108 and its Significance

I have always been fascinated by people obsessed with few numbers and letting those numbers dominate their life. I remember one of the richest guy in my locality was obsessed with the number 9, he had fleet of car and some vans and buses all had the same number 9999 or something which sums up to 9. May be I am fascinated with the number themselves than the obsessed people, this fascination guided me into Numerology and related things.

There are few Numbers we come across very often, like 786,666,108, and so on...

I already have dedicated 2 of my posts for 666(Antichrist and Beast and its beauty) , so thought of writing about something else, Number 108, very popular in Oriental religions, like Hinduism , Buddhism, Jainism, etc.

This number as such is mainly cardinal count of Upanishads, or the count of rosary beads in the japamala. Today we will look into the other things regarding this mysterious oriental number.

In Hinduism there are(were actually) two major divisions, shaivism and vaishnavism, this number has been of importance in both the partitions equally. In shaivism, Lord Nataraja(shiva) is the cosmic dancer and according to Natyashastra there are about 108 karanas (karanas are dance units) we can find this relation in the popular Chidambaram temple in TN. For Vaishnavas it is the number of gopis lord Krishna danced with.

It is said that there are 108 marmas (energy points) where the nadis passes through and gives prana, a person is alive because prana flows through these marmas. Marmas can also be imagined as the intersection of ethereal body and the physical body where the prana flows into the living beings. This is in line with the practice of acupuncture, which also talks about 108 pressure points. There are 108 energy lines passing through the Anahata (heart chakra).

Mathematical beauty

1*2*2*3*3*3 = 108

Also

2 sin(108/2) = golden ratio

6*6+6*6+6*6 = 108

108 is said to be the distance between ourself to the inner god and that is the reason yogis do 108 surya namaskara. This is the same reason why mantras are chanted 108 times. For the same reason, the rosary has 108 beads, with each bead we move one step closer to god.

There are 108 pithas (pilgrim centres) in india, just like the 108 energy centres in our body.

There are 108 sacred stars in Chinese astrology. In Indian astrology there are 27 nakshatra which when multiplied with 4 padas (quarters) gives 108. One more interesting thing is there are 12 houses in astrology and 9 planets travel through these houses, the product of these two numbers is also 108.

There are said to be 108 desires and delusions humans have to overcome to have self-realization. There are 54 alphabets in Sanskrit, each having sakthi and shiva part (male and female part with them) which comes to 108. In similar lines there are 54 intersecting points on sri yantra, which again represent male and female, so which again gets the count as 108, after doubling the number 54.

In Indian numerology 1 represents the supreme one, the god etc... 0 represents emptiness and 8 represents infinity or eternal. So 108 represents the universe completely. The diameter of the sun multiplied by the sacred number 108 gives the distance between the sun and earth. This could also be the reason for 108 surya namaskara.

According to Tantra, there are about 21,600 breaths per day, of which 10800 are solar breaths and 10800 are lunar breaths.

In Jainism there are 5 categories of holy men , they have the following numbers of virtues, 12, 8, 36, 25, 27, which sum up to again 108.

So these are some of the places where we find the number 108 in eastern civilization.