Ayur Mantra

The mantra I feel most called to chant in the past few years is the Ayur Mantra, a Veda chant from the Taittirīya āranyaka, an ancient text on ritual practices and spiritual philosophy. 

Ayur is Sanskrit and the word means, essentially, Life. Ayur is Life, and the Ayur Mantra is a mantra that makes lifeforce flow like a pure and healthy river within, so I love to share it with students. 

I learned this mantra initially from my Vinyasa krama teacher, Khushi Malhotra, who teaches this mantra along with the nyasa, the beautiful hand gestures/mudras that may accompany the mantra, and bring it deeper meaning and power somatically.  

​I have since learned the traditional way that the mantra is chanted (that is, according to traditional Veda chanting rules) from my teacher, Shantalah Sriramaiah. 

You can watch a video and listen to the Ayur Mantra being chanted by Shantala and her students here. 

SHANTIPAT FROM THE ISHA UPANISHAD

ॐ पूर्णमदः पूर्णमिदं पूर्णात्पूर्णमुदच्यते ।
पूर्णस्य पूर्णमादाय पूर्णमेवावशिष्यते ॥
ॐ शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः ॥

om pūrṇamadaḥ pūrṇamidaṃ pūrṇat pūrṇamudacyate | 
pūrṇasya pūrṇamādāya pūrṇamevā vaśiṣyate | |
​
Om That is Fullness; this is Fullness. 
From that Fullness, the Fullness became manifest. 
Taking Fullness from Fullness, 
Fullness indeed remains.
-Isha Upanishad Shantipat

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I was fortunate to have a beautiful, spontaneous spiritual experience at age 8 or 9 that forever changed me. 

Now, it’s best to never try to describe your spiritual experiences, especially ones that are ineffable; they lose their power. What I can say was that this experience was one of Fullness: I was everything and contained everything, too—a vital and intrinsic but individual and temporary expression of the Whole--everything, everywhere, all at once—whole, perfect. Freedom and Fullness. I was literally FILLED with joy, freedom and Oneness.

Afterwards, I wondered, “What does it mean!?” I told my Mom, asked her,  “Was that heaven!?” She was silent for a moment, before answering, “It was only a dream.” Which was deeply dissatisfying. I knew she was wrong: what had happened was the most real and true experience of my life, not a dream.

Several years later, when I was 15, fate helped me find my Aunt’s Catholic High School textbook with the title “Religions of the World” on it, tucked into a bookshelf at my grandparent’s house. They let me take it home (because up until that moment, I'd never learned bupkiss about any religions, as my parents had decided to forego raising me under any particular religious affiliation.) A deeply spiritually curious child, and spiritually lonely as a result of my Mother's answer about my earlier experience, I read this textbook with an almost secretive need to understand about God.

Still, the chapters on Christianity left me cold, tbh.  But, forging ahead, I got to the shortest chapter of the book, which spoke sparingly, yet in clear and hautingly beautiful ways, about the philosophies that were the basis for Hinduism (which include Yoga) In that moment, I sensed there was something undeniably familiar in the descriptions: they indeed validated my belief in a deep and full connection to Source that was very much like my own sense of spirituality.

It was both the first time that anything had remotely begun to explain that seemingly unique earlier experience of non-duality, and my first introduction to the philosophy of yoga, too.
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To learn that there was a place in the world, even though very far far away, where my experience of freedom and fullness was seen as, while not exactly normative, still a worthy and desirable goal, made me feel less lonely. It made me want to go there, to India, which I've been so fortunate to do three times, and will do so again in the Fall of 2024.

Of course, later I learned there were teachings and practices—although not a religion, mind you—that helped explain and even further our human birthright to experience this sense of love-filled Fullness—that brings the freedom from fear and suffering. And, I learned that one could pursue a life connected to this truth: that actually there were no Others—and that, if one person suffers, we all suffer, too. 
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Imagine my joy when I discovered many years ago this powerful and ancient Sanskrit verse that points clearly simply, profoundly to that experience of Fullness I’d had when I was a child.