《美食祈禱和戀愛》Chapter 53 (114):吟唱讚歌
So I went to the chant the next morning, all full of resolve, and the Gurugita kicked me down a twenty-foot flight of cement stairs—or anyway, that's how it felt. The following day it was even worse. I woke up in a fury, and before I even got to the temple I was already sweating, boiling, teeming. I kept thinking: "It's only an hour and a half—you can do anything for an hour and a half. For God's sake, you have friends who were in labor for fourteen hours . . ." But still, I could not have been less comfortable in this chair if I had been stapled to it. I kept feeling fireballs of, like, menopausal heat pulsing over me, and I thought I might faint, or bite somebody in my fury.
於是隔天早晨我去參與吟唱時，內心堅定，可是古魯梵歌卻把我從7米高的水泥階梯踢了下來——反正就是這種感覺。隔一天更慘。我怒氣衝衝地醒過來，還沒抵達寺院，即已汗流浹背，情緒激動，揮汗如雨。我不斷在想：“只有一個半小時——你做得了任何一個半小時的事。看在老天的分上，你有朋友分娩十四個小時呢……”儘管如此，我卻像被釘在椅子上渾身不舒服。我不斷感覺到一陣陣沸騰的更年期熱，感覺自己就要暈倒，或氣憤得想咬人。My anger was giant. It took in everyone in this world, but it was most specifically directed at Swamiji—my Guru's master, who had instituted this ritual chanting of the Gurugita in the first place. This was not my first difficult encounter with the great and now-deceased Yogi. He was the one who had come to me in my dream on the beach, demanding to know how I intended to stop the tide, and I always felt like he was riding me.
我憤怒至極，足以吞噬世間每個人，尤其針對思瓦米吉——我的導師的師父，也就是設立古魯梵歌儀式吟唱的創始者。這不是我頭一次與這位偉大、已歿的瑜伽大師之間困難的相會。他曾出現在我的夢中，在海邊盤問我打算如何阻止海潮，我始終覺得他陰魂不散。
Swamiji had been, all throughout his life, relentless, a spiritual fire-brand. Like Saint Fran-cis of Assisi, Swamiji had been born into a wealthy family and had been expected to enter the family business. But when he was just a young boy, he met a holy man in a small village near his, and had been deeply touched by the experience. Still in his teens, Swamiji left home in a loincloth and spent years making pilgrimages to every holy spot in India, searching for a true spiritual master. He was said to have met over sixty saints and Gurus, never finding the teacher he wanted. He starved, wandered on foot, slept outside in Himalayan snowstorms, suffered from malaria, dysentery—and called these the happiest years of his life, just searching for somebody who would show God to him. Over those years, Swamiji became a Hatha Yogi, an expert in ayurvedic medicine and cooking, an architect, a gardener, a musician and a swordfighter (this I love). By his middle years, he had still not found a Guru, until one day he encountered a naked, mad sage who told him to go back home, back to the village where he had met the holy man as a child, and to study with that great saint.
思瓦米吉一生堅毅不懈，是位心靈煽動家。和聖方濟一樣，他亦出身於富裕人家，預期接掌家族事業。然而還是個小男孩之時，他在家裏附近某個小村子遇見一位聖者，便深深地被這場經驗所感動。才十幾歲，思瓦米吉便裹着腰布離家，長年去印度的每個聖地朝拜，尋找真正的心靈大師。據說他遇上六十多位聖人與導師，卻始終找不到自己想要的導師。他捱餓，赤腳步行，在喜馬拉雅暴風雪中露宿在外，罹患瘧疾、痢疾——但他卻說在尋找能爲他指點神的人的那一段時間，是他生命中最快樂的時光。那幾年，思瓦米吉成爲陰陽瑜伽師（Hatha），精通草本醫學與烹飪，同時也是建築師、園藝家、音樂家、劍士（我喜歡這點）。人到中年時，他仍未找到導師，直到有天遇上一位裸體、瘋狂的聖徒叫他回家去，回到他小時候遇上聖者的村子，追隨聖者學習。
