Newsletter #94, by Swati Sharan – Samarpan- Let Go and Let God (1 January 2018)

Samarpan Online Group Meditation Newsletter

TOPIC FOR THE WEEK – Samarpan – Let Go and Let God

Since I was a kid in Canada, the word surrender never held a very good connotation especially when it came to discussions about religion. It’s as though someone is holding you captive. Or at best, some of the school textbooks would go and use descriptions like submitting to the will of God. Simply put: The connotations given about different religions was very dryly academic and impassioned.

Contrast that with Sanskrit and Urdu terms like “samarpan” or “sajda” and the whole picture would change about the same topic. As the same human being, I would feel uplifted and immersed with the powers that be and even outright romantic upon hearing these words.

I later came to realize in maturity why we had such dry terminology for a word that is descriptive of many a great epiphany. One of the great flaws we are contending with for those of us who grew up learning about eastern philosophy is much of the old-style of Indian English. And the other are colonial westerners who perpetuated many myths about some of these different terms due to their limited understanding. What further served to perpetuate the myths were unfortunately a heavy amount of cryptic coding in a lot of Sanskrit and Hindu teachings. So sometimes even many Hindus were at a great loss to get to the bottom of the hows and whys of everything.

In Sanskrit, one word may describe an entire concept. Therefore, the term may be loaded with several connotations and can’t be encapsulated as one sole thing. When some of these ideas get brought into English, they may then not get carried over as well. As someone who has taught Bal Vihar or Hindu Youth in Sunday Schools for years, I too faced this barrier many times especially with those kids who didn’t have as strong an understanding of a Sanskrit derived language.

I see this very pattern coming out in some of the outreach we try to do with Samarpan Meditation in countries like Canada. For years, I struggled with some of the words we were using. In fact, I cringed many times over the years with how even I translated some of the speech summaries of Swamiji’s and Guruma’s. I just never felt I hit the bullseye. One can say it’s because of my ego while others can argue it’s about my being a constantly dissatisfied soul.

While the all of the above is true, some of this is also owing to there being a great dissonance between modern politically correct Canadian English and old Indian English. As a second generation Indo-Canadian, then, I feel we have to start changing the narrative. And this is not a measure to masquerade anything. Hatha Yoga is popular like never before in Canada and Deepak Chopra books sell like hotcakes here. Conclusively, I feel it’s all in the explaining and cultural context.

So what I would like to end with here is a start for better explaining in English. One of the most culturally friendly ways to explain Samarpan to a Canadian is the phrase “Let go and let God.” The other is substituting surrender with releasing. For example, I’ve seen people say things like ‘surrender to the earth as you bow down to get rid of your negativity’ as a rough translation of something Swamiji might say.  Instead, one could say ‘Release yourself into the earth as you bow down and declutter yourself’.  Or ‘Let yourself go as you bow down and immerse yourself in the earth and declutter yourself.’

And the list goes on for many other word or phrase substitutions. But for now, I guess I should “let go and let God.”

Swati Sharan, Canada