Invoke Universal Love Music

namāmīśam īśāna nirvāṇa-rūpaṃ
vibhuṃ vyāpakaṃ brahma-veda-svarūpam |
nijaṃ nirguṇaṃ nirvikalpaṃ nirīhaṃ
cid-ākāśam ākāśa-vāsaṃ bhaje'ham || 1 ||

nirākāram oṅkāra-mūlaṃ turīyaṃ
girā-jñāna-gotītam īśaṃ girīśam |
karālaṃ mahākāla-kālaṃ kṛpālaṃ
guṇāgāra-saṃsāra-pāraṃ nato'ham || 2 ||

tuṣārādri-saṅkāśa-gauraṃ gabhīraṃ
mano-bhūta-koṭi-prabhā-śrī-śarīram |
sphuran-mauli-kallolinī cāru-gaṅgā
lasad-bhāla-bālendu kaṇṭhe bhujaṅgā || 3 ||

calat-kuṇḍalaṃ bhrū-sunetraṃ viśālaṃ
prasannānanaṃ nīla-kaṇṭhaṃ dayālam |
mṛgādhīśa-carmāmbaraṃ muṇḍa-mālaṃ
priyaṃ śaṅkaraṃ sarva-nāthaṃ bhajāmi || 4 ||

pracaṇḍaṃ prakṛṣṭaṃ pragalbhaṃ pareśaṃ
akhaṇḍaṃ ajaṃ bhānu-koṭi-prakāśam |
trayaḥ-śūla-nirmūlanaṃ śūla-pāṇiṃ
bhaje'haṃ bhavānī-patiṃ bhāva-gamyam || 5 ||

kalātīta-kalyāṇa-kalpānta-kārī
sadā sajjanānanda-dātā purārī |
cid-ānanda-sandoha-mohāpahārī
prasīda prasīda prabho manmathārī || 6 ||

na yāvad umā-nātha-pādāravindaṃ
bhajantīha loke pare vā narāṇām |
na tāvat sukhaṃ śānti-santāpa-nāśaṃ
prasīda prabho sarva-bhūtādhivāsam || 7 ||

na jānāmi yogaṃ japaṃ naiva pūjāṃ
nato'haṃ sadā sarvadā śambhu tubhyam |
jarā-janma-duḥkhaugha-tātapyamānaṃ
prabho pāhi āpannam āmīśa śambho || 8 ||

Dear friend, let me ask you something gently.

When did you last feel loved for no reason at all? And when did you last love someone, or something, without keeping any account?

Most of us are not short of people. We are short of warmth. The day fills up with messages, bills, traffic and small arguments. We give a little, and quietly wait for it to come back. We keep our warmth for the few who agree with us, and the door stays closed for the rest. Slowly the heart becomes like a tap in a house where the water comes for only one hour a day.

If this is you, please hear me. Nothing is wrong with you. The well has not gone dry. Only the bucket has not gone down for a while.

The eight verses above are a very old song for exactly this. I have named this recording "Invoke Universal Love". To invoke simply means to call in, the way you open a window in the morning and call in the fresh air. I want to share it with you, and tell you in the simplest way how each verse can help in an ordinary day. It plays softly beside me in my six hours of Trataka Yoga, while my eyes rest on a single point.

These are eight verses in Sanskrit, more than four hundred years old, and people have gone on singing them ever since.

They are sung to someone. I hear them as sung to love itself. I do not mean the love of one person for another, which comes and goes. I mean the wide love that is there for everyone, like sunlight and air. That is what I call universal love.

The verses do one simple thing. They look at this love from eight sides, like walking around a mountain and seeing it from eight villages. And the old names in them, when I read them as plain Sanskrit words, are simply its qualities. Dayālu is kind. Kṛpālu is tender. Śaṅkara is one who does good. Śambhu is one from whom ease comes.

You do not need any belief to listen to this. You do not need to know Sanskrit, and you do not need to belong to any path. A lamp does not ask who is sitting in the room before it gives its light. This song is like that.

This is how I hear it each day, while I gaze softly at a point twelve finger-widths in front of my nose, in my Trataka Yoga.

Download Invoke Universal Love here

You can listen to the above recording in three ways.

The first is the way I listen myself. Let it play softly, and let your gaze settle gently on a single point, with no strain at all. The eyes rest on one point, the ears rest on the song, and the chest slowly begins to feel warm and wide.

The second way is for the days when you are too tired for anything. Sit or lie down comfortably, close your eyes, and just listen. You do not have to understand a single word. Warmth from a fire reaches you whether or not you know how the fire was made.

The third way is to sing along. Follow the verses at the top of this page, slowly, one line at a time. Do not worry about getting the words right. A song sung badly with a full heart is still a song.

Keep the volume low, softer than you think you need. The player repeats by itself, so you can stay as long as you like. Even five minutes is a good beginning.

For myself, I let it play quietly while I gaze at a single point, and that is my Trataka Yoga.

Let me walk through them the way I feel them. Each verse shows one face of love, and one small way to live it today.

1. Love like the sky. The first verse speaks of something that is spread everywhere (vyāpaka), that wants nothing for itself (nirīha), and that lives in the open sky of our own awareness (cid-ākāśa). The sky holds the crow and the swan, the kite and the storm, and it never sends anyone a bill. Now think of the people you help. Most of us keep a small notebook in the mind: I did this for her, he never did that for me. Today, do one thing that goes into no notebook. Make tea for someone before they ask. Give way in traffic and expect no thank you. When my eyes rest on one point, I notice the open space all around it, and my chest feels as wide as that space.

2. Love without shape or words. The second verse says it has no form (nirākāra), that it is older than the first sound, and that speech and knowledge cannot reach it. Love has no fixed shape. It is a lunch box packed at six in the morning. It is a father waiting at the bus stop. It is a friend who sits beside you and says nothing. A baby knows it long before knowing a single word. The same verse calls it fierce (karāla) and tender (kṛpālu) in one breath. The hand that pulls a child back from the road is not gentle, and it is pure love, so a firm "no" can be love too. And it outlasts time. We still feel the care of grandparents who left us long ago. At my point no words are needed, and I learn again that the deepest things happen in silence.

3. Love like a mountain, a river and a young moon. The third verse paints pictures: a snow mountain, bright and deep; a lively river flowing down from the very top; a thin new moon; and a snake resting calmly around the neck. When a home is in a storm, one steady person calms everyone, and that is the mountain. A river begins high and flows to whoever is lower, and never checks who is drinking, so let your kindness flow first to those who can give nothing back. A new moon is only a thin line, yet it is enough to walk home by. One small message, "Did you reach safely?", is that much light in someone's night. And the snake at the neck tells me that love can sit calmly with the thing it fears: the difficult relative, the hard conversation. Sitting still with my eyes on one point, I borrow a little of that mountain.

4. Love with kind eyes and a held tongue. The fourth verse comes close to a face: wide, kind eyes, a cheerful look (prasannānana), and a throat that has turned blue (nīla-kaṇṭha). The old picture behind the blue throat is of poison held in the throat so that it harms no one. Each of us is handed a little poison every day: a harsh word, an insult, a piece of bad news. If I swallow it, it burns me for weeks. If I spit it out, it burns someone else. Love holds it quietly until it loses its sting. The next time a sharp reply rises at the dinner table, hold it in the throat for three breaths. The verse also remembers that every one of us is here for a short time, and remembering this makes us softer with each other. The soft eyes I practise on a point slowly become the eyes with which I look at people.

5. Love that is whole and bright. The fifth verse shows love as strong: bold (pragalbha), unbroken (akhaṇḍa), bright as ten million suns. The sun does not choose which roof to shine on. And unbroken is the word I need most. Our attention usually comes in pieces, half on the person and half on the phone. Five minutes of whole attention is felt as love by a child, by an old parent, by anyone. The verse then speaks of pulling out three kinds of pain by the root: the pain that comes from our own body and mind, the pain that comes from others, and the pain that comes from things nobody controls. Love cannot take away every pain, but it does take away the loneliness inside the pain. Its last word is bhāva-gamya, reached by feeling. Nobody can be argued into feeling loved. Holding one point without a break is my daily training in giving unbroken attention.

6. Love that ends old things and clears the mind. The sixth verse calls love the one who brings an age to its end (kalpānta-kārī), who breaks down walled cities (purāri), who removes confusion (mohāpahārī), and who quietens whatever churns the mind (manmathāri). Some things should end. A five-year silence between two brothers. A grudge that has lived longer than the hurt that caused it. One phone call can end an age. We build walls to feel safe, and then we live alone inside them. And the mind is churned all day by wanting, comparing and scrolling, like a pot of buttermilk. Twice the verse says prasīda, prasīda: be gentle, be gentle. I say it to life, and I say it to myself. When I gaze at one point the churning settles by itself, the way muddy water clears when the glass is left alone.

7. Love at the root. The seventh verse says a plain thing. Until a person bows at the feet of love, there is no happiness, no peace and no end to the burning inside, in this world or in any other. We water the leaves. We polish the house, the title, the number in the bank, and the root stays dry. Then we wonder why the tree looks tired. Feet are the lowest part of the body, and love is found by bending low: saying sorry first, serving others before yourself, listening before speaking. The verse ends by calling love the one who lives in every being (sarva-bhūtādhivāsa). That includes the vegetable seller, the driver who cut in front of you, and the person you cannot agree with. Every day I return to the same small point, like going back to the root with a pot of water.

8. Love that needs no qualification. The last verse is the most humble, and it is the one I love the most. The singer says: I know no method, no special words, no ceremony. I only bow, always. I am scorched by the troubles of being born and of growing old. Please look after me. We think we must first become wise, healed or worthy before we can love or be loved. A child gives a crooked drawing with both hands, and nobody checks the lines. Asking for help is itself an act of love, because it lets another person give. This week, say to one person, "I am tired, please help me." I come to my point every morning as a beginner who knows nothing, and that is enough.

This is what the eight verses do for me, day after day, as they play beside me while I gaze at one point in my Trataka Yoga.

You may feel a warmth in the chest. The face may soften, and the breath may slow and become even. Someone you have not thought of for a long time may come to mind, and you may feel like calling them. Please do.

Some days tears may come. Let them come. A dry field cracks a little when the first rain falls.

And some days you may feel nothing at all. That is fine too. The song is not in a hurry. Come back tomorrow.

One loving word of care. I say "heal" and "ease", and I do not say "cure". What I share comes from my own practice and from my students, and it is not medically verified. If the heaviness in your heart or body does not lift, please see a doctor or someone trained to help. This song will happily sit beside that help. It does not replace it.

I go gently with myself too. When I sit with this song, gazing softly at one point in my Trataka Yoga, I let whatever comes take its own time.

Dear one, love is not something you have to earn or find. It is already there, like the sky above a closed roof. This song only opens a window.

Come back to it whenever the day has made you hard, in the morning or at night, for five minutes or for an hour. It is my small gift to you.

And if you feel like it, write here in the reply and tell me how it was for you. I would love to hear.

I will be here, listening to the same eight verses, my eyes on one point, in my six hours of Trataka Yoga.

With love, Trataki.