Vedic Meditation (VM) is often mistakenly defined as Hindu Meditation. In fact, Vedic Meditation comes from the Veda - the body of knowledge from ancient India that is the source of Yoga, Meditation, and Ayurvedic medicine - and predates modern Hinduism.
It can be defined as a spiritual discipline aimed at awakening to the supreme. The normal Vedic meditation posture has the devotee on the floor with his legs crossed and his eyes closed. The purpose of VM is for the devotee to silently repeat a mantra, and thus awaken to the supreme self. The purpose is not to relax, or help a person's health (although followers claim it does), it is to experience deeper levels of mind.
Vedic meditation is over 5,000 years old; its origins are in India. Learning Vedic Meditation is relatively simple. The initiate is given a mantra by a teacher or guru based on Vedic Astrology. The mantra has no inherent meaning but is only a sound used silently (not spoken or chanted) in the mind to induce a relaxed, non-thinking state. The mantra is repeated until it becomes more and more "subtle". The meditator practices twice a day - once in the morning and once in the evening - for 20 minutes in a comfortable upright position. There is no demand on the meditator to change his/her lifestyle in any way save that nothing interferes with his/her daily practice.
It is structured so that there is no formal organisation and meditators do not have to join any group to learn. Vedic Meditation has been gaining in popularity in recent years, and is taught world-wide by independent teachers.
The oral tradition of the Vedas (Śrauta) consists of several pathas, "recitations" or ways of chanting the Vedic mantras. Such traditions of Vedic chant are often considered the oldest unbroken oral tradition in existence, the fixation of the samhita texts as preserved dating to roughly the time of Homer (early Iron Age).[1]
The various pathas are designed to allow the complete and perfect memorization of the text and its pronunciation, including the Vedic pitch accent.
UNESCO proclaimed the tradition of Vedic chant a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity on November 7, 2003.
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Mainly the students are first taught the samhita patha, that is the text with sandhi applied. Other pathas include vakya, pada, krama, jata, mala, sikha, rekha, dhvaja, danda, ratha, ghana.
A pathin is a scholar who has mastered the patha. Thus, a ghanapaathin (or ghanapaati in Telugu) has learnt the chanting of the scripture up to the advanced stage called ghana. Ghanapathins chant the ghana by intoning a few words of a mantra in different ways, back and forth. The sonority natural to Vedic chanting is enhanced in ghana.
The padapatha consists of dividing the sentence (vakya) into individual pada or words. The kramapatha consists of pairing two words at a time. In Jatapatha, the words are braided together, so to speak, and recited back and forth. The Ghanapatha or the "Bell" mode of chanting is so called because the words are repeated back and forth in a bell shape. The samhita, vakya and krama pathas can be described as the natural or prakrutipathas. The remaining 8 modes of chanting are classified as Vikrutipathas as they involve reversing of the word order. The backward chanting of words does not alter the meanings in the Vedic (Sanskrit) language.
The chief purpose of such methods is to ensure that not even a syllable of a mantra is altered to the slightest extent, which has resulted in the most stable oral tradition of texts worldwide.
Prodigous energy was expended by ancient Indian culture in ensuring that these texts were transmitted from generation to generation with inordinate fidelity.[2][1] For example, memorization of the sacred Vedas included up to eleven forms of recitation of the same text. The texts were subsequently "proof-read" by comparing the different recited versions. Forms of recitation included the (literally "mesh recitation") in which every two adjacent words in the text were first recited in their original order, then repeated in the reverse order, and finally repeated again in the original order.[3] The recitation thus proceeded as:
The insistence on preserving pronunciation and accent as accurately as possible is related to the belief that the potency of the mantras lies in their sound when pronounced. The shakhas thus have the purpose of preserving knowledge of uttering divine sound originally heard by the rishis.
Portions of the Vedantic literature elucidate the use of sound as a spiritual tool. They assert that the entire cosmic creation began with sound: "By His utterance came the universe." (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 1.2.4). The Vedanta-sutras add that ultimate liberation comes from sound as well (anavrittih shabdat).
Primal sound is referred to as Shabda Brahman - "God as word". Closely related to this is the concept of Nada Brahman - "God as sound". Nada, a Sanskrit word meaning "sound, noise", is related to the term nadī, "river", figuratively denoting the stream of consciousness - a concept that goes back to the Rig Veda, the most ancient of the Vedas. Thus, the relationship between sound and consciousness has long been recorded in India's ancient literature. Vedic texts, in fact, describe sound as the pre-eminent means for attaining higher, spiritual consciousness.
Mantras, or sacred sounds, are used to pierce through sensual, mental and intellectual levels of existence (all lower strata of consciousness) for the purpose of purification and spiritual enlightenment. "By sound vibration one becomes liberated" (Vedanta-sutra 4.22).
Modern practitioners claim that the sounds of Sanskrit phonemes (aksharas) have been shown to affect the mind, intellect, and auditory nerves of those who chant and hear them (see also experiments by Hans Jenny), claiming that they affect the seven chakras of the spinal column, as well as the three pranic channels of the subtle body.
The chanting of popular Hindu mantras like Om (found throughout the Vedas) or the Hare Krishna mantra (found in the Kalisantarana Upanisad) is also sometimes referred to as "Vedic chant" even if the chanting is not done according to a patha. The Gayatri Mantra is Rigvedic, but due to its popularity in Hinduism it is often chanted freely, and thus would also sometimes not strictly qualify.
Vedic mythology refers to the mythological aspects of the historical Vedic religion and Vedic literature. It has directly contributed to the evolution and development of later Hinduism and Hindu mythology. The four Vedic Samhitas are part of the Hindu Śruti. Sanskrit veda means "knowledge".
Vedic lore contains numerous elements which are common to Indo-European mythological traditions, like the mythologies of Persia, Greece, and Rome, and that of the Celtic, Germanic and Slavic peoples. The Vedic god Indra in part corresponds to Dyaus Pitar, the Sky Father, Zeus and Jupiter. The deity Yama, the lord of the dead, is Yima of Persian mythology and the (later) Buddhist Yanluo or Emma in the traditions of China and Japan. Vedic hymns refer to these and other deities, often 33, consisting of eight Vasus, eleven Rudras, twelve Adityas, and the late Rigvedic Prajapati. These deities belong to the three dimensions of the universe/heavens, the earth, and the intermediate space. Some major deities of the Vedic tradition include Indra, Surya, Agni, Vayu, Varuna, Mitra Aditi, Yama, Soma, Ushas, Sarasvati and Rudra.
The Vishnu Purana attributes the current arrangement of four Vedas to the mythical sage Vedavyasa.[1] Puranic tradition also postulates a single original Veda that, in varying accounts, was divided into three or four parts. According to the Vishnu Purana (3.2.18, 3.3.4 etc) the original Veda was divided into four parts, and further fragmented into numerous shakhas, by Vishnu in the form of Vyasa, in the Dvapara Yuga; the Vayu Purana (section 60) recounts a similar division by Vyasa, at the urging of Brahma. The Bhagavata Purana (12.6.37) traces the origin of the primeval Veda to the syllable aum, and says that it was divided into four at the start of Dvapara Yuga, because men had declined in age, virtue and understanding. In a differing account Bhagavata Purana (9.14.43) attributes the division of the primeval veda (aum) into three parts to the monarch Pururavas at the beginning of Treta Yuga.
no:Vedisk mytologi ro:Mitologie vedică