美食祈祷与恋爱意大利文化 《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 52 (111):咏诵

《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 52 (111):咏诵  

The biggest obstacle in my Ashram experience is not meditation
actually. That's difficult
of course
but not murderous. There's something even harder for me here. The murderous thing is what we do every morning after meditation and before breakfast (my God
but these mornings are long)—a chant called the Gurugita. Richard calls it "The Geet." I have so much trouble with The Geet. I do not like it at all
never have
not since the first time I heard it sung at the Ashram in upstate New York. I love all the other chants and hymns of this Yogic tradition
but the Gurugita feels long
tedious
sonorous and insufferable. That's just my opinion
of course; other people claim to love it
though I can't fathom why.
The Gurugita is 182 verses long
for crying out loud (and sometimes I do)
and each verse is a paragraph of imperable Sanskrit. Together with the preamble chant and the wrap-up chorus
the entire ritual takes about an hour and half to perform. This is before breakfast
re-member
and after we have already had an hour of meditation and a enty-minute chanting of the first morning hymn. The Gurugita is basically the reason you have to get up at 3:00 AM around here.
I don't like the tune
and I don't like the words. Whenever I tell anyone around the Ashram this
they say
"Oh
but it's so sacred!" Yes
but so is the Book of Job
and I don't choose to sing the thing aloud every morning before breakfast.
我不喜欢其曲调，我不喜欢歌词。每回跟道场哪个人这么说，他们总说“喔，可是它非常神圣哪！”没错，但《约伯记》也很神圣，我可没选择每天早餐前大声吟唱。
The Gurugita does have an impressive spiritual lineage; it's an excerpt from a holy ancient scripture of Yoga called the Skanda Purana
most of which has been lost
and little of which has been translated out of Sanskrit. Like much of Yogic scripture
it's written in the form of a conversation
an almost Socratic dialogue. The conversation is beeen the goddess Parvati and the almighty
all-enpassing god Shiva. Parvati and Shiva are the divine embodiment of creativity (the feminine) and consciousness (the masculine). She is the generative energy of the universe; he is its formless wisdom. Whatever Shiva imagines
Parvati brings to life. He dreams it; she materializes it. Their dance
their union (their Yoga)
is both the cause of the universe and its manifestation.
In the Gurugita
the goddess is asking the god for the secrets of worldly fulfillment
and he is telling her. It bugs me
this hymn. I had hoped my feelings about the Gurugita would change during my stay at the Ashram. I'd hoped that putting it in an Indian context would cause me to learn how to love the thing. In fact
the opposite has happened. Over the few weeks that I've been here
my feelings about the Gurugita have shifted from simple dislike to solid dread. I've started skipping it and doing other things with my morning that I think are much better for my spiritual growth
like writing in my journal
or taking a shower
or calling my sister back in Pennsylvania and seeing how her kids are doing.
Richard from Texas always busts me for skipping out. "I noticed you were absent from The Geet this morning
" he'll say
and I'll say
"I am municating with God in other ways
" and he'll say
"By sleeping in
you mean?"