Om

Om / Aum

In Hinduism, Om is the most sacred of sounds. It's also known as Aum or Pranava. Om is a mantra used in chants and meditation by Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, and Jains. One can say it's a truly universal sound.

Wikipedia has a great page about Om with includes links to lots of other resources. I'm not going to repeat what's said better elsewhere.

Click here to listen to the sound of Om. Download Om as a WAV file or as an MP3 file by right-clicking on the filename and saving the file to your hard drive.

Right click here to download the image of Om on the left as your Windows wallpaper image. Save the file to your hard drive and then use it as your desktop image. (I do.) I've noticed lots of people use this as their MySpace background image. Lots!

Om written in Sanskrit is a widely used symbol in art, both sacred and pop. Many incorporate Om into their tattoos.

Om is part of the Tibetan Buddhist mantra "Om mani padme hum", sometimes written "Om mani peme hum". This is the mantra of Avalokiteshvara, also called the mantra of Chenrezig, and loosely translates as "Behold! The jewel in the lotus!". This mantra is found in Tibetan prayer wheels too.

I'm delighted to see street art incorporating Om appear here and there in Seattle. The upper two and the middle left were near my office in West Seattle, Luna Park to be exact. The barrel has since been repainted. The middle right is just north of Pike Place Market, Seattle, just before the northbound 99 entrance. The truck? What can I say. I certainly hope the owner did this cuz I'd be one mad mofo if I came out one day and saw my ride vandalized like that.

That said, I'd love to find out who does these and ask what it means to them and why they do it.

It's said that the pitch of Om is 136.1 Hz (low C#), known as Nada Brahma. This frequency is also called the fundamental tone, the primordial vibration, and the ever-sounding tone.

BTW, the character for Om is Unicode U+0950. One a font nerd, always a font nerd.