CHANT OF GOD NAME

Name (Nama) is certainly superior to form (Rupa); therefore, even if form doesn’t arise in the mind, one should not abandon the Name. In time, form will naturally appear on its own. Since form is material and perceptible, it is subject to creation and destruction, increase and decrease, occupying and shifting space, and changes over time — in other words, it is bound by limitations. However, the Name exists beyond the senses, is subtle, and thus is free from these changes — no birth or death, growth or decay, or limitations of space and time affect it. The Name is of the nature of truth and existence itself. Compared to form, the Name is vast and expansive. And since anything more expansive holds greater power, it also possesses more independence. The more independent a thing is, the fewer limitations it has. That’s why the Name is more extensive, powerful, free, and unbound than form.

Now, let’s consider how our process of knowing works. Suppose you stand atop a hill and gaze upon the beauty of creation. Notice the different processes taking place in this act of seeing. First, rays of light enter your eyes. Then, after a brief moment of rational thought, you gain an accurate understanding of the objects around you. But the activity of human intellect doesn’t stop there. As you stand on the hill and look around at the trees, vines, houses, gardens, people, birds, and ponds, you gather knowledge of all these individual things. Then, bringing them together in your mind, you recognize them as a unified ‘splendor of nature.’ This means that the essential characteristic of human knowledge is to perceive unity in diversity.

Though the world presents a wide variety of strange and diverse things — different kinds of stones, insects, birds, and animals — even though their names and forms differ, they all share the quality of ‘existence.’ Whether it’s a living creature or an inanimate object, it ‘is.’ Even happiness itself possesses the quality of ‘being.’ This quality of ‘being-ness’ is called the Name. In essence, the Name is equivalent to ‘Existence.’ That is why the Name was present at the beginning of creation, it exists now, and will remain even after the universe dissolves. The Name is the very form of the Divine. From the Name arise countless forms, and in the end, all of them dissolve back into it. Form cannot exist independently of the Name. The Name pervades all forms and still remains beyond them.

The Name is eternal — it existed in the past, it exists in the present, and it will continue to exist even after we are gone