A Rhythm !
Hello Friends,
It’s been a little while. Life has been full since my return from Varanasi, a time spent settling back into daily life, getting organised, and establishing new rhythms.
One new discipline I've been cultivating is an early morning gym routine. It helps immensely that my wife joins me—it's become a wonderful, shared start to our day. This focus on physical discipline has, perhaps unsurprisingly, sparked a return to a spiritual one.
Alongside this new physical routine, I’ve dusted off an old spiritual one: Vedic chanting. A colleague and I had started about two years ago, and I've just resumed with one of my favourites, the Purusha Suktam.
It’s a hymn about the creation of the universe, and I wanted to share a little of what makes it so fascinating. It paints a picture of a single cosmic being, the Purusha, from which everything flows. Here are a few key ideas:
He is All-Encompassing: The Purusha has a thousand heads, eyes, and feet, pervading and transcending the entire universe. He is everything that was, is, and will be.
The Universe is Just a Fraction: Incredibly, the entire physical creation is said to be only one-quarter of His being. The rest is pure, immortal spirit.
Creation from Sacrifice: The hymn describes a cosmic sacrifice where the Purusha is the offering. From this act, everything is born: the sun from His eyes, the moon from His mind, the earth from His feet, and even the four social orders (varnas) from different parts of His body.
Chanting this has been a great way to ground myself. It’s a profound reminder that there’s a cosmic order to things, even when daily life feels chaotic.
You can read this hymn from here Chap-11.p65
The exact pronunciation is here Complete Purusha Suktam with Lyrics | Vedic Chanting by 21 Brahmins