“Fright never injures anyone. What injures the spirit is having someone always on your back, beating you, telling you what to do and what not to do.”
Carlos Castaneda

Journey to Ixtlan

Chanting – Panca Maya

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Chanting is one of the more intriguing tools in Yoga. In my first years of practice I was uncomfortable with chanting – it took me time to overcome my fears of letting my voice be heard (I don’t even sing in the shower). Since then, I have had an opportunity to learn only the basics of voice and chanting and know only a few chants. I would be happy to learn much more.

It is said that a practice of Asana & Pranayama is an effective preparation for meditation. My experience of chanting is that it can pierce directly into the heart of meditation and beyond. Over the past few days I have re-opened my chanting resources and re-introduced some chanting to my practice. Tonight I also made a short recording and was surprised to (1) thinking of uploading it and (2) actually doing it.

Placing the sound of my voice online feels like a whole new dimension of exposure. Especially now, when I am alone and on some days almost completely silent:

click to play

I don’t have the tools to present a proper transliteration of Sanskrit – so this is as close as I can go for now.

Panca Maya

ma aham – ahama annam
me I am – I am the body

ma aham – ahama pranam
me I am – I am energy

ma aham – ahama manah
me I am – I am the mind

ma aham – aham vijnanam
me I am – I am the personality

ma aham – ahama anandam
me I am – I am the emotions

ma aham – aham sarvam
me I am – I am all

ma aham – aham aham
me I am – i am I am

This entry was posted in Chanting, Yoga. You are welcome to read 1 comment and to add yours

One Comment

  1. Louise
    Posted March 3, 2021 at 6:14 pm | Permalink

    Thank you so much for this (and your very interesting blog). My teacher is chanting the panca maya in an online meditation class and I couldn’t quite make out all the words. I’ve copied them out by hand so hopefully I will be able to follow along much better next time 🙂

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