Namaste

NAMASTE

The gesture (or mudra) of Namaste is a simple act made by bringing together both palms of the hands before the heart, and lightly bowing the head. In the simplest of terms it is accepted as a humble greeting straight from the heart and reciprocated accordingly. 

Namaste is pronounced “Namastay”, and is a composite of two Sanskrit words, Nama, and te. Te means you, and Nama means to bend, incline or bow. The meaning of these two words together is a sense of submitting oneself to another, with complete humility. 

The word nama is split into two, na and ma. Na signifies negation and ma represents mine. The meaning would then be ‘not mine’. The import being that the individual soul belongs entirely to the Supreme soul, which is identified as residing in the individual towards whom the Namaste is directed. Indeed there is nothing that the soul can claim as its own. Namaste is thus the necessary rejection of ‘I’ and the associated phenomena of egotism. It is said that ‘ma’ in nama means death (spiritual), and when this is negated (na-ma), it signifies immortality.

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