A single verse from the closing section of the Vishnu Sahasranama, spoken by Īśvara — Shiva — in answer to a question Parvati has just asked him: by what short means can the learned recite the thousand names of Vishnu every day? His reply is this verse. "Saying 'Śrīrāma, Rāma, Rāma,' I delight in Rāma, the one who draws the mind; O fair-faced one, the name of Rāma is equal to all thousand names." It is called the tāraka mantra — tāraka, "that which ferries across" — and though it sits inside the sahasranama, it is recited on its own far more often than the text it closes: at the end of a pooja, while walking, or as the one verse a household says together. The beauty of it is in a single pada where one root appears three times over: rāmeti is the name being spoken aloud, rame is the speaker taking delight in it, and rāme is Rāma himself, the one delighted in.
The full recitation, in the order it is chanted. Pick a section to begin.
1 passages in all