Translation:

Notes:

• "Namah Shivāya" is also known as the "panch akshari mantra" or Five Syllable Mantra, also the Great Redeeming Mantra.

• "Namah Shivāya" historically occurs first:
  • ... in the Rudram, a chant from the Vedas (specifically, the Krishna Yajur Veda, perhaps the earliest of the Hindu scriptures, thousands of years old).

    Amazing fact: The Rudram, if I recall correctly, is the only place that Proto Indo European tone is still explicitly marked, tone having otherwise been lost in all the daughter languages. Using the strong and reliable methods of historical linguistic reconstruction, PIE has been reconstructed as a tone language, due to an inferred tone pattern's influences on historical sound changes, except that all its daughter languages have lost the distinctive tone. Except in the Rudram, where tone marks are still explicit, and those who chant the Rudram need to see the marks to know how to sing it.

  • ... in the section of the Rudram known as "Chamakam", which enumerates names and attributes of the god Rudra, more recently known as Shiva and as the Self. "cha" means "and" or "also", so the Chamakam lists the attributes that are also (Rudra's, Shiva's, the Self's, yours).

  • ... in a verse which goes, "Namah shivāya cha, Shiva tarāya cha", meaning "and also 'honor to shiva' and also 'to that which is beyond shiva'". Thus Shiva is not an endpoint but that which one honors, whereby the bowing or honoring itself is the attainment, and where shiva is acknowledged but immediately surpassed; the going beyond is itself divinity.

• ONS is the slogan of Shaivite Hinduism, written in large letters on buildings and fences in some Hindu neighborhoods, printed on shawls. As a public symbol, it indicates affiliation with some form of meditation-oriented yoga philosophy.

• "I bow" renders in Sanskrit as "namāmi" with the first person singular present indicative tense suffix "-āmi" on the root verb "nam", to bend or bow, hence "I bow".

  In contrast "namah" is actually the noun derived from "to bow", thus "reverence, homage, honor". It is said, there is no "I" in "TEAM", similarly there is no first person pronoun, I, in "Om namah shivāya".

  This grammatical difference changes my experience in mantra-repetition meditation with ONS. Instead of putting myself into the phrase as the agent or doer of a bowing action, I find myself merely observing what happens, considering it all to constitute, or have the meaning of, honor to Shiva.

  Similar to the removal of an unnecessary sense of agency in the So'ham mantra when the latter is listened to as already going on in the breath, rather than carried out as the doer, the words are understood as predicative not performative, they call your attention to what is going on, rather than represent something you are to do or think.

• ONS is the public mantra of Siddha Yoga.

• The five syllables can be onomatopoetically identified with the five actions in the "five-fold action of Shiva" frequently mentioned and discussed in yoga philosophy, namely, creation, sustenance, dissolution, ignorance, and grace.

• As it turns out I have a PhD in phonetics for which I spent perhaps thousands of hours listening to and studying the finest details of natural speech pronunciation in a variety of dialects, a process which left me with certain intuitions about pronunciation. I've also been to the beach and listened to waves, sucked appreciatively on a lollipop, been shushed when too loud, and shouted with surprised joy, just like you or anyone. These two sources of information are combined below.

  na	/n/ is the fastest of all consonants, pronounced with a phonetic transition between steady states measureable in the range of 2 to 4 milliseconds. Speed evokes change, and change evokes creation of something new, novelty, chaos, the unknown. Thus "na" evokes creation.
  mah	/m/ is the sound of yumminess and continuity, especially when it is prolonged. /m/ thus evokes the desireable experience which continues forward in time and is held, known, and relished and cherished by the experiencer. Thus "mah" evokes the action of sustaining, or sustenance.
  shi	/sh/ is the sound of "be quiet", which implies the cessation of noise and distraction by outside stimulation. Thus "shi" evokes the end or dissolution of stimulating experience, and the return to attentive focus within on one's own power of attention itself, which is the inner witness, or the Self.
  vā	/vā/ and /wā/ are not different in devanagari or most Indic languages such as Sanskrit and Hindi. /vā/ is often pronounced as [wā]. [wā] is the sound of a wave breaking, the sound of relaxation itself. Repeat it, you will see. Thus "vā" evokes the experience of rest, or the inward settling after experiences are over while the system recharges itself. Inward settling rest is free of mental phenomena, and thus lacks knowledge and can be understood as ignorance. Thus "vā" evokes the fourth action of the five-fold action.
  ya	/ya/ is the sound of an innocent shout of happiness or surprised delight. Thus "ya" evokes grace.

  Therefore to meditate on the syllables of the panchakshari mantra is to meditate on the five-fold action of Shiva. Each syllable can itself be repeatedly contemplated as referring to its action, so that through the sound of the syllable, the action can be focussed on. Each cycle through the five syllables reiterates to the meditator that the five-fold action is continuously going on within consciousness, and that, for example, truly satisfying rest (action 4), and the fully-charged experience of divine grace (action 5), are also part of each cycle. Since many forms of mental anguish and pain are caused by ignorance of the fact that rest and grace are frequently and with great availability recurring in one's own experience, this mantra understood in this way can bring relief from mental pain and anguish.

• Ask me about mantra as understood within a general theory of language production.