Music, Memory, Mantra

 

If you’re reading this because you have some experience of yoga, possibly with me as your teacher, you may have been offered a mantra to chant or listen for at the beginning or ending of class.  Mantras are phrases of sometimes seemingly nonsensical syllables.  They generally have some sort of meaning, though, and you can know what they mean.  But the key to mantra theory is that you don’t have to know what the syllables mean.  (I write syllable, because some of them aren’t things we’d translate as words.)  You can really only know if it works or not.  Some of them are easy to do and hear; they may ground you and soothe you.  Others are more difficult to say out loud; they may churn you and agitate.  The yoga is what you do with that experience. 

In any case, mantra does to you what good music often does.  It takes you to memory.  Mantra traverses mind to heart and back again (manas means both heart and mind; -tra makes it a tool), crossing the palate to create sound.  Both the sound and the act of making the sound are ways that you connect what has never been and can never be separate.  Mantra just heightens the resonance that was already there.   

For months, I had only been listening to what was readily available on my phone for my hours-long commutes every day.  For being a lady who doesn’t mind to spend a little dough, I was surprisingly cheap when it came to my music library.  There was very little in my playlists that I couldn’t just ignore while I flipped through the Vogue or attended to the Facebook on the train.  I played one of the tracks from Shantala’s Voice of the Esraj or Garth Stevens’ Flying for savasana at the end of class.  I didn’t realize what I was missing – that there could be more.

An unexpected concert attendance back in February re-lit me and reminded me of how it could be, how I could feel.  And so I bought the album, joined Spotify, and was mystified by my newfound ability to think of an artist, type it in, and come up with something that touched my heart again and again.  (I know, I’m a little behind here folks.)  For weeks, I’ve been revisiting old songs, remembering favorite moments.  But not just remembering how I was then, I really felt like that girl who loves those songs.  At the same time, I’ve begun having new feelings and making new memories.  I’m adding to old songs and learning new ones. 

The difference between an old song from your college days and mantra is that mantras take you farther back.  They take you in to the operating system in your heart-mind, allowing you to touch the parts of yourself that are otherwise hard to get to.  These are the parts that are not right before your eyes, but that you’re willing to see with your eyes closed.  And then open.  It’s said that if you meditate and become receptive enough, you’d hear them chanting themselves.  And then you can join in.    

Every year at Rajanaka Camp with Douglas, we spend some time learning a mantra.  We take something that’s effective as simply message, information, instruction and learn enough about it through narrative to give it meaning.  Mantras are gifts, and gifts shouldn’t be burdens.  We are reminded of very few instructions on when and how much to do the mantras.  The only instruction is to do it when you feel like it. 

At the end of Camp, we have a dinner called Curry Night.  After days of lecture and note-taking, we let loose a little, have a drink, and eventually head upstairs to gather around the piano and sing Springsteen and Stones songs.  It’s only just this year that I understand that we’re remembering then, too.  And making new memories.  We’re connecting heart to mind and back again.  I’m really looking forward to this year’s Camp.