HU and HO in Islam and in Zen. I hope you all don't mind my being pedantic but since the topic came up I felt I should share my little bit...
In tasawwuf (sufism), "HU" is both the essence of the divine and the totality of the creation the 'h' in Arabic is the sound created furthest back in the back of the throat(there are several 'h' sounds in arabic but the 'h' in 'hu' is the one below the larynx.) 'w' in Arabic is wau, the sound created by the two lips and is the sound furthest away from hu (in English OOO with the lips relaxed and both voiced or unvoiced) In calligraphy, 'HU' is written often with two eyes, and the eyes are crying bloody tears. Hu is chanted as a zikr(prayer of remembrance and a kind of 'yoga'), both silent zikr and vocal zikr, with breathing. Hu is also indicated by its own musical notes and makam when zikr is musically accompanied. w through h then includes all the sounds it is possible for the human mouth and throat to make and the Word Allah ends in "HU" 'al' means "the"; 'ilah' means "god" small g; the "h" is the ending which includes "hu" except that it drops off and only pops up again when it has something to follow it. Translated literally Allah means al - ilah - hu : THE [one and only] GOD Itself. Compare 'al-illah' the god (any of many gods). Basic statement of faith: la illah ha ila'LLAH means "no god is but GOD (is)" HU is also the name of G-D in the Pentateuch. Yahweh. Grammatically it means, in old Hebrew, "he" (you might be able to think of it as if it were a kind of verbalization of the third singular pronoun) but I don't remember which transformation of the root. Arabic and Hebrew have the same system of verbal transformations. Elohim in Hebrew is the plural of the word ilah, or god small g, and is the exact same word in Arabic. HU then is the "essence" of both Yahweh in Hebrew and Allah in Arabic. It is a pure prayer and every living being on Earth does remembrance of that name of Allah every time they breathe in or out. in zazen: Incidentally, "ho" is also part of standard zen practice. Between sittings in a sesshin(a zen retreat which is 3 to 8 days). You sit zazen for 3 hours, 3 or four times a day, and every hour there is ten minutes of walking zen during which there is ho chanting. After the ho chanting when you begin to feel blood in your feet again, then you sit and silently "observe" your practice for another hour. More or less, usually timed by an incense stick. Between sittings, after lunch for example, there is work zen. Every day in sesshin there are ceremonies sermons chantings, zazen, walking zen and working zen. Eating is also done as a zen exercise. I don't know the linguistic http://www.tiwiguide.com/ http://www.couchsurfing.com/profile.html?id=B6D9H5 We do not inherit it; we borrow the Earth from our children: Native American wisdom. The only immorality is not to do what one has to do when one has to do it: Jean Anouilh * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist