Before posting some of answer to our "contest" here is a funny story from yesterday.
We had a nice puja in Kitchener-Waterloo area (Ontario, Canada) and it was the first time I was asked to lead the puja.
Now, before going forward, I have to explain you something.
Those of us who are moving to another country are in a strange position. We slowly, slowly forget our mother tongue or talk have a strange accent and we can never speak perfectly the new language. Also, we can understand both languages, even if talked right after another, but when we are to speak it takes us few seconds be able to go from one to another. It is like we have a brain switch that changes the output from one language to another.
So now back to the puja. I got all planned out. I got a transcript of what needs to happen at the puja, with a list of songs, even approximate times when each has to happen so we finish in time. I was 100% sure that there was nothing I missed.
We started the puja with a short meditation, we went through few mantras.
Behind me there was a Romanian yogini with a cute 3-4 years daughter and she told her something, I don't remember what, in Romanian language. At that moment, the switch in my brain changed to Romanian.
And happily I spoke on the microphone:
"Acum sa spunem mantra pentru Nirvichara si sa stam in meditatie pentru 2 minute"
that is: "Let's say the mantra for Nirvichara and spend 2 minutes in meditation"
Something did not sound right... The room was at once quiet and I started the mantra and so did everybody else. I did not realize what has just happened until few second later.
Only after we finished the mantra, it occurred to me that some yogis from the 200 yogis in sitting behind me might not be so proficient in Romanian so, to help them, I translated in English :)
Our daughter is now married and living in India. As we often see in Indian films, a person is speaking Hindi and then says a sentence or two (of great importance in English). She says they don't even realize they are speaking English.
ReplyDeleteIt is like when we say "pajama" or "bungalow" or "shampoo" – well, we speaking Hindi aren't we?
Richard
Yeap the point is the 2 key words of the phrase, mantra and Nirvichara, were understandable. And the brain does not process a message word by word, it tries to make sense of it globally. Which makes possible for every sahaja yogi to feel at home in a Sahaja Yoga program in any foreign country.
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