Why do we chant mantras 108 times?

At the Yoga Australia teacher's retreat in South Australia recently we took the opportunity to chant the Gayatri Mantra 108 times. This is a traditional practice which is why there are 108 beads on a mala. The fingers are run over the beads to facilitate counting while chanting. There is also a tradition in yoga of doing 108 sun salutations.

The question arose later in conversation, why 108? What is it about 108 that makes it chosen as the number of times to chant a mantra or  do sun salutations?

108 is a number that is ascribed mystical significance in Indian traditions but other traditions as well. Here are some attributions:

• The deities of Hinduism often have 108 names. 
• There are 54 letters in the Sanskrit alphabet; with each letter being attributed with a masculine and a feminine aspect, or more accurately Shiva and Shakti, 54 x 2 = 108. 
• There are said to be 108 Gopis or servants of lord Krishna
• In symbolic terms 1 stands for the one Universal Consciousness from which all arises; 0 stands for completeness or perfection which is also fully spacious (empty, void) that is the goal of the spiritual path; 8 stands for Infinity (laid on its side it is a universal symbol for infinity
• In numerology 9 is considered the number of completion and 12 is the cosmic number. their product 9 x 12 = 108, 108 is the Universal number
• 1+0+8 = 9; in numerology 9 represents unconditional love
• Some schools of Buddhism say there are 108 feelings, multiplying the six senses of taste, hearing, smell, sight, touch and consciousness by the three attributes of  painful, pleasant or neutral, multiplied again by the two factors of whether they are internally or externally generated, and again by the three time divisions of past, present or future. 6 x 3 x 2 x 3 = 108
• 18 is a revered number in Judaism. Gifts and charitable donations are given in multiples of 18 (18 x 6 = 108) and in the number 108 the fullness of zero sits inside 18.
• Many Buddhist temples have 108 steps

But none of this really satisfactorily explains why.

The ancient Indians were keen astronomers (and astrologers) and great mathematicians, so I wondered if all the magical mystical significance comes about due to their understanding of the maths and science of it. And it turns out that there are indeed some pretty amazing things about 108 when we turn to science and mathematics. Like this:

• The average distance of the earth from the sun is 108 times the diameter of the sun
• The average distance of the earth from the moon is 108 times the diameter of the moon

At least it would have been as far as the ancients could observe and calculate it - with modern instruments and computers it is a bit off, but still, I am already going wow!

Now for the mathematics.  I have to admit to quite a lot of  "glazing over" when researching this for I am not noted as a mathematician. But it turns out to be a pretty cool maths idea too. See if you can get your head around these:

• 1¹ x 2² x 3³ = 108 (1 x 4 x 27 = 108) - that is called hyperfactorial. But wait there's more!
• 108 is a refactorial number meaning that it is divisible by the count of its divisors, that is it has 12 divisors, 1 and 108, 2 and 54, 3 and 36, 4 and 27, 6 and 18, 9 and 12, and it is divisible by 12
• The measure in degrees of the internal angle of a regular pentagon is 108 (Euclidean space) - this relates back to metaphysical excitement about the number as pentagons are also considered a magical shape.
•  2 sin (^108°/₂) = ᵩ (the Greek symbol phi which means the golden ratio )

• Apparently it is also a "self number", an "abundant number", a "semi-perfect number" and a "tetranacci number" but this is about where my mathematical capabilities resulted in a headache.

I do not know if all of this has resulted in an answer, really, as to why we chant the mantras 108 times and do 108 sun salutes, or why the deities have 108 names, however with such an amazing number, why not?

Many thanks to my daughter Chaitanya Shettigara for her mathematical input ... she actually does understand it all and was most helpful in researching this article.

Navaratri

First published in "On the Mat" 2013 

While traditions vary across India, the festival of Navaratri honours the Goddess in her different forms, mainly as Saraswati, Goddess of learning and culture, Lakshmi, Goddess of wealth and prosperity, and Durga, Goddess of strength, courage and encompassing the ferocity of a mother in protecting her young.

Maa Durga

The word navaratri literally means nine nights, and the festival of Navaratri lasts nine days and nine nights. It occurs during the first nine days of the bright half of the month of Aashwayyuja in the Indian calendar. In our western calendar it is a "moveable feast" like Easter is, because the western calendar is not linked to the phases of the moon.

West Bengal celebrates Navaratri as Durga Puja. Kolkata (Calcutta) probably derived its name form Kali, another name of Durga. The last three nights and days are given over to magnificent welcomings of Maa Durga to her earthly home. Huge displays of earthen sculptures of Durga with her sons Ganesha and  Kartika, and Saraswati and Lakshmi are erected as the focus of large communal prayer meetings followed by mass feedings and cultural celebrations. On the tenth day they are taken in a procession to a nearby river where they are ceremoniously immersed.

Dancing Dandiya in tradiational dress

In western India, especially in the state of Gugarat, people spend the nine nights in party mode, dancing the garba and dandiya dances all through the night, with a puja for the Goddess and food served for everyone present. Women dressed in beautiful brightly coloured clothes with a wide skirt, blouse and scarf draped gracefully, dance the garba, a graceful dance in circular patterns, moving in a big circle around a central pot containing a lamp. Men and women participate in the dandiya, which features bamboo sticks held in the hands that are brought together, either one's own or another's, as the intricate patterns of the dance proceed.  The dance commences slowly but as it progresses the tempo increases to a frenzy.

In Mysore in the southern state of Karnataka, the biggest day is Dusshera, the tenth day after Navaratri, when the city turns on a parade to celebrate Chamundi, a form of Durga, and her victory over the demon. Chamundi is the family deity of the Maharaja of Mysore and the parade features the palace elephants decked out in all their glory,hoses and courtiers, who wend their way throughout he city and all the way to Chamundi Hill which overlooks the city.

A typical golu display

Many places throughout India have a custom during Navaratri of erecting tiered displays of dolls called by various names such as golu, kolu, bombe habba, bommala koluvlu. The displays are erected in the house on an odd number of tiers (usually 7, 9 or 11). Just like we store our Christmas decorations and get them  out from some high shelf, or from under a bed where they have languished for a year, so too the golu dolls emerge at the beginning of the festival, the steps are arranged and the dolls displayed. Deities are displayed on the top tiers, and depictions of householders lower down as well as animals on the lower shelves. Women and children visit each other during this festival to view each other's displays, sing some bhajans for the goddess and take home packages of prasadam from that house (often the day's sundal, see the recipe section). Unlike Christmas trees which can tend to linger for ages, the golu display is promptly packed up at the end of the festival and put away for another year.

The dance of ever renewing delight

I recently spent a week on retreat, in silence, while also being in community. Try imagining sitting in a dining room full of other people and talking to no-one. Many find it impossible to imagine.

What a treat it was! And a week did not seem long enough in the end.

Silence doesn't only mean "not talking". It means "not doing anything that will take you away from the ongoing meditation and stilling of the fluctuations of the mind". Pretty much no texting, emailing, reading the frivolous, like Facebook,. I didn't take a computer, and the only book I had was my handbag sized copy of the Yoga Sutras interpretively translated by Swami Venkatesananda, as it goes wherever my handbag goes. I did indeed open and read it on a few occasions at night and during the long afternoon breaks, finding that it could take me deeper, rather than taking me away.

Another text that might have also taken me deeper would have been the Radiance Sutras had I thought to take it. Many of the meditation practices we did on retreat were from the Radiance Sutras.

The retreat was titled "Embodied Awakening" and was led by a very talented teacher, Anne Douglas. The title indicates that the body itself is a gateway to awakening. As we come into a heightened sensitivity to information of the body we start to open all of our perception, including to the experiences that are beyond the body.

Through repeated body-sensing practices, meditation and Yoga Nidra, and by not interspersing this with the things that would take us away, we began to enter a more awake state.  An awakeness that is awake no matter what the state of the body, awake even if the body sleeps, dreaming or dreamless, and awake in a vaster sense than ordinary wakeful states.

The Radiance Sutras are Lorin Roche's beautiful, modern, interpretive translation of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra (c.800CE), a lovely text from the tradition of Kashmir Shaivism. The title of this post is taken from Sutra 156.

Let me share Sutras 155 -156 with you.

155
Breath flows
Into this body
As a nectar of the gods. 

Every breath is a whisper
Of the Goddess:
"Here is the ritual I ask of you -
Be the cup
Into which I pour this bliss,
The elixir of immortal peace." 

156
The breath flows out with the sound sa,
The breath flows in with the sound ha.
Thus thousands of times a day,
Everyone who breathes is adoring the Goddess. 

Know this, and be in great joy.
Listen to the ongoing prayer that is breath.
Life shall dance in you
A dance of ever-renewing delight.

Perhaps you are put off by this talk of "the Goddess" so lets talk about that. Who is this Goddess?

The text comes from the tradition of Kashmir Shaivism. The "Goddess" is, at a story-telling level, the consort of Shiva, who is sometimes called Parvati, but also is known as Shakti. But such terms are actually metaphorical. This God and Goddess are not personalities, they are the Universe, and they are in fact one. The Goddess is the energetic aspect of Consciousness that causes manifestation. In other words, Shakti causes Divine Consciousness to pulse, and matter to come into being. These concepts have a very nice correlation with astrophysics!

So everything is really Shiva-Shakti, and you can experience this, in your body. Your body becomes a pathway to knowing the Divine and a pathway to returning to the knowledge of your True Nature. So the 112 meditations of the Vijnana Bhairava are 112 gateways of the body to returning to your True Nature.

Here in these two sutras our gateway is the breath. "Be the cup into which I pour this bliss", be receptive to the breath, "be in great joy", "listen to the ongoing prayer", "life shall dance in you".

So next time you are lying quietly - in savasana at the end of your next yoga practice perhaps, or even in bed tonight, waiting for sleep, be receptive, open, listen, feel and quietly let this wondrous experience of the breath be meditation and prayer.

There is a poem about how I was feeling when I returned from retreat here.

You might also be interested in a previous post, Siva - Sakti.

Namaste

First published in "On the Mat" September 2011

Namaste - though it literally translates as "I bow to you", some say it signifies "the Divine in me salutes the Divine in you".

First day of September was Ganesh Chaturthi this year. How apt! Lord Ganesha, Remover of Obstacles, is propitiated for all new beginnings, and spring is a great new beginning. It followed closely upon the birthday of Lord Krishna, Krishna Jamnasthami, on 22 August. 9 September is Onam, a harvest festival in the southern state of Kerala. Soon arising on the Hindu calendar are Navaraatri, the nine nights of celebration of the Goddess in her many forms, commencing 28 September, and Diwali, the festival of lights, on 26 October.

Always comfortable with paradox, Hinduism has many deities, yet still acknowledges just one Divine Presence. Whether we focus on the Divine Mother, powerful Shakti, the Remover of Obstacles or the Divine cowherd, all are aspects of the one, and the One is everywhere, including in ourselves.

When we salute the Divine in other people and in other life forms, and treasure it in ourselves, we have the foundation of Ahimsa, non-violence and compassion, first of the Yamas which comprise the first of the eight limbs of Patanjali's Yoga. To acknowledge the Divine flowing through us all, how could we not be compassionate.