artemisdart

237) In my yoga class, quite often we chant something in Sanskrit before starting. Of course I don't know Sanskrit (almost went to grad school at the University of Chicago to study it, but didn't). So I had no idea what they were singing, and I would just try to hum along.

Finally we were handed a photocopied sheet of paper with all sorts of Sanskrit chants on it. Here is the literal translation of what the people in my class have been chanting:

"I bow to the lotus feet of the guru who awakens insight into the happiness of pure being.
Who is the refuge, the jungle physician who eliminates the delusion caused by the poisonous snake of samsara.
I prostrate before the sage Patanjali who has thousands of radiant white heads and who has, as far as his arms, assumed the form of a man holding a conch shell, a wheel, and a sword."

Wow. Sounds a whole lot different in English than it did when it was just a meaningless bunch of syllables.