[h=1]GREETING[/h][h=1][/h] Namaste’, ‘Namaskar’ or ‘Namaskaram’ is the traditional way in which Indians greet each other. The location, person, age, familiarity, etc., do not matter when this greeting is offered. Namaste is a combination of two Sanskrit words, ‘namah’ and ‘te’. ‘Namah’ has five different meanings: Stoop Sink Bend Bow Incline ‘Te’ means ‘you’. Thus, together, they point to a humbling of oneself to another. Interestingly, the word ‘namah’ is again a combination of two different words, ‘Na’ and ‘Ma’. ‘Na’ means ‘not’ and ‘ma’ stands for ‘mine’. Literally, it means not mine. What it really stands for is that my heart and soul are not mine and belong to the higher souls. We are basically surrendering our egos by offering a Namaste greeting to another soul. Namaste is also treated a mudra (gesture) in various activities that we perform, like prayers, a dance, a recital, etc. We use all the 10 fingers of our two hands for this mudra. We join the fingers of one hand with the five fingers of the other hand, the tips and the palms joining each other. It has a reason. The five fingers of the right hand govern the five organs of knowledge and the five fingers of the left hand govern our karma. Thus, our karma is being governed by rightful knowledge. When we combine the two hands, we achieve the number 10 which represents perfection. On a spiritual level, Namaste is a surrender to the gods. We cannot pray to the gods unless we surrender ourselves completely to them. There is a theo ry that when we do the Namaste, we awaken our own divinity and are able to ‘converse’ with the divine. Namaste also brings together two different forces in many cases like God and Goddess, Man and Woman, Conscious and Unconscious, Intellect and Instinct and so many others. Namaste is thus not just a casual greeting, it has a deep significance attached to it. Jayasala42
