This week we will continue with the remaining pre-chant warm up steps Nyasam and Dhyanam. Nyasam is simply purifying and divinizing the various parts of the body. Dhyanam is a simple prayer to the Lord to whom the chant is addressed to.
NYASAM (Invocation)
Nyasam simply means to invoke or to place. In short, it is the process of divinizing oneself by invoking the God (Paramatma) who resides inside us (Jeevatma). It is to be performed by the individual who is doing the chanting. There are seven kinds of Nyasa and they recommend to do 3 or 4 types of nyasa i.e. divinize various parts of the body such as head, mouth, hands, feet, heart etc before chanting Aditya Hrudayam. This is a slightly elaborate process usually performed while doing Sandhya vandana. I usually skip this step to proceed to dhyanam.
DHYANAM (Prayer)
After completing nyasam next step is to pray to Lord Surya with the following dhyana mantra and do namaskaram.
namassavitre jagadeka cakṣuse
jagatprasūti sthiti nāśahetave
trayīmayāya triguṇātma dhāriṇe
viriñci nārāyaṇa śaṅkarātmane
Namah – Salutations
Savitre – Sun God
jagat – World
eka – one
caksuse – eye
jagat – world
prasuti – procreate
sthiti – maintain, sustain
nasa – destroy
hetave – cause
trayimayaya – embodiment of vedas
trigunatma – the three forms
dharine – takes
virinci – Brahma, the creator
narayana – Vishnu
sankaratmane –Shiva
Meaning:
Salutations to the Sun God, who is the only eye of this world, the one who (causes) creates, sustains and destroys everything in the universe, one who is the embodiment of the Vedas, one the who takes the form of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva by combining all their functions into himself.
Gayatri Mantra
After dhyana mantra do a simple namaskaram to Lord Surya and then chant the Gayatri mantra. This mantra comes directly from the Rig Veda and attributed to sage Vishwawmitra. This is addressed to Veda mata Gayatri. We pray to Mata Gayatri to take Her blessings and for the divine light to illumine our intellect
Om Bhur Bhuvaḥ Swaḥ
Tat-savitur Vareñyaṃ
Bhargo Devasya Dhīmahi
Dhiyo Yonaḥ Prachodayāt
Now the pre-chant steps are complete and we can begin chanting Aditya Hrudaya Shlokas. Even though it looks like these steps are elaborate it is actually only 2-3 minutes long (excluding the nyasam) and not a big deal given the benefit it offers by making the intellect and the heart to sync with the chant.