We seek to know the supreme, unchanging divine presence.

We meditate upon the Great Auspicious Lord — the all-encompassing being.

May Rudra inspire and guide our hearts and minds.

Śiva brings the mind to stillness, reveals the truth beyond concepts, and heals by dissolving the roots of suffering and fear — the cause itself.

This mantra is the inner work of transformation: a readiness to pass through the first phase of resistance, neither fleeing from it nor drowning in it.

The fruit (phala): clarity of mind, release from fear and illusion, readiness to know what lies hidden behind the veil of appearances.

One of the most ancient Vedic gods. The name “Rudra” means “the roaring,” “the howling,” “the mighty, the most powerful” — bound to Vāyu, the wind and the storm. He is the deity of medicine and the hunt, a many-sided force.

The essential meaning to which this mantra is addressed: Rudra does not cope with a problem — he removes its cause. He does not treat the symptom; he pulls the root.

In the Veda, Rudra was feared: for most people the thought of perpetual transformation is too heavy, and Rudra gradually becomes an outcast-ascetic, given only the leftovers of sacrifice. In the Purāṇic age a mature resolve is born — to accept Rudra and to convince oneself that this is good. So Rudra becomes Śiva (from the root śi — auspicious, kind, benevolent), Śaṅkara — “the bringer of good.”

When the gods and the asuras churned the ocean — before the amṛta, before the treasures — the poison Halāhala rose up. Śiva neither swallowed it nor spat it out. He held it in his throat — and so his throat turned blue, and they called him Nīlakaṇṭha.

Ordinary people either swallow the poison (and poison themselves) or spit it out (and poison the world). Śiva is the third way: neither refusal nor dissolution, but holding. This is the very force to which the mantra is addressed.

The mantra is set in Gāyatrī meter — three lines of eight syllables, twenty-four in all. The most contemplative of the Vedic meters.

A few places ask for attention, so that the Sanskrit truly sounds rather than is merely read: