That most excellent light of the god Savitṛ, the Sun —
may we meditate upon it;
may he inspire our thoughts.
qMonk literal translation — draft, pending review
That light — the most beautiful light there is — the shining light of Savitr, the Sun, who wakes up the whole world every morning.
We meditate on that light. We hold it in our minds.
May it light up our thinking, and guide our thoughts the right way.
Here is a way to say it to a child. Think of the sun as God's flashlight, shining on the whole world so that everyone can see. This prayer says: please shine that flashlight inside my head too — so I can think clearly, learn well, and choose what is good.
That is the whole prayer. Many prayers ask for things — health, safety, good fortune — and there is nothing wrong with asking. This one, the most famous prayer in the Vedas, asks for exactly one thing: a bright, clear mind. Not something to own. The ability to think well. That is why it has been taught to children for something like three thousand years: it asks for exactly what a growing child is doing every day.
The Sun has a special name here — Savitr (SUH-vih-tri) — which means "the one who sets everything going": the sun at the moment it rises and wakes the world up. And the last word of the prayer, prachodayat (pruh-CHO-duh-yaat), means "may he set going." So the prayer asks the one who starts everything to start our minds. The name and the wish are the same idea, said twice. Children who like patterns love this.
The word for "thoughts" — dhi (dhee) — is a bigger word than it looks. It is the ancestor of dhyana, meditation, and it means the seeing part of the mind, the part that understands. That is what the light is asked to reach: not our cleverness, our understanding.
This is the prayer of sandhya, the practice of turning toward the sun at dawn and dusk — so it is said at the very moment the sun is doing what the prayer describes. It comes from the Rig Veda, which makes it one of the oldest prayers still spoken anywhere in the world, and many Hindu children know it by heart before they can read.
What was one thing today that made your mind light up?
qMonk literal translation — draft, pending review·Devanagari checked against two printings·Draft — awaiting reviewer·How these texts were made