Chapter 37

 When I was growing up, my family kept chickens. We always had about a dozen of them at any given time and whenever one died off--taken away by hawk² or fox or by some obscure chicken illness--my father would replace the lost hen. He'd drive to a nearby poultry³ farm and return with a new chicken in a sack. The thing is, you must be very careful when introducing a new chicken to the general flock. You can't just toss it in there with the old chickens, or they will see it as an invader⁴. What you must do instead is to slip the new bird into the chicken coop in the middle of the night while the others are asleep. Place her on a roost beside the flock and tiptoe away. In the morning, when the chickens wake up, they don't notice the newcomer, thinking only, "She must have been here all the time since I didn't see her arrive." The clincher of it is, awaking within this flock, the newcomer herself doesn't even remember that she's a newcomer, thinking only, "I must have been here the whole time . . ."

This is exactly how I arrive in India.

My plane lands in Mumbai around 1:30 AM. It is December 30. I find my luggage, then find the taxi that will take me hours and hours out of the city to the Ashram, located in a remote rural village. I doze¹ on the drive through nighttime India, sometimes waking to look out the window, where I can see strange haunted shapes of thin women in saris walking alongside the road with bundles of firewood on their heads. At this hour? Buses with no headlights pass us, and we pass oxcarts. The banyan⁵ trees spread their elegant roots throughout the ditches.

We pull up to the front gate of the Ashram at 3:30 AM, right in front of the temple. As I'm getting out of the taxi, a young man in Western clothes and a wool hat steps out of the shadows and introduces himself--he is Arturo, a twenty-four-year-old journalist from Mexico and a devotee of my Guru, and he's here to welcome me. As we're exchanging whispered introductions, I can hear the first familiar bars of my favorite Sanskrit hymn⁶ coming from inside. It's the morning arati, the first morning prayer, sung every day at 3:30 AM as the Ashram wakes. I point to the temple, asking Arturo, "May I . . .?" and he makes a be-my-guest gesture. So I pay my taxi driver, tuck my backpack behind a tree, slip off my shoes, kneel and touch my forehead to the temple step and then ease myself inside, joining the small gathering⁷ of mostly Indian women who are singing this beautiful hymn.

This is the hymn I call "The Amazing Grace of Sanskrit," filled with devotional longing⁸. It is the one devotional song I have memorized, not so much from effort as from love. I begin to sing the familiar words in Sanskrit, from the simple introduction about the sacred teachings of Yoga to the rising tones of worship ("I adore the cause of the universe . . . I adore the one whose eyes are the sun, the moon and fire . . . you are everything to me, O god of gods . . .") to the last gemlike summation⁹ of all faith ("This is perfect, that is perfect, if you take the perfect from the perfect, the perfect remains").

The women finish singing. They bow in silence, then move out a side door across a dark courtyard and into a smaller temple, barely lit by one oil lamp and perfumed with incense¹⁰. I follow them. The room is filled with devotees--Indian and Western--wrapped in woolen¹¹ shawls against the predawn cold. Everyone is seated in meditation¹², roosted there, you might say, and I slip in beside them, the new bird in the flock, completely unnoticed. I sit cross-legged, place my hands on my knees, close my eyes.

I have not meditated¹³ in four months. I have not even thought about meditating¹⁴ in four months. I sit there. My breath quiets. I say the mantra to myself once very slowly and deliberately¹⁵, syllable¹⁶ by syllable.

Om.

Na.

Mah.

Shi.

Va.

Ya.

Om Namah Shivaya.

I honor the divinity that resides within me.

Then I repeat it again. Again. And again. It's not so much that I'm meditating as unpacking¹⁷ the mantra carefully, the way you would unpack¹⁸ your grandmother's best china if it had been stored in a box for a long time, unused. I don't know if I fall asleep or if I drop into some kind of spell or even how much time passes. But when the sun finally comes up that morning in India and everyone opens their eyes and looks around, Italy feels ten thousand miles away from me now, and it is as if I have been here in this flock forever.

1 doze   

v.打瞌睡；n.打盹，假寐

参考例句：

• He likes to have a doze after lunch.他喜欢午饭后打个盹。
• While the adults doze,the young play.大人们在打瞌睡，而孩子们在玩耍。

2 hawk   

n.鹰，骗子；鹰派成员

参考例句：

• The hawk swooped down on the rabbit and killed it.鹰猛地朝兔子扑下来,并把它杀死。
• The hawk snatched the chicken and flew away.老鹰叼了小鸡就飞走了。

3 poultry   

n.家禽，禽肉

参考例句：

• There is not much poultry in the shops. 商店里禽肉不太多。
• What do you feed the poultry on? 你们用什么饲料喂养家禽?

4 invader   

n.侵略者，侵犯者，入侵者

参考例句：

• They suffered a lot under the invader's heel.在侵略者的铁蹄下，他们受尽了奴役。
• A country must have the will to repel any invader.一个国家得有决心击退任何入侵者。

5 banyan   

n.菩提树，榕树

参考例句：

• This huge banyan tree has a history of more than 400 years.这棵大榕树已经有四百多年的历史了。
• A large banyan tree may look like a forest.大型的榕树看起来象一片树林。

6 hymn   

n.赞美诗，圣歌，颂歌

参考例句：

• They sang a hymn of praise to God.他们唱着圣歌，赞美上帝。
• The choir has sung only two verses of the last hymn.合唱团只唱了最后一首赞美诗的两个段落。

7 gathering   

n.集会，聚会，聚集

参考例句：

• He called on Mr. White to speak at the gathering.他请怀特先生在集会上讲话。
• He is on the wing gathering material for his novels.他正忙于为他的小说收集资料。

8 longing   

n.（for）渴望

参考例句：

• Hearing the tune again sent waves of longing through her.再次听到那首曲子使她胸中充满了渴望。
• His heart burned with longing for revenge.他心中燃烧着急欲复仇的怒火。

9 summation   

n.总和；最后辩论

参考例句：

• The exhibition was a summation of his life's work.这次展览汇集了他一生中典型的作品。
• The defense attorney phrased his summation at last.最后，辩护律师作了辩论总结。

10 incense   

v.激怒；n.香，焚香时的烟，香气

参考例句：

• This proposal will incense conservation campaigners.这项提议会激怒环保人士。
• In summer,they usually burn some coil incense to keep away the mosquitoes.夏天他们通常点香驱蚊。

11 woolen   

adj.羊毛(制)的；毛纺的

参考例句：

• She likes to wear woolen socks in winter.冬天她喜欢穿羊毛袜。
• There is one bar of woolen blanket on that bed.那张床上有一条毛毯。

12 meditation   

n.熟虑，（尤指宗教的）默想，沉思，（pl.）冥想录

参考例句：

• This peaceful garden lends itself to meditation.这个恬静的花园适于冥想。
• I'm sorry to interrupt your meditation.很抱歉，我打断了你的沉思。

13 meditated   

深思，沉思，冥想( meditate的过去式和过去分词 )； 内心策划，考虑

参考例句：

• He meditated for two days before giving his answer. 他在作出答复之前考虑了两天。
• She meditated for 2 days before giving her answer. 她考虑了两天才答复。

14 meditating   

a.沉思的，冥想的

参考例句：

• They were meditating revenge. 他们在谋划进行报复。
• The congressman is meditating a reply to his critics. 这位国会议员正在考虑给他的批评者一个答复。

15 deliberately   

adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地

参考例句：

• The girl gave the show away deliberately.女孩故意泄露秘密。
• They deliberately shifted off the argument.他们故意回避这个论点。

16 syllable   

n.音节；vt.分音节

参考例句：

• You put too much emphasis on the last syllable.你把最后一个音节读得太重。
• The stress on the last syllable is light.最后一个音节是轻音节。

17 unpacking   

n.取出货物，拆包[箱]v.从（包裹等）中取出（所装的东西），打开行李取出( unpack的现在分词 )；拆包；解除…的负担；吐露（心事等）

参考例句：

• Joe sat on the bed while Martin was unpacking. 马丁打开箱子取东西的时候，乔坐在床上。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• They are unpacking a trunk. 他们正在打开衣箱。 来自《简明英汉词典》

18 unpack   

vt.打开包裹（或行李），卸货

参考例句：

• I must unpack before dinner.我得在饭前把行李打开。
• She said she would unpack the items later.她说以后再把箱子里的东西拿出来。