After my noon time meal and checking my e-mail yesterday, just as I was about to retreat to my journal and reflect on my seemingly deep seated feelings that Hinduism isn’t as practical or parsimonious in its cosmological intricacies as the Buddhist or Christian religions, or simply a yoga practice divorced of religious dogmas, I joined a wild (solo) adventure making the question of dismissal (of Hinduism) blissfully more complex...
One thing I hoped to survey on my trip to India was how individuals blend in or stand out from group activities and “groupthink” in spiritual communities, and whether heterodoxy (I just started reading Sen’s Argumentative Indian: under normal circumstances, I would never think to use the word “Heterodoxy” :) ) has more of an effect of creating factions within the group or leading the group as a whole in new directions. This is an important element in forecasting the direction Spiritual Communities take, of course, but this is also dear to my heart and very relative to my personal experience (which is, I guess, more what the blog is about :) )
When I first became involved with the Art of Living community, I was strongly identified as a Buddhist. My first meditation teacher was a Theravada Buddhist monk, and though, at that time, I went to a diverse number of different spiritual groups locally for meditation and studies, they were almost exclusively Buddhist groups. In Buddhism, many schools of thought say that praying to gods (or “Gods” or “God”) is futile, because essentially, one must rely on ones own inner intelligence and wisdom, only that will be one’s saving grace. A Buddhist does not take refuge in different gods because when those gods come out of power, Buddhists fear, the devotee is “stuck on a sinking ship”, to quote an old Buddhist teacher of mine.
I had somewhat of a cosmological butting of heads when the first week after learning the basic Art of Living techniques, I found it was common practice to close with group singing, and in the largely Hindu community that I learned the Art of Living with, this took the shape of Sanskrit mantras and Hindi bhajans. Was I “breaking refuge”? Would these Gods interfere with the direct path of my Buddhist studies? Who in the world is Vasudevaya?
Gradually, and I attribute it largely to both a hankering to learn the practice of mantra, whether Hindu or Buddhist, combined with the heart-wrenchingly beautiful singing each week of my dear friend Bhaskar, I began to take some pleasure in the musical Satsangs. Over time I became more involved with Art of Living and felt that it embodied the Buddhist teachings as I understood them, and I began to feel it was the most positive place for me to place my energies. Yet, over the years (though, admittedly, it has only been four…) being involved with the predominantly Hindu community of Art of Living in different areas, there has been a shift, completely of my own will, from Art of Living as a tool for embodying Buddhist ideals to Art of Living as a sort of dock on the Ocean of world religions, of which, the Sea of Hinduism is most readily at hand. (Can you tell I’m writing from the beach?)
The Vedic Sciences and the philosophies of the Upanishads and Vedanta that are so intertwined with the ‘formless’ Hindu religion have much to inform and supplement Buddhism, much as the simplicity of some Buddhist cosmology (Hinayana/earlier Buddhism) and meditative practices (Zen-mindfulness or Vipasana) give focus to the infamously diffuse light of Hinduism. Hinduism is, for me, about detail and fullness, and Buddhism is about direction.
So, for long I have been learning about Vedic Sciences and focusing mainly on scriptures of Vedanta or knowledge directly from Sri Sri, yet, all the while I have had, just under the surface, my deep well of love for Buddhism and Christianity. As time passes in the Art of Living, I try to judge for myself whatever I see. Sometimes in peoples’ behavior or attitudes or (not to blaspheme against some Art of Living teachers, but in my perception I must include this) their teachings, there is some sense that individuals bring in some amount of (Hindu) religious dogma into the more simplistic (parsimonious) spiritual teachings of the Guru. I am not talking about this now for any personal derision or as a more essential call back to the origin of the teachings, but rather about my own experience, so I am not including any further examples of this. However, I do sense at times this dogmatism and so I try to understand the religious practice, I try to see if it works for me and, if so, to what extent and why it does work for me. However, it has been easy for me to get wrapped up in groupthink or private practices of a spiritual group, and over the past few years, I’ve had ample opportunities to check myself in my attitudes, beliefs, and practices.
“Where I am” lately seems to be trying to come to terms (as anyone who has suffered through the rougher parts of reading the blog knows…) with being a “Yogi” and being American, with being in a predominantly Hindu community much of the time, and being somewhat othered by not being Hindu and also by not being Indian. * These questions occur time and again for me—either I tend to neuroses or I am, more positively, a self-aware person (in a fun comment in one of my personal journals, I wrote this same line and followed it with the pondering: “Is there a difference between neurosis and self-awareness?”) or maybe it’s just my age.
This sort of personal search for identity is given some immediacy by my history of what I could call, if I wanted to be cruel to myself, my religious fervor. This immediacy is augmented by frustrations with small-mindedness of people and group “politics” that are inevitable in any organization, spiritual or otherwise, Indian or American or International. (Though a famous quote that I can’t place, I believe it is Tagore, comes to mind: “If there are three Indians, there will be three opinions.” Of course, I’m saying this with love.) Over the past year, I’ve asked myself again and again, “Am I a Hindu?” And the only answer I will allow myself to proffer is, “NO!” (And yes, I refuse to read the book by the same name.) So, I’ve been walking this fine line of deciding where my faith is, and why it is there, and how I can participate in Indian spiritual communities without being Hindu. How can I beeline to the coolest Guru in all of India and parallel this with a disaffected answer when questioned about my religion? “Umm… I’m Buddhist or Christian,” my eyes trace the floor, “or something.”
At any time in the past year or two, the thought hasn’t been foreign to me of trying to “quit Art of Living.” (In one tape, Sri Sri jokes about how it’s impossible—“You can try, then one morning, in the shower, you find yourself singing ‘Jai Jai Radha Ramana Hari Bol’!” [The bhajan sung to close every Satsang in the past several years]) I’ve frequently reflected about leaving the organization and bringing Sri Sri’s knowledge and practices back to a more solidly Christian or Buddhist life. Still, when I arrived at the Bangalore Ashram at the beginning of February to meet with a dear friend from the North (“Heeeeeeey, Budd-IE!”) who had been staying there for six months, I was at a loss to hear him say that he had often been overcome by doubts about leaving Art of Living and joining the Catholic Church. (Which is, to my interest, and possibly my interest alone, much closer to the good coffee shops in Bangalore than the Art of Living ashram.) Yet, through my four months of India, now I could not sympathize with him more. He spoke of a time when a (particularly dogmatic?) ashramite interrupted his singing of a Christian song in the kitchen with an admonition that he should be singing the morning arati, a traditional Sanskrit prayer. Not only is the prayer in arcane, complex Sanskrit, much too hard for the uninitiated, (admittedly, my budd-IE is quite “initiated”) it is actually one that I have never, in four years of traveling with Guruji and listening to his lectures both live and on any of several dozen recordings, heard him talk about or recommend. **
Before leaving home, I found myself on one or two occasions, crying or on the brink of tears at the thought of how much Art of Living meant to me yet also how much I wanted to escape the organization, at least at its weaker moments. During this study, so much of the focus has been directly at learning about Indian society, (though the title and objective is to understand [Indian] Spiritual Community— explaining the disparage between my studying and the study itself will actually be a short essay on its own in my final paper, so more on that later) so a lot of what I have come in touch with is the real life dogmatism of different Hindu groups, and how different branches of Hinduism view and treat different groups of people. I’ve learned a lot about the kind of stories of the Gods told in the Vedas versus those of the Puranas. *** The way religious difference shapes the ways Indians treat each other (sometimes positively accepting, sometimes distancing, and at unfortunate but seemingly regular intervals, violently) the way they justify worldly actions and the way they view other religions and cultures are all great sources of doubt for me continuing on the path of yoga without having firmer ideas of my own faith and where it lies in relation to Hinduism, and, in a larger scope, where my personal cultural identity lies with respect to India. ****
I faced this a lot in Rishikesh when I was pressed between visiting the Dalai Lama and foregoing the experience. (Luckily, the decision was made for me as I broke my leg.) It was this same emotional confusion that made leaving Bangalore ashram so hard when I realized I could not stay there with a broken leg. In the torrent of frustrations, I thought I might never return, because of my own obstinence, and that scared me. And, as these thoughts set in, I was about to sit down and write about this confusion yesterday in the early afternoon.
It is all part of a struggle that I have been experiencing of whether or not Indian society is wholly deplorable to the values I was raised with. (The answer, of course, is that it is not, to make myself clear; but at times I definitely lack the right sort of intelligence to understand the culture through my own eyes, from my own moccasins.)
As I was about to have a coffee and get out my journal, a particularly placid street-hawker came up and showed me the beautiful cards he was selling, and I actually humored him, something I haven’t done in a long time with hawkers. After talking to him, I thought to call the local Art of Living group, remembering that I wanted to see if I could do the group Sudarshan Kriya practice before going home.
I got hold of the right person in the end and he seemed enthusiastic about there being a special program that day (yesterday) for Guruji’s 50th Birthday. Initially I was only interested in the Kriya, but I wanted to also attend a satsang to lift my spirits out of the blue. I figured it would be an excellent way to honor Guruji’s birthday, something I had wanted to do anyway. I packed up for one night and took an auto-rickshaw to Trivandrum and walked around (probably too much, my ankle is sore again :( ) before coming to the Kerala Ashram for the celebration.
After a short initial satsang, there was a Guru Puja. There were about 400 people there, and I was the only non-Indian. An announcement came in Malayam: “Blah blah blah blah Guru Puja Course Phase 1 or Phase 2, blah blah blah blah,” motioning to the front stage with the puja altar. Some people began to walk up to sit on the stage. He had made an announcement for people who had been taught the puja to come up on stage. “Do I go? I’m the only non-Indian here! That attracts so much attention. So many Indians will be weird if I go up on stage.” I pictured wide smiles, and a dozen people asking, “You’re from which place? You are working? You are traveling alone?”
I counter-reasoned: reciting the puja from my place in the audience might draw a more concentrated attention from the people surrounding me. “Maybe I should go up and do the puja because it is the natural thing to do. I’m following the flow of events.” (After thinking about it this much, nothing about the decision was “natural.”)
I went up. I took a seat and was given flowers to offer. It was a beautiful puja, a very blessed moment. Of the 400 people attending, there were only about a dozen of us who were on stage. I was self-conscious, but more absorbed in the puja, all in all. The satsang after the puja was blissful. About 40 minutes of really great music and there was wonderfully energetic devotion from all around. I was out of my head, literally, singing along, so conscious of how my mood had completely changed from earlier that day. An unexpected dance followed, traditional Indian dance, though (as far as my limited knowledge of Indian and Keralan dance goes) seemingly quite modern. It was amazing, one of the best Indian dances I’ve ever seen. I kept thinking, “This is better than the stuff they had us watch at Silver Jubilee, hands down!” As, for twenty minutes, the dancers held one another in positions that I didn’t think I could support my own body weight in, everyone was hushed except for moving one another out of the way so they could see better. More satsang followed, then prasad (dinner), then I was given a place to stay at the ashram for the night, followed by morning Kriya. A beautiful gift. And now, with a smile on my face, I am again entranced by what India can offer at times, and I wonder, just how Hindu am I???
* Essentially, (very essentially) there’s a basic conflict that people have labeled as some form of dualism again and again throughout the history of the world’s philosophies. If spiritual teachings don’t lie, then we are unchanging spirits, made up entirely of love and abundant with bliss, the abode of heaven; yet the body has many needs in the world, and the mind has a multitude of desires—circumstance put us in conflict with others in fulfilling these needs and desires, and we deal with this stress in any number of ways, all the while with that same “abode of heaven” in our hearts. Is it just sophomoric to say that existence is one big identity crisis? In some way, maybe my American identity is largely my consumer identity (aren’t we labeled a consumer culture?) and my conditioned stress reactions, and the yogic path is the dialogue of that spirit conflicting with my basic “tribal identity” if my American consumerism.
** One of the most interesting Q&A moments I got in translation from his Hindi talks in Rishikesh, one devotee wanted the advice of Guruji on a seemingly important matter: “What shradhas [religious observations / recitations of prayers] should we do daily?” Guruji’s answer (for an audience that was a vast majority of Hindu Indians, a smaller group of Sikh Indians and a small “residue” of Guru-chasers from outside India, who anyway couldn’t understand what he was saying without translation): “Go ask a pundit.” There wasn’t a trace of stepping down from the question, Guruji actually seemed to make his answer endorse any path of religiosity.
*** This is an interesting development in my little worldview, ever since studying early Christianity about four years ago, I have usually said, whenever I got “into it” with someone (I rarely do…) that I mostly believe in the New Testament and not the Old Testament, because of the often cited difference in the way the sources talk about God. The Old Testament speaks of a wrathful God, one that should be feared, and Jesus spoke of a God that was pure love, a benevolent, non-judgmental provider for all. The latter jived with my optimistic view of a world of transcendental purity, all strawberries and cream on the inside. Thanks largely to a comparison that Wolpert makes in his history, India, I realized that this is actually not very different at all from, for a direct example, the Gods of the Vedas and their violent power struggles, and attempts to fulfill a myriad of desires, and the kind of God that Krishna speaks of or the kinds of yogis described in the Upanishads.
**** There is an undying insistence of many Hindus that there is nothing that can ever conflict between their religion and another… though this makes for great interpersonal acceptance, this is subtly chauvinistic and denies of other faiths the tenets of their beliefs that actually do make them different forms of faith.
I even had a man include this on his obligatory five-minute summary of the faith that I was subjected to last night as I got ready for bed. I had told him only that I was writing about India, catalyzing his sermon, which he ended with “I tell you this because it came up.” His highest concern was that, being schooled in the West, I would have only been told of Hinduism, “that we stand on snakes and pray to many statues.” Though I had many opportunities to do so, I lacked the energy to contradict him and launch a debate, only rejecting his insistence that India had no deserts, which was his way of citing how non-Indians over-harvest resources and how Indians themselves were innocent of opportunistic over harvesting and other ecological abuses. Actually, during the conversation, I kept thinking how the conversation was the best example of a somewhat questionably educated Indian who was convinced that he was correct and had the only possible outlook—he wouldn’t listen to a word I said, not even pausing at my injection about the Thar desert as I tripped over my incredulity: “It’s like one of the largest deserts in the world!” Though, his son, my age, smiled.
To cite a (common) example of the Hindu belief that their faith does not come into conflict, at the Sivananda Ashram, one Christian woman, with much sympathy from the group, injected that she wanted nothing to do with the satsang where we chanted the traditional praise of Hindu Gods and the gurus of Sivananda’s Shankaracharya tradition, every morning and night, and the teacher, insisting that the satsangs were mandatory for people staying at the ashram, said that they weren’t in conflict with the Christian religion or any other, and all of us were left reflecting on how 90% of the interpretations of the First Commandment don’t readily conform to the teacher’s understanding of religiosity.
