Praise (Pratah Smarami)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T02g1MEmPuE&list=RDT02g1MEmPuE&start_radio=1Praise (Pratah Smarami) – Vistahttps://sylvianvista.com/2022/01/28/praise-pratah-smarami/"At the end of each morning she would sing the song. Her voice resonated through our house, it was magnificent. It was so deeply moving. I have a studio in the house and she very gracefully allowed us to record her. We captured something that was a very important document for us. It became part of our practice we would listen to that piece over and over again on daily basis.’ It was so moving, it was so pure. Just to aspire to that purity, that openness, that love for life, for God, however you want to name it, was really something…Just being around the presence of people like that, that have so much love for life, they understand the shadow too and they understand the difficulties that the world is going to face, but that doesn’t deter them in terms of their focus and what has to be done." David Sylvian, 1999
This grainy photograph of Shree Maa, Ingrid Chavez and David Sylvian accompanied the contemporary online account of the visit to Ingrid and David’s home in Minneapolis, 1997
Another photograph which accompanied the contemporary online account of the visit to Ingrid and David’s home in Minneapolis, 1997. Shree Maa playing tambura, believed to be in Sylvian’s home-studio
‘The song she is singing in ‘Praise’ is a song to the Divine Mother,’ said Sylvian. ‘Each verse deals with a different aspect of the Divine Mother. But it is basically a song of praise to each aspect. It is something that is normally sung after a period of worship. So the first line would be ,“in the morning I bow down to…” and then it would say the name of the particular aspect, and go on to list those aspects.’ These words are taken from the Chandi Path, a text drawn from chapters 81 to 93 of the Markandeya Purana, one of the revered scriptures of Hindu spirituality. The English versions are from Swami Satyananda Saraswati’s own translation. As the hymn of praise closes, we hear Shree Maa repeat a mantra – ‘Om Hrim Chandikayai Namah’. This japa would be repeated by devotees 108 times as part of worship, promoting the concentration of the mind, their practice typically aided by mala beads strung with either 108 or 27 beads (being one fourth of the 108 repetition).
A Song of Praise to the Supreme Goddess
In the morning I remember the Foremost, She who shines like the autumn moon, wearing a shining necklace and earrings studded with fine jewels. She holds divine weapons in Her thousand arms of excellent blue, She gives divine life. The soles of her feet are red like a lotus. She is the Highest Divinity.
In the morning I bow down to the Foremost, to the Slayer of the Great Ego, Anger and Passion, and the Destroyer of other negativities of duality led by Self-Conceit. Her graceful activities delude even Brahmā, the Creative Consciousness, Indra, the Rule of the Pure, Rudra, the Reliever of Sufferings, and other wise beings. She is Chaṇḍī, She Who Tears Apart Thought, the image of divinity to all the Gods in so many forms.
In the morning I laud the Foremost, the Fulfiller of all Desires for those who worship, the Creator of all the worlds and Remover of all difficulties. Take away all the bondage from the world of objects and relationships, and bring us to the pure intuitive vision of the Supreme Consciousness that resides beyond Māyā.