Shanti Mantras And The Upanishads
The chanting of Shanti Mantras is the recitation of peace prayers before the teaching of the Upanishads, which are the loftiest teachings from the Vedas, influencing Schopenhauer and many great Western thinkers.
Today, having a meaningful way to pray for the peace and well-being of the world carries a sense of urgency. Mantras work more effectively in this context because their vibrations are different from those of everyday speech, even though mantras are themselves a form of speech, albeit not ordinary speech but sacred speech.
The chanting of Shanti Mantras was at a crucial juncture in the Eternal Way of Hinduism, also known as Sanatana Dharma that originated from the Vedas. The Upanishads are the culmination of the Vedas, which is why they are known as Vedānta: the anta, meaning "end," of the Vedas. Chronologically, the Upanishads occur at the end of the Vedic period.
You have these beautiful poems written in the ancient Vedic meters, which begin the Vedas with the Rig Veda, and then they're expressed in song, meaning in a type of lilting, musical manner in the Sama Veda. Then, they're described in ritual with the Yajur Veda and subsequently expressed in the magical spells of the Atharva Veda.
However, all this reaches its climax in the Upanishads, where a significant breakthrough occurs, which Karl Jaspers calls the First Axial Period. Upon examining the timing, it appears that the Upanishads mark the beginning of the First Axial Period, indicating that the breakthrough at that time originated in India.
Shanti Mantras are chanted before any Upanishadic teaching, which explores the nature of Brahman and the nature of the self, topics that many of us find ourselves considering today as we ponder what lies beyond death or the deeper meaning of being alive. In Hinduism, specifically in the Upanishadic period, we see the emergence of ashramas.
The ashrama, on the one hand, means the Ashram, which is a physical location. On the other hand, they mean a stage of life. And so, at this particular time, people were retiring deeper into the forest to begin this introspective process. They were examining the aging process and wanted to delve deeper into it.
They wanted to discover some aspect of self that would defy death, that would sustain beyond death, that had a deeper meaning beyond biological life, that had a deeper meaning beyond what we could call the typical psychological chronology of a human: be born, study, get married, have children.
And so the ashramas developed as one comes to the end of their life and realizes that death is coming next. Everything one did to fill one's life with meaning does not have quite the same relevance now. And so they withdrew into the forests to become more introspective, and their extraordinary findings are documented in the Upanishads.
In this awareness, we begin our study of the Upanishads, specifically the Taiterreya Upanishad, in our Yogic Mystery School. And, as customary in the Upanishadic tradition, we start by chanting Shanti Mantras, which are praying for the peace and well-being of the world.
In the early centuries of the first millennium BCE, a remarkable breakthrough occurred within India's ancient spiritual civilization. The Vedas had been "heard" (śruti) by the Hindu seers (ṛṣiḥ) sometime before this watershed moment; they are "apauruṣeya," not of human origin.
The Vedas evolved from the original form of uninterrupted sacred verse (saṁhita) and their embodiment within holy rituals (brāhmaṇam) into the forest ashrams of yogic mystery schools, where they were internalized through mantras, meditation, and yogic practices during the āraṇyaka phase.
The Upanishads gather this sacred wisdom in forest texts that embody the early experiences of spiritual enlightenment, which shine in humans. Every Upanishad begins with a Shanti mantra, a peace prayer that prepares the body, mind, and heart for knowledge that transcends this world.
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