Today marks my 100th "Inside the Pomegranate" blog post. So, I thought I would somehow incorporate the idea of 100 into my post today. I wasn't sure where the idea of 100 would take me, but my mind started wandering - which it's prown to do - and I remembered that I recently read that there are 100 meanings of om. I decided to take that idea and run with it for my 100th post.
For anyone who's ever gone to a yoga class, many are begun or at least ended with a collective chant of om. Yoga, with in roots in Hinduism, relies on many Sanskrit words for poses (asanas) and breathing techniques. Sanskrit, as you probably know, is the ancient language of India (akin to how Latin is an ancient language). Depending on the yoga class and the teacher more or less emphasis is given to the meaning of om. I'm nowhere near being an expert on the meaning of om or Vedic chanting, but here's a little of what I've learned through a bit of reading: in the beginning it was the supreme word and the word created everything, the sound om is the sound within us and it is also the sound of the universe, by chanting om it also means you are inviting energy, and om is the sound of the divine.
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| the Sanskrit word, om |
Om, when spelled out, is obviously a short looking word, but when chanted it takes on a vowel-heavy song-like quality, more like aaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmm. I love when, at the end of a yoga class, chanting starts with each person voicing om in their own pitch - their own musical note - and then suddenly the tone melts together in harmony. It is a beautiful thing to be part of.
I also learned that om, which comes to us from Hinduism and before that from Sanskrit, is the same root word for Amen in the Roman civilization, Amun in the Egyptian civilization, and Ameen in the Arabic civilization. Interesting, no?
