Wisdom for your Week: Chant as a Practice of Fullness

©2011 photo courtesy of markuso

In this short introductory video for this week’s wisdom of our week feature, Dr. Marc Gafni introduces us to the ways that chant is a practice that enacts, invokes, and accesses the Enlightenment of Fullness.  The Enlightenment of Fullness is a term he coined in 2009-2010 to describe an emergent property of World Spirituality. Here, he introduces chant by describing the parallels between it and classical silent meditative forms. Meditation is a practice of emptiness that frees us from the conceptual mind, liberates us from ego, and grounds us in True Self. The Enlightenment of Fullness—accessed through chant—emerges out of the ground of emptiness and the ground of being. However, in the end, as Marc says here, both the emptiness and fullness are one.

Here is an excerpt from this teaching:

(3:25) The Enlightenment of Fullness emerges out of the ground of emptiness, out of the ground of being, which is the fullness of all that is. But it actually expresses itself in an non-dual fashion in all of the fullness of life. In sexuality. In commerce. In communication. In structures of organization and structures of consciousness.  In all of the play of nature and the ecstatic dance of mathematics and physics. The Enlightenment of Fullness is the fullness of the Infinite which animates all of the finite—which is ultimately not different from the Infinite.  The finite and the Infinite are one. The finite is in. It’s inside. Inside the finite is the In-Finite. It’s the inside of the finite is the Infinite. The Infinite. The interior of the finite. The interior face of the cosmos is infinity which clothes itself, which garbs itself, in the finite, in this world. And, all of the garbs that we engage in in everyday life.

So, the Enlightenment of Fullness is to realize and live an enlightened, awake, alive, aware life while I’m talking—in

©2011 photo courtesy of Exsodus

every conversation. In sexing. In engaging in the structures, the organizational structures of life. When I’m trying to build my career, am I doing it from an enlightened place? My sexuality, from an enlightened place? And, that can mean many things. But, it means that I’m at all times fully present in myself as an expression of the full, awake, alive, aware being—consciousness that lives in me, as me, and through me.

And to access that fullness, we use chant. To access the emptiness, we use meditation. So, that’s what chant is.

Chant’s not a sing-along. Just like meditation is not not-talking. Chant is a practice.  It’s a full-throated, full-voiced, full-bodied, full-hearted, full-minded practice through which I access, I open the door, it’s a portal to the Enlightenment of Fullness—precisely like meditation is a full-bodied, full-throated, full-voiced silence, which involves heart, mind, and body, through which I open the door, the portal to the Enlightenment of Emptiness. And, in the end, both are one.

 A fuller version of this transcript can be found here on Uniqueself.com.>>>

 Try out a practice chant on youtube with Dr. Marc.>>>

Or, view one of his other teachings on the CWS Youtube channel.>>>