The one syllable before all words, the sound of the Upaniṣads' silence, chanted at the beginning and end of nearly everything.
The unmanifest, source of all sound Vedic, the root of every later tradition Foundations
The mantra
ॐ
Oṁ (A-U-M)
Meaning
All this is the syllable Oṁ. Its parts, a, u, m; are the waking, dreaming and sleeping states; the silence after is the fourth, the Self (the Māṇḍūkya's whole teaching).
In the tradition
Every mantra on this page is, in the tradition’s understanding, an extension of this one. The Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad spends all twelve of its verses on it and still ends by pointing past the sound to the quiet after, which is why teachers end the chanting there, and wait.
Sources & further reading
- Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad , the Upaniṣadic seer (all twelve verses unfold Oṁ as the whole of experience)
- Bhagavad Gītā , Vyāsa (traditional attribution) (8.13, uttering the single syllable Oṁ at the end, one attains the highest goal)