life is about. But without this body, without this mind, without this planet, we cannot exist here.

Getting Yourself Unstuck

You cannot live without this planet, but if we bury you in the ground right now, the moment you get stuck to it, what is your sustenance becomes your enemy. If you are able to walk on it, it is beautiful. If you get stuck to it, it is different. The same thing goes for the body. If you are able to live in this body, it is wonderful. If you are stuck to it, it is another case. If you are stuck to your mind, it is really a “case.”

There is a very profound meaning to the Nirvana Shatakam. To put it very simply, it means “I am neither this nor that.” Nirvana means that which is formless, almost like non-existence. Because your idea of existence is physical. Everything that is physical has a shape, form, and size. That is what you call creation. Whether it is yourself, a tree, the planet, the Sun, the Moon, or the galaxies, you are seeing only those specks of creation. You are not seeing that which is uncreated.

That which does not have a physical form is not creation in your understanding. So, nirvana means to be beyond this and that. This is a negative terminology. Nirvana was always there in the tradition, but Gautama the Buddha popularized it.

Nirvana, Mukti, Moksha – One and the Same?

The Yogis of the East generally used more positive terminology. They called it mukti, moksha – that means freedom, liberation. It is essentially the same thing. Do you want non-existence or freedom?

As part of the marketing, they spoke about mukti. When people came fresh, they said, “We will liberate you.” Gautama started with, “We will obliterate you,” not in a negative way. If we remove all boundaries, you are there but not there.

A little space between you and the body, between you and the mind, will open up the possibility of experiencing the non-physical.

It is like a meditation, or if you do not have such a profound experience of meditation, at least when you sleep, you are there but you are not there. Because you go to that state every day, you are okay. If you do not sleep for two days, on the third day, you will crack up completely.

Neither This nor That

So, nirvana is very, very important – to live here as neither this nor that.

It may look impossible to some of you, but you can learn the chant. And more than anything, the very sounds are such that by constantly listening to Nirvana Shatakam, it will slowly create a little space between you and the physical. Everything physical about you is gathered, accumulated. A little space between you and the body, between you and the mind, will open up the possibility of experiencing the non-physical.

Once you touch the non-physical, then there is a sense of limitlessness to who you are. It is my wish and my blessing that every one of you should know this. Having come here in this human form, you should not leave without knowing what is beyond the accumulated physical.

Listen to the Nirvana Shatakam

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