Language of the Heart: Replacing a beloved Sanskrit Chant
The CPY community and the resources on this site help practitioners maintain, with skill and sensitivity, the integrity of both a yoga practice and a prayer life rooted in the Christian tradition. What follows is an attempt to describe how I approached chanting in my personal practice. It’s an example of one of many decisions we make when practicing yoga with an intention of deepening our faith in Christ and upholding the spiritual roots of yoga. While digging into the questions, I think it’s possible to find deeper meaning, deeper faith and deeper community with others on the path.
When I found the CPY community in 2012, I also left my Ashtanga practice behind, in search of a practice more in line with how I thought a Christian might go about using yoga as prayer. Ashtanga’s extreme postures and feats of flexibility and strength seemed to me too focused on a fit body to “count” as prayer. The more I’ve learned from this community, the study of yoga and Christian mediation, the more I’ve realized that my original practice of Ashtanga IS prayer. Practiced regularly with the intended focus, Ashtanga mirrors Centering Prayer in many ways, in both its practice and intended outcomes. Through the sequence, one can enter into the silent flow of a moving meditation, engaging the 8 limbs of yoga in a daily, 90-minute mat practice.
Beginning the practice again a few weeks ago, I couldn’t believe how much I’d forgotten of the sequence! I needed a refresher on everything, starting with the opening and closing chant, or invocation. Actually, I needed to take some time to decide if these chants were right for me at this point in my life. I loved how they made me feel, the memories they stirred, and the vibrations in the center of my heart. Chanting is “breath yoga,” with proven benefits for the mind as well as the physical body. Singing has always been one of my favorite ways to blow off steam, and chanting with a room full of people feels almost magical. I was hoping to find a way to keep them in the practice.
The invocations are in Sanskrit, the liturgical language of ancient India, sometimes referred to as “the language of the heart.” The opening chant offers gratitude for the long lineage of yoga and the benefits one receives from this lineage.
Here is the first half of the mantra, translated into English:
I bow to the lotus feet of the Supreme Guru
which awaken insight into the happiness of pure Being,
which are the refuge, the jungle physician,
which eliminate the delusion caused by the poisonous herb of Samsara (conditioned existence).
I loved these words, especially the idea that the Supreme Guru, which I understood as God, is the “jungle physician,” (Jangalikayamane in Sanskrit) accompanying us. I’ve written about this previously. As words rolled off my tongue, and as I patted myself on the back for memorizing it, I’d imagine my mind as this deep green tangled and confused jungle, with chattering, swinging monkeys, cunning predators and poisonous plants. Living in this treacherous place with danger around every corner, there could be no doubt as to why we’d developed so many survival techniques. On the mat, in the practice, I’d imagine rising above the heat and confusion to witness this world and my conditioned existence in it, with the jungle physician as my refuge. What can I say? I fell in love with the Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden romance of it. My imagination and emotions rushed forth to create a storyline placing Jesus in the starring role of the heroic jungle physician, and me the patient in need of rescue.
I can get carried away.
As with mantra, a fitting chant settles deeply into the heart; this one took over my imagination. We are instructed to let thoughts go in meditation, even the best, most juicy ones that we really want to grab a hold of, in the service of going deeper. Similarly, I had to let this chant go. It’s beautiful, but I should admit it is not mine.
Here’s the 2nd half, in English:
I prostrate before the sage Patanjali
who has thousands of radiant, white heads (as the divine serpent, Ananta)
and who has, as far as his arms, assumed the form of a man
holding a conch shell (divine sound), a wheel (discus of light or infinite time) and a sword (discrimination).
Simply stated, it’s a thank you. Yet, it would take me a hundred years of scholarship and another hundred years of living someone else’s life to bring these ideas and descriptions of Patanjali into my being. They aren’t my lived experience, despite some study of philosophy, the sutras and the practice. I can appreciate the teaching, but these ideas are not mine for the taking.
I had Fr. Tom’s advice about Sanskrit chanting in my ear.
“One should not enter into that energy field without being formally initiated to it. Christians have been initiated in baptism into the body of Christ, into the love-energies of God revealed as Jesus-Emmanuel (God-with-us) whose Holy Spirit has been poured out into our hearts. So my counsel would be: Chant those names. Intensify those divine energies within you.”
So, it is with no small amount of grief that I decided to leave the Ashtanga Invocation behind and seek another way to open this personal practice.
Choosing my own opening chant
I searched for a chant to settle in my heart as an intention for the practice, intensify the “energy fields” of my own tradition, and offer gratitude to the history and lineage of the practice I’m adopting. See the links to my favorite resources at the end of this post.
Chants I’m most drawn to are based on mystical poetry. Christians have a deep well of works from Christian mystics and poets from which to draw, such as Teillard de Chardin, Meister Eckhart, even the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing. Thomas Keating, beloved by many in this group, left behind a short work of mystical poetry. Christian prayer groups are drawn to Mary Oliver’s work, yet Mary Oliver, as far as we know, never declared a formal religion.
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do/ with your one wild and precious life?”
Poetry is the language of the heart. Through it we get beyond our literal and over-intellectualizing tendencies, which get us nowhere fast in regards to faith.
“Wisdom is not knowing more, but knowing with more of you, knowing deeper, carving and digging your being deeper and deeper so that it can receive more knowing.
”
I chose chant based on a poem by Rumi, the 13th century Sufi mystic, and developed by Darlene Franz, whose works are in active use in wisdom schools, Christian retreats and Centering Prayer groups. The words are “You the One, One in All, Say I AM, I am you.” The full poem is at the end of this post. Its firm and unerring footing within Christianity may not be immediately obvious, except perhaps within the context of mystical poetry. This is the one, and you can hear it here.
The words are comfortably familiar, yet the meaning impossible to grasp. Its only a slow recitation and the breath that follows, acting on the words, that allows the meaning to become clearer, if only for a moment. Through the breath, the intention of the chant spreads out, filling both the mind and the heart. Then one can connect this intention with the body.
So I stand at the top of my mat in mountain pose, hands at the heart, gazing softly down the nose, and chant this poem. Then, I bow my head to say a brief prayer of gratitude, expressing the sentiment in Kelly McLellan’s post titled “Stealing Yoga”:
Dear India,
I would like to thank you for gifting the world with the beautiful practice of yoga. I would like to apologize for all of the ways that Christians (including myself), have intentionally or unintentionally, disregarded your religious and spiritual traditions and overlooked their contributions to the world for thousands of years. I would like to acknowledge our indebtedness to you India, for your rich philosophical traditions and practices. Thank you India, for sharing your gifts with the world.
Then onto the practice.
The Closing
Parts of closing Ashtanga chant will be familiar to most practitioners:
Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu
Om Shanti Shanti Shantihi
May all beings everywhere be happy and free
Om peace, peace, perfect peace
And so, after the finishing sequence, meditation and daily intentions (I love Sally’s 5 finger prayer for this), a closing of peace. Shalom. I chose a simple song, planted in my heart for as long as I can remember; I understand it’s long out of print, yet I suspect it’s forever in the hearts of Catholics growing up in the 70s:
“Peace, I leave with you, my friends, my friends, and I am with you ‘til the end. Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, Grant us peace.”
Giving Thanks
The Ashtanga invocation is one of thanks. As I write this, I realize how many people have pointed me in the right direction, with this post alone. I am grateful to my teachers at Yoga on High, especially the late Martha Marcom, who first welcomed me with her gracious invitation to talk of my own faith during training, and planted the idea in me that for every 1000 times the mind wonders, there’s 1000 opportunities to return to God. I am grateful to the generous teachings of Father Tom, Kelly McLellan, and Sally Grillo available on this site and incorporated here. I am grateful to Kevin Flynn for answering my questions about the appropriateness of the mantra I chose. I am grateful for fellow blogger Amy Secrist for her 31 comments on my first draft! I am grateful to my High School choir director, for teaching me the music that settled into my heart even when other teachings could not grab hold. I really don’t give any of you enough credit.
Peace, friends.
Chant Resources:
Darlene Franz Wisdom Chants
https://wisdomchant.bandcamp.com
Wisdom Way of Knowing Chant Directory
https://wisdomwayofknowing.org/directory-categories/sacred-chanting/
The Oriental Orthodox Order in the West
https://theooow.com/resources/contemplative-chants/
Say I am you
By Rumi (translated by Coleman Barks)
To the bits of dust I say, Stay.
To the sun, Keep moving.
I am morning mist, and the breathing of evening.
I am wind in the top of a grove, and surf on the cliff.
Mast, rudder, helmsman, and keel,
I am also the coral reef they founder on.
I am a tree with a parrot in its branches.
Silence, thought, and voice.
The musical air coming through a flute,
a spark of a stone, a flickering
in metal. Both candle, and the moth crazy around it.
Rose, and the nightingale lost in the fragrance.
I am all orders of being, the circling galaxy,
the evolutionary intelligence, the lift,
and the falling away. What is,
and what isn’t. You who know,
You the one
in all, say who
I am. Say I
am You.
