The opening verse
मनोबुद्ध्यहंकार चित्तानि नाहं न च श्रोत्रजिह्वे न च घ्राणनेत्रे। न च व्योम भूमिर्न तेजो न वायुः चिदानन्दरूपः शिवोऽहं शिवोऽहम्॥
In IAST:
Mano-buddhy-ahaṃkāra cittāni nāhaṃ na ca śrotra-jihve na ca ghrāṇa-netre, na ca vyoma bhūmir-na tejo na vāyuḥ cidānanda-rūpaḥ Śivo’haṃ Śivo’ham.
In English:
I am not the mind, the intellect, the ego, or the storage-mind. I am not the ears or the tongue; not the nose or the eyes. I am not the sky, the earth, fire, or air. I am of the form of consciousness-bliss — I am Shiva, I am Shiva.
The hymn’s method
The Nirvana Shatkam is a sustained exercise in neti neti — “not this, not this” — the classical Upanishadic method for arriving at the Self by exclusion. The chanter does not affirm what they are. The chanter systematically rules out everything they are not, until what remains is self-luminous.
The progression is rigorous:
- Verse 1: I am not the four faculties of mind, not the senses, not the elements. Identification with the cognitive apparatus is dropped.
- Verse 2: I am not the pranas, not the bodily tissues, not the sheaths. Identification with the biological organism is dropped.
- Verse 3: I have no aversion, no attachment, no emotions, no duties. Identification with the emotional and motivational life is dropped.
- Verse 4: I have no merit, no sin, no pleasure, no pain, no rituals, no Vedas. Identification with the religious and moral apparatus is dropped — even the desire for liberation itself is dropped.
- Verse 5: I am not death, not relations, not roles. Identification with the social and existential self is dropped.
- Verse 6: I am beyond all this — pure witness, pure being-consciousness- bliss. I am Shiva.
By the end, the chanter has been led step by step through the entire catalogue of what they ordinarily take themselves to be, and seen each one ruled out. What remains is not a thing called the Self. What remains is the seeing itself — the awareness in which the systematic ruling-out has been happening. That awareness, the hymn says, is what Shiva names.
The closing refrain
The same line closes every verse: cidānanda-rūpaḥ Śivo’haṃ Śivo’ham — “I am of the form of consciousness-bliss; I am Shiva, I am Shiva.”
The repetition is everything. By the sixth refrain, the chanter has said “I am Shiva” twelve times. Each time is meant to be felt, not asserted. The hymn is not a creed; it is a recognition-practice. If the practitioner is identified with the mind in verse 1, the closing refrain falls flat. If the practitioner has actually let go of identification with the mind, the closing refrain lands with the weight of a genuine seeing.
This is why the hymn is short. Six verses is enough to walk the chanter through the full neti neti. More verses would dilute the rhythm; fewer would not complete the dis-identification.
The Govindapada story
The traditional account of the hymn’s composition is one of the best-loved stories in Shankara hagiography.
Shankara at age eight, having taken sannyasa against his mother’s objection, walked from Kerala to the cave of the sage Govindapada on the banks of the Narmada in central India. He waited at the cave entrance until Govindapada emerged. Govindapada looked at the eight-year-old boy and asked: ko bhavān — “who are you?”
Shankara could have answered with name, lineage, village, intent — the usual answer to that question in eighth-century India. Instead he answered with the six verses now called the Nirvana Shatkam. He named himself not by social coordinates but by Advaita recognition. He told Govindapada that he was Shiva, was the consciousness in which the question and the answer were both arising.
Govindapada, the story says, accepted him on the spot.
Whether or not the historical details are exact, the story has done philosophical work for a thousand years. It establishes that the right answer to who are you is not biographical but ontological. It also establishes that the answer is available — even to an eight-year-old — if the seeker has actually settled into it.
When to recite
The hymn has several distinct uses:
At the close of meditation. After silent sitting, the six verses articulate what the sitting has been pointing at. The hymn does not produce the recognition — meditation does — but it names the recognition and anchors it in language.
When identified with the mind or body. Anxiety, anger, attachment, and pain all involve a tightening of identification with some surface layer of the self. The Nirvana Shatkam reverses this — verse by verse it loosens the identification. Many practitioners use it as an emergency intervention when caught in a strong emotional state.
On Maha Shivaratri. The great night of dissolution is the canonical night for this hymn. Between watches of the night, after the Tandava and the Rudrashtakam have ignited the devotion, the Nirvana Shatkam settles the practitioner into the recognition that the devotion-er and the devoted-to are not two.
Before sleep. As the final word of the day, the six verses prepare the consciousness to let go of the social-self for the night’s disidentification of dream and sleep.
A note on the metre
The hymn is in Bhujangaprayata — the serpentine four-foot metre that also carries the Rudrashtakam. The metre is sweet and undulating, which softens the philosophical severity of the content. The hymn never feels cold or abstract when sung at the right pace. The metre makes the disidentification feel like coming home, not like a logical exercise.
On reciting it well
For a beginner, the Nirvana Shatkam can feel forbidding — the language is philosophical, the negations are unfamiliar, and the closing claim (“I am Shiva”) may feel presumptuous. Two suggestions:
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Read the English translation slowly before attempting the Sanskrit. Let the meaning settle. The Sanskrit recitation only works if the negation has been understood; an unfelt negation is just noise.
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Start with just the refrain. Cidānanda-rūpaḥ Śivo’haṃ Śivo’ham — recite it slowly, ten times, with eyes closed, before you ever attempt the full hymn. The refrain is the heart of the practice. The verses exist to set up the refrain.
After thirty or sixty days of this approach, the hymn becomes one of the most accessible and most powerful in the Shaiva-Advaita corpus.
Practice
The Nirvana Shatkam is not for everyone. A practitioner deep in dvaita (dualist) devotion may find the hymn jarring, because it dissolves the distinction between worshipper and worshipped that dvaita-devotion depends on. For such practitioners, the Rudrashtakam or Shiv Chalisa is a better match.
For practitioners drawn to non-dual recognition — those who have read some Advaita Vedanta, or sat in long silent meditation, or studied Ramana Maharshi’s Who am I? — the Nirvana Shatkam is one of the shortest and most direct devotional texts in the entire Indian tradition. Six verses, twelve “I am Shiva”s, the whole of Advaita compressed.
Daily recitation, for a year, will not produce the recognition the hymn names. But it will keep the question of that recognition close. And that, the tradition says, is enough.