Hamsa, the Sacred Swan

In a bowl, milk and water have been poured together. The color is the same. The smell is almost the same. No eye can tell which is milk and which is water. Yet there is a creature that could drink from this bowl, take only the milk, and leave the water behind.

In Hindu legend, that creature is Hamsa.

Hamsa is the sacred white swan of the Hindu world. This is no ordinary swan. It is a bird of the gods, the vahana of Brahma, the god who created the universe, and of Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge, music and the arts. In Sanskrit, vahana means a mount, a creature the god rides. But it means more than that. It stands for the power the god represents.

And the power Hamsa carries is the most remarkable part.

The way Hamsa is said to separate milk from water is called Nira Kshira Viveka. Nira is water, Kshira is milk, and Viveka is the word that matters most. Viveka means discernment, the power to see clearly what is true and what is false, what is pure and what is mixed. In the Hindu tradition, this is the best known trait of Hamsa. It is also the reason Saraswati chose this bird as her companion.

The goddess of knowledge did not choose a mighty or fearsome animal. She sits on the back of a bird that can see the truth in the middle of confusion. For real knowledge is more than knowing a great deal. It is knowing how to tell things apart: what matters, what is true, what is worth keeping and what should be let go.

But Hamsa teaches one thing more, a lesson that can only be heard in silence.

In the Upanishads, the most profound scriptures of ancient India, the word Hamsa comes from "Aham Sa", which means "I am That". It is one of the greatest sayings in Hindu thought. It says that the soul of each person and the universe are one. More wonderful still, people point out that our breath already recites this mantra by itself, every day. The breath in sounds like "So". The breath out sounds like "Ham".

So Ham. I am That.

In this teaching, with every breath, without trying, the body quietly repeats the lesson of Hamsa. That is why this is called the ajapa mantra, the mantra that recites itself. Nobody needs to speak it, because it already flows in every breath.

Each day, a person takes in so much information, so many words, so many opinions. Some are right and some are wrong. Some are worth hearing and some are not. Telling them apart is the hard part. The people of old answered with the image of Hamsa, the swan before a bowl of milk and water, drinking only what is pure.

The traces of Hamsa are not found only in far-off scriptures.

In Da Nang, the Museum of Cham Sculpture holds a relief of Saraswati from the 12th century. The goddess sits with dignity on a stone pedestal, and at her feet is Hamsa, a calm white bird. The Cham are a people of south-central Vietnam whose ancestors lived in the ancient kingdom of Champa. Long ago they took Hindu culture from India and carved this image in stone. In the stone, they recorded the teaching of Viveka on the soil of central Vietnam.

In Vietnamese Buddhist art, a white crane is seen standing on the head of a turtle, or rising from the top of a bronze lamp. Many people consider this the Vietnamese way of receiving the same spirit in their own manner.

Hamsa does not need to spread its wings across the whole universe, as Garuda does. It does not need to fight or to sacrifice. It does not need to do anything great or loud.

Hamsa only needs to sit still before the bowl of milk and water that is life, and to look very clearly.