Lost in transit

Why is it that whatever passes for my daily rituals, fledgling though they may be, get lost when I travel? And, is that necessarily a bad thing?

I've spent most of my life proud of my ability to adapt, to be happy in most situations, with most people, under many different circumstances. On vacation, especially in a group, I like being the "whatever" person. (* a note to those who know me well below...) I guess when I was growing up, I looked around my family of origin and figured there were so many opinionated people, my option was either to have an opinion and the argument that went with it or to go along and have a chance at some fun. The choice to not care too much about my choice is not a bad way to travel with a husband and two teenagers as I care more about simply spending time with them than I do about where we actually go or what we actually do.

But somehow, once I pack that suitcase, I don't just leave behind work and the daily to do lists, I leave behind even the things that have come to mean something to me. The result? I came home from this trip a bit sad and lost. Meditation? Once or twice in three weeks. Exercise? Only the walking that comes from wandering around in hilly places. Not bad but not enough for me. It wasn't all gray. I played cards with Luke and Matt, listened to them laugh together in the back seat, watched the sun set with Kevin in more than one beautiful place, met so many lovely people, saw a rainbow with Matt when we really needed to see one, and I read a lot of Faulkner. But I spent way too much time focused on logistics and deciding where and what we were going to eat and dealing with credit card fraud alerts every other day, so much so, I began to wonder what I ever liked about traveling in the first place. Maybe I used to like leaving my daily life behind. Now, I hated that part of it. I really felt like I had vacated my life.

I must confess I also did way too much scrambling to make things work for everyone, even jumping in to solve problems that weren't mine to solve, so no one would fall apart, all in the maniacal quest for the magical family trip.

And I wonder why I came home feeling the way I do?

But it was more than just the mother-in-charge thing... It wasn't until I got back to my desk and found the passage from the Bhagavad Gita I love so much -- "He who can see inaction in the midst of action and action in the midst of inaction, is wise...etc" that I got why I'd felt so lost in transit this time. I'd lost touch with some of the small actions I now take that help give me stability, peace, meaning: the time I spend every day alone; the time I spend meditating; the literature I reread most days because it helps remind me of what it actually important rather than what presents itself on a minute-by-minute basis as needing my attention. And it didn't get lost because of the outside swirl of the people I love or even broken down rental cars. I simply didn't understand it's importance in my life and the need to make very sure I didn't lose those small things I do every day simply because I was away from home.

I get it. Rituals are important.



[* Okay, my friends and acquaintances...I'm talking about vacation. Yes, I know and freely admit I have NEVER been the "whatever" person at work but that is another subject ;-) ]

Christmas break

Mom and Dad are in town so I'll probably be too busy dealing with the "now, why exactly are you doing this crazy thing" questions to post until the end of the month but, maybe not... I hope your holiday season, whatever it entails, is filled with peace and joy.

A present -- my favorite passage of the Bhagavad Gita from Stephen Mitchell's translation all together in one place:

He who can see inaction
in the midst of action, and action
in the midst of inaction, is wise
and can act in the spirit of yoga.

With no desire for success,
no anxiety about failure,
indifferent to results, he burns up
his actions in the fire of wisdom.

Surrendering all thoughts of outcome,
unperturbed, self-reliant,
he does nothing at all, even
when fully engaged in actions.

There is nothing that he expects,
nothing that he fears. Serene,
free from possessions, untainted,
acting with the body alone,

content with whatever happens,
unattached to pleasure or to pain,
success or failure, he acts
and is never bound by his action.

When a man has let go of his attachments,
when his mind is rooted in wisdom,
everything he does is worship
and his actions all melt away.

Bhagavad Gita 4.18-4.23

86 hours of silence

Can a man get pearls by floating or swimming on the surface? He must dive deep.

Sri Ramakrishna, The Gospel of Ramakrishna

Silence and withdrawing for a period of time are an important part of Hinduism but I am one of the loudest, least solitary people I know. Don't get me wrong: I actually like being alone, at least, I think I do, but most of my working life I've spent in television news and, aside from a couple of years in my twenties, I've never lived completely alone. And the house I grew up in was loud: had three querulous brothers and we lived in a neighborhood filled with guys who never seemed to stop yelling, laughing or teasing. Now I live in a house with two boys and a husband, none of whom could be described as quiet. But I have liked being alone. The very first few words I put together on this project came when a girlfriend backed out of a cross-country skiing trip we were supposed to take together and, instead of canceling, I went alone. So, I figured it was time to see what a few days in the Vedanta Society's retreat house might be like.

With a letter from Swami Sarvadevananda, I got permission to go to the retreat center in Olema at the very end of January for four nights. It seemed like a good time to go, given that Luke’s and Matt’s finals were over and Kevin had just finished a project making that week a light one for him. Four nights meant I was going to have to keep my mouth shut from Tuesday dinner through Saturday at dawn. But it wasn’t just no talking: the rules of the center said no cell phone or computers either.

The retreat center confirmation also said to bring towels, linen, and all of my own food, that the kitchen was well-stocked with utensils and plates but “retreatants” were on our own for just about everything, including cleaning. So, on Tuesday morning, I dropped Luke and Matt off at school and drove six hours north through farmland and alongside the state’s endless aqueducts to Olema.

To get to the Vedanta women’s retreat center, you have turn onto a dirt road just outside the intersection that is Olema and follow it past the farmhouse that serves as the men’s retreat center, then through uncertainly fenced fields with muscular black cattle chewing in them. At the very end of the rutted road was a fairly new building built expressly for its purpose.

The kitchen was, indeed, well-stocked and cleaner than almost any kitchen I had ever seen. The open dining and living room had polished wooden tables, couches and armchairs and opened onto a wooden deck with a view of pastures bordered by trees. There were eight bedrooms off two short corridors, each opening directly to outside and a carpeted meditation room, Just off the kitchen, there was a small room for the caretaker – it was Noelle while I was there - who gave me keys to front door and as well as a “silence bead” to let the other women know that, even in the few hours we were allowed to talk (around dinner time), that I would be silent.

Not talking for eight-six hours is a lot easier if you’re in a beautiful place without cell phone service or internet or anyone you know. I brought nothing in with me except the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna,

the puja kit Hemu had encouraged me to buy, the small handbook Swami Sarvadevananda had suggested – Worship of Sri Ramakrisha - and a journal, although I was determined not even to write in that. And I kept my meals simple: nuts, yogurt, some spinach salad, fruit, nothing that required major preparation.

Not talking wasn’t so bad; not doing was my problem. Watching the day flow by from a bench on a hill instead of being immersed in it was hard. I do so I don’t feel. I do to convince myself there is a point. I do to distract from the fact that doing isn’t the point but I have no idea what is. Days directed by sunlight, wrist stripped of its handcuff of time, were long, deliciously long when you stopped fighting them. When the to-do lists and the doubts came, I simply watched the storm clouds gather, the mental winds whip around and then pass. Thoreau and his sunlight kept coming to mind as I sat overlooking the valley, measuring time by the shadow’s spread from one tree trunk to another, by the layers of clothing needed to stay warm, by the herd of exotic deer’s slow climb from the valley into the hills just after dawn. The deer’s ancestors were left behind more than fifty years ago by men who planned to hunt them but now they overrun the place.

Comic relief: the first two mornings my wake up call was a gang of wild turkeys gobbling and complaining just outside my window as they scuttled across the grass at first light.

I tried to use the puja kit but its complexity, even with plenty of free time, even with the help of the step-by-step instructions in the Worship of Sri Ramakrishna, stumped me again although there was one revelation: in the directions for the daily ritual, devotees are directed to dip their fingers into purified water and then to draw a triangle inside a circle and then a square around both on the ground.

Sound familiar? It did to me. At home, I googled: “Alcoholics Anonymous symbol” and saw, on an AA-related website, the very same image (minus a square around the outside) and the following statement quoted from AA literature: “That we have chosen this particular symbol is perhaps no accident. The priests and seers of antiquity regarded the circle enclosing the triangle as a means of warding off spirits of evil, and A.A.'s circle and triangle of Recovery, Unity, and Service has certainly meant all of that to us and much more." I had forgotten, until seeing this image, Swami Sarvadevananda’s telling me that the founder of AA, Bill Wilson, had been a devotee of this particular form of Hinduism, at least for a while.

But most of the time, when I wasn’t wandering the grounds or trying to meditate, either inside the meditation room or outside on the bench on the hill, I read the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna.

He sure was tough company. The Gospel is really more of a biography or journal written by one of Ramakrishna’s devotees under a single initial: “M.” What’s interesting about it is the degree to which “M” simply took notes rather than making a concerted effort to mythologize the man he came to believe was an actual incarnation of the Divine. It has a warts-and-all feel, a very human picture which, for me, made it all the more difficult to consider the idea that this man could be a “capital I” Incarnation. I mean, this was a man who shamelessly guilted some of his married followers into living away from their wives and children for months at a time; who was unschooled, perhaps close to illiterate, and who spent the first years of his adult life weeping at the feet of Kali, sometimes without clothes on, demanding that God actually appear before him, live and in person.

Who can measure up to that standard? Do I want to literally see God, if such a thing were possible? Sure, I’m driven to do whatever it is I am doing – I sometimes feel like a carcass and an intellect being dragged along by this drive of mine – but to weep for it? To stand naked in a temple and demand a Visit? To threaten to kill myself if God didn’t seem interested in complying? It isn’t just that my passion isn’t strong enough to follow Ramakrishna’s example, to disregard all inbred societal norms. If I’m very honest, I’m not so sure I would choose to see God even if I believed such a thing were possible.

In the Bhagavad Gita, the terrifying passage where God finally revealed just part of Itself to Arjuna, made me not so certain any of us really would choose to see the Divine if we could. That awe-filled description takes my breath away. I was clear on this point: at that moment I felt wholly incapable of even imagining myself ever having the courage required to have that kind of desire, that absolute and laser-beam faith. Alone, for days of silence with Ramakrishna, the mountain of faith felt too sheer, too high to climb, without better spiritual equipment than I had.

Perhaps it’s enough, in any given moment, to act on faith “indifferent to results, content with whatever happens.” Or take the actions of a faithful person just to find out something I might not learn otherwise.

When reading Ramakrishna got too much, I wandered around the woods, following overgrown paths wherever they led. At one point, so many branches had fallen, the path was impossible to follow. Clearing the ones I could move, I wondered if it was possible my purpose might be just that, to clear those branches on that particular day so that some modern day Ramakrishna might be able to find his or her way to their bodhi tree, to their epiphanous spot, and it was just my job to move those branches without ever knowing the effect. Could that be enough? Would it matter if it wasn’t?

By the time Saturday morning came, I was packed up in my ice-coated car, waiting for the caretaker down at the men’s retreat center to open the gate at seven in the morning, the moon still high in the early morning sky. I was going to meet Huston Smith. When I got to an area where my cell phone had reception, I was relieved to find no message canceling our visit.

How will I know?

…when it’s time to move on to Buddhism, to Confucianism, to Daoism, to Christianity, to Judaism, to Islam?

Humility, patience, sincerity,
nonviolence, uprightness, purity,
devotion to one’s spiritual teacher,
constancy, self-control,

dispassion toward objects of the senses,
freedom from the I-sense, insight
into the evils of birth,
sickness, old age, and death,

detachment, absence of clinging
to son, wife, family, and home,
an unshakable equanimity
in good fortune or in bad,

an unwavering devotion to me
above all things, an intense
love of solitude, distaste
for involvement in worldly affairs,

persistence in knowing the Self
and awareness of the goal of knowing—
all this is called true knowledge;
what differs from it is called ignorance.

Bhagavad Gita, 13.7-11

I was in Swami Sarvadevanada’s tiny office, trying to understand more about the specific elements of the Kali puja when I tried to ask him some personal questions again. Old habits die hard.

“What was your name…before?” I asked.

The swami was behind his desk.

“Why do you want to know that?”

“I don’t know. But I do.”

Cool fall air was coming in the window behind him. There was a long pause before he answered. “We want to forget our past identity. This is a monastic identity. I am a monk. I am for the whole world. My name is Sarvadevananda; I am a priest ‘of the consciousness of all gods.’ That means universal. I don’t give any attachment to my family.”

“None at all?”

“No. Wherever I am, that is my family, eh? So, to get over our personal identities of little things of life, we left that (his original name) back and I don’t want to go back to that identity and remember ‘Oh I belong to this. I was born here and this and that.’”

“And if you miss--”

“What shall you miss? If you get something higher, you don’t miss.”

I tried to imagine doing this to my family: I just couldn’t. But then, I didn’t grow up in India or in a household where religion comes before everything so I can’t possibly get an accurate sense of the meaning or the impact of Swami Sarvadevenanda’s decision on his family. I do know that Swamiji’s so firm about the insignificance of names that it’s been the source of one of our only intractable disagreements.

I’ve had Swami Sarvadevenanda (along with several other people) fact-check everything I’ve written and will write about Hinduism and he’s asked for only one change I’ve refused to make: Swamiji wanted me to remove every mention of his name, Sarvadevananda, except for the very first time I introduce him, and simply refer to him as “the swami.” The reason: the message is what’s important, the message of Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda, not the person delivering the message.

I said I understood his point but I thought it’d seem awkward and a bit odd if he became this anonymous shadow rather than the flesh and blood person that he is. And it’s that flesh and blood person who is my teacher. Okay, so it’s really (according to Vedanta) the teachings of Ramakrishna, of Swami Vivekananda, of Brahman coming through this teacher sitting in front of me in his orange robes and big glasses but, still, he is the teacher before me and it’s his way of communicating these ideas that brought me to the Vedanta Society in the first place.

I decided to move from the personal family history to safer ground.“What does – Sarvadevananada mean?”

“First word ‘Sarva’ means ‘all’. ‘Deva’ means god, gods. And ‘ananda’ means joy, bliss. So you have: ‘the bliss of all the gods’. That means you are reminded you are not a man, not a woman, you are (imperishable consciousness) and you are awakening to that consciousness.”

I looked down at my hands. Ink from my pen was on my fingers. “I’m so grateful to you for what you’ve been giving…”

Swamiji interrupted me with a wave of his hand. “Spiritual life is like that, to share, eh? If you eat good food, you want to share with others.” He laughed.

I said, “All the different temples I went to and ...I end up here, a temple where Ramakrishna has done, obviously in a much deeper way, what I’m trying to do.” (Ramakrishna spent some time practicing both Christianity and Islam.)

“I think that is the way God is taking you in different experiences and brought to the right place. That’s all.”

In some of the classes, the swami had discussed other religions so I said, “Buddhism has come up a little bit and you’ve talked about the point of religion is to see God, to have that real sense of a Presence. Doesn’t – again, I don’t know that much about Buddhism yet but doesn’t Buddhism say there is no god?”

“Yes. But the question is the definition of God. What do you mean by God?” He paused for effect. “Buddhism says: don’t talk about it. Buddha took the Vedantic idea – he (Buddha) was born Vedantic – he said: ‘Look at the world. What is permanent? By the time you sit for some moment, the thing changes. Every fraction of a second everything is changing. So, if everything is changing, it gives the illusion of reality.’ For example if you take a fan blade: when it moves very fast you don’t see the blade. Does it mean that there is no blade?”

“No.”

“Vedanta says negate, negate, to come to one Absolute Reality.” The swami was talking about the Hindu idea of going through everything your senses can perceive to realize, one-by-one, that these were not the Divine. “Buddha didn’t say that. He said only: ‘Be a lamp unto you.’ What Buddha said – he didn’t want to get caught into that trap of God, God, God, what is this, that? He wanted to emphasize: go back to the source of the light - consciousness. Eh? So, his language was different (but) go to the realization— When he got the realization, look at his face. He was beaming in joy. Where the joy comes from if there is no joy inside? So what’s the difference between (the Hindu definition of God and the Consciousness of Buddhism)? The effect we see the same. So the words are just labels.”

I then brought up a subject that had been on my mind since I started this whole project. “So how will I know when it’s time to go on to another (faith?) If I’m going to do this work, at some point I have to say, ‘Okay, it’s time to turn my attention to the next tradition.’ What is your suggestion about how I will know?”

“This is your project. Writing about this is one thing, that’s a project. But your spiritual sadhana, you should have to go deep with one thought, one idea, one practice. Otherwise, it is like digging the ground to get water: you dig ten feet here, you dig ten feet there and you never get any water. You have to be persistent in going down and down. Your spiritual life should be dedicated to one idea, one principle.”

“But can’t this (project) be of service?” I asked.

“This can be a great service,” the swami said, “to bring this concept is a great thing because harmony is the need of this age. So, you should have to study the others and put their views forward with as much emotion and connection in that particular practice as you can. Here is a person, Ramakrishna, he individually practiced all these religions and came to the same conclusion: that all roads lead to the same conclusion.”

“What is your suggestion about how will I know when it’s time?”

“You’ll have to figure it out.”

I laughed. “I knew you were gonna say that. I was just kind of hoping there’d be something more, I don’t know, you know….”

“You pray inside and say: ‘Oh Lord guide me from my heart’ and your mind will say. Or some opportunity will come or, as you say, you didn’t know about us or anything and you happened to be in Kumbha Mela. So, I am saying something like that may come up and God will show you the path.”




Sri Ramakrishna & Swami Vivekananda























The Hollywood Vedanta Society main office and chapel

Seeing God...

This passage of the Bhagavad Gita freaked me out when I read it. Don't judge, just read and imagine what it describes...

Arjuna said:
Tell me now, in detail,
the divine manifestations
by which you pervade these worlds
and grace them with so much splendor.

How can I know you, Krishna?
Which of your many forms
should I visualize, Lord of Yoga,
as I focus my thoughts on you?

Give me some further examples
of your glorious manifestations;
for I never can tire of hearing
your life-giving, honey-sweet words.

The Blessed Lord said:
All right, Arjuna, I will tell you
a few of my manifestations,
the most glorious ones; for infinite
are the forms in which I appear.

I am the Self, Arjuna,
seated in the heart of all beings;
I am the beginning and the life span
of beings, and their end as well.

Of the sky gods, I am Vishnu;
of the heavenly lights, the sun;
Marichi, chief of the wind gods;
among stars, I am the moon;

of the Vedas, I am the hymns;
Indra among the gods;
the mind among the six senses;
the consciousness of all beings;

of the storm gods, I am Shiva;
of demigods, Kubera;
Agni among the bright gods;
and Meru, highest of mountains.

Know, Arjuna, that among
priests I am Brihaspati;
of generals, the war god Skanda;
of waters, I am the ocean;

of the great seers, I am Bhrigu;
of words, the syllable Om;
of worship, I am the mantra;
of mountain chains, Himalaya;

of trees, the sacred fig tree;
of divine sages, Narada;
of the high celestial musicians,
Chitraratha; of saints,

the wise Kapila; of horses,
Ucchaishravas, Indra’s
favorite, born of the sea foam;
of elephants, Indra’s winged

Airavata; of men,
I am the king; of weapons,
Indra’s thunderbolt; of cows,
Kamadhuk, the wish-granter;

Kandarpa, the god of love;
the king of reptiles, Vasuki;
of divine serpents, I am
Ananta, the cosmic serpent; Varuna

among the gods of the ocean;
of the blessed forefathers, I am
Aryaman; of the controllers,
Yama, the god of death;

of demons, the devout Prahlada;
of things that compel, I am time;
the king of animals, the lion;
Garuda among the birds;

of purifiers, the wind;
of warriors, I am Rama;
of sea monsters, Makara;
of rivers, the holy Ganges;

of creations, the beginning and the end
and the middle as well, Arjuna;
of knowledge, knowledge of the Self;
of orators, I am the speech;

of letters, the first one, A:
I am imperishable time;
the Creator whose face is
everywhere; death that devours all things;

the source of all things to come;
of feminine powers, I am
fame, wealth, speech, and
memory, intelligence, loyalty, forgiveness;

of chants, I am the great Brihat;
of poetic meters, the gayatri;
of months, Margashirsha,
the first month; of seasons, the flower-lush spring;

of swindles, I am the dice game;
the splendor of the high and mighty;
determination and victory;
the courage of all brave men;

of the Vrishi clan, I am Krishna;
of Pandavas, I am Arjuna;
of the sages, I am Vyasa;
of poets, the sublime Ushanas;

of punishers, I am the scepter;
the astuteness of the great leaders;
the silence of secret things;
and I am the wisdom of the wise.

I am the divine seed
within all beings, Arjuna;
nothing, inanimate or animate,
could exist for a moment without me.

These are just a small number
of my infinite manifestations;
were I to tell you more,
there would be no end to the telling.

Whatever in this world is excellent
and glows with intelligence or beauty –
be sure that it has its source
in a fragment of my divine splendor.

But what need is there for all
these details? Just know that I am,
and that I support the whole
universe with a single fragment of myself.

Bhagavad Gita, 10.17-10.40

It's October, Happy New Year!

Now, this was something to see. I had no idea what Annakut was and, frankly, I didn’t bother to look it up because, if Hemu invited me, that was enough for me so I didn’t bring my camera. But I did find a few pictures on line... just wait.

By worship you will nourish the
gods and the gods will nourish you in turn;
by nourishing one another
you assure the well-being of all.

Bhagavad Gita 3.10

When I got to the Whittier BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir (temple) in Whittier, Hemu was easy to find. Although crowds of people were talking in small happy groups or wandering in out of the hot late fall sun, I had now her cell phone number and she had mine. I was by her side in a moment and, when I bent down to touch her feet – or at least show some effort to get down there while we were standing on the black macadam- she grabbed me and laughed, “No, wrong person. I should be the one doing that to you!”

That wasn’t true, of course -- the student always bows to the person with the knowledge -- but we settled for a quick hug. Hemu is one of the only people who makes me feel tall. Her neat, shiny hair was parted in the middle and she was wearing yet another elegant sari in honor of the festive occasion. She said, “You know, I really feel like I’ve always known you.”

I knew exactly what she meant. “Me, too, Hemu.”

“Come. Let me show you something.”

I’d finally learned that you never come to a temple empty-handed so I’d brought flowers which, Hemu gently pointed out, was a perfectly fine offering on most days and was even perfectly fine that day as well but, on Annakut, the first day of the new year, what people were supposed to bring was food. As we walked in to the mandir, I found out why.

There are not enough excessive words to describe what was in that room. The entire length of the altar was blocked by a wooden, stepped platform covered with hundreds of individual plates of food, perfectly presented, as if ready for a commercial photo shoot. A second showcase for still more plates was actually a fountain with four separate sprays of water, each lit a different color by underwater lights. The variety of the food was astounding.

I asked Hemu, “What's this all this about?”

“This is the first day of the new year,” Hemu said, “and we are offering all this food to God so he will give it back to us all year. The target was like nine-hundred to twelve hundred items.”

“How many did you bring?”

“I brought like seven or eight.”

“I’ve never seen so much food put out like this.”

“It’s our way of saying thank you to Lord Ganesh for everything he will provide this year. There are about seven hundred items here today.”

And it turns out, seven hundred plates of food requires two rooms, two enormous stepped platforms to display because there was even more food, on an even larger stepped platform, in the main prayer hall where people were sitting, watching a video transmission of the sadhus officiating the service in the other hall – there were just too many people there to use just one.

I loved being there with Hemu, loved that she'd thought to invite me but I struggle in the midst of big pageants like these. It's hard for me to respond in anyway other than as an observer, a parade-watcher, a gawker. I'm certain I'd have a much different feeling about all of this had I stayed up, night after night, probably with family members, making one special dish after another to contribute to the offering. It'd be a family ritual, then, like decorating our Christmas tree or our nearly annual attempt to make a gingerbread house. (It's a good thing ours aren't ever meant to be on display.) But I think Annakut offers more than just annual ritual, if you're open to it.

So much of Hinduism involves treating whatever your idea of God is kind of like a revered corporal figure. Most of these rituals involve the symbolic feeding, bathing and clothing of whatever form of God you worship so there's an opportunity to develop an intimate, on-going relationship - not so easy when I find myself truly incapable of imagining any form that might even serve as a stand-in for the Divine. Not only that, I think I have a hard time with the display portion of organized religion. It might just be that I haven't had enough experience with it to feel comfortable but there may be more to it than that: the moments I've had in my life where I've felt something I might identify as the first rumblings of the sacred have always occurred in quiet, in solitude or something close to it, only on occasion in the midst of an event and usually those events involved a story that made me see things a different way - events like plays or movies, even songs.

I do know I was so much more comfortable being there with my current frame of mind than the one I've lugged around with me all of my life. I sat next to Hemu while she translated the service in in my notebook just trying to understand and to appreciate, to find what I could in it that might have meaning for me while accepting that whatever might not resonate still was beautiful and possibly moving to others. Boy, that hasn't been my natural state until recently. If I'd ended up some place like this decades ago I would have tried to soothe my feelings of dislocation and fear by cataloguing all that was "weird" instead of just taking the time to understand more. What a sad way I've lived some of my life.

As the service continued, I began to wonder if any of the sadhus I was seeing on the big screens (although they were just one hall away)was the one who’d read and written his reactions to my project. I pointed to one and asked Hemu, “Is that the one who answered my email?” Why I needed to see the face of the monk originally shocked by project, shocked by me, I didn't know but I did. I guess I wanted to see the face of someone my upbringing could shock.

Hemu answered, “No. That isn’t him.”

“Is the one who answered here?”

“Yes, I’ll show him to you.” We watched the screen showing the ritual in the other room for a while when all of a sudden Hemu said, “That’s him. He was the one just singing. He was born here.”

Just before the camera panned away, I caught a glimpse of a tall, thin man with a close-cropped beard, probably in his mid-thirties, possibly forty, but I doubted it. He didn’t seem all that shockable but, as alien as Hinduism was for me, my upbringing outside of any faith and practice must have been alien – and even shocking – to him.

I sat on the floor next to Hemu who, without discussion, had taken my notebook and was busily translating whatever was said. Around her right wrist were at least five of the magenta puja strings like the one she'd tied on mine at my very first "puja" or worship service, the string she’d told me was supposed to symbolize our devotion to God. Hers were all different shades: some new and bright, one pale and about to break. My single strand had frayed and faded a bit but was still, more than a month later, strong on my wrist. Hard to believe but, in all this time, no one had asked me about it or even seemed to notice it; it was just a piece of cotton kitchen string tied to my wrist and slowly losing its once uneven shade of magenta. I’d been wondering what I was supposed to do about it. Was I supposed to cut it off or what? But it felt strange to just call Hemu up to ask.

Now I had my answer: it's supposed to stay on until it falls off.

Well, okay.

22 October 2006

More Annakut pictures from various BAPS Swaminarayan mandirs around the country....

Cleveland & Houston....














Boston and New Jersey...

Truth and simplicity...

Whoever, clear-minded, knows me
as the Ultimate Person, knows
all that is truly worth knowing,
and loves me with all his heart.

Thus, Arjuna, I have taught you
this most secret doctrine; whoever
learns it, is wise, and has done
all that there is to do.

Bhagavad Gita 15.12-20

I read this passage of the Bhagavad Gita in the morning and it made me cry. Why, I don’t know, but it did. Maybe because it just seems so simple while I seem to make everything just as complicated as it can be. I’m still the sixth grader who could turn any routine school project into a multi-level medieval castle with a moat and working drawbridge. Out of toothpicks.

The Svetavatara Upanishad says “Beyond It, truly, there is nothing else to be known.” If something in that simple statement resonates so profoundly with me, why can I just stop right here? But I can’t.

With religious wars and wars of culture and belief conducted by people who say their beliefs leave them no choice, my personal beliefs just don’t begin to answer the questions I have. This isn’t just about what I believe but about what others believe, what others say leads them to do what they do. So long as I have no actual or gut knowledge I’m going to have to take at face value what the actors or the critics of the actors say. I am no longer willing to do that.

But I do wish I was someone else sometimes.

(12 October 2006)

Bowling and death...

Focused on me at all times,
you will overcome all obstructions;
but if you persist in clinging
to the I-sense, then you are lost.

Bhagavad Gita, 18.58

My brain is exploding.

There’s a good reason why people only consider subjects like these once a week, a good reason why most religions have sabbaths only every seventh day: the brain can only process so much. At least, this brain. My head felt so crammed with new thoughts, ideas, and concepts it actually hurt. But it turned out to be the perfect week: both of my sons had different days off from school so I had an excuse to play and it came in the nick of time -- I needed mindless. I decided to take Matt bowling. It’s hard to be too serious in rented shoes.

Right before we left I sent an email to Professor Amir Hussain, hoping he might know either where Huston Smith was or anyone who might introduce me to him. Although I’d decided to use the chapter structure of his book, The World’s Religions, as the archtecture for this project, it hadn’t occurred to me to try and talk to him about it until Swami Sarvadevananda mentioned that Smith had spent a great deal of time in the Vedanta Society temple in St Louis. I mean, how weird is that? After wandering around from one branch of Hinduism to another, I end up choosing a swami in the same sect of Hinduism as Huston Smith? It seemed, somehow, not accidental or, at least it made me think I should try to talk to him about what I’m doing. If he’d see me, that is.

Once I sent the email, Matt and I went bowling.

Just how bad a bowler am I? Let’s just say that Matt and I played with the bumpers up. Let’s just say that Matt, using his unique two-handed hurling strategy in which the ball slammed to the wood some distance down the alley and then bounced – sometimes twice - off the bumpers, consistently beat me. Three games, some air hockey, pinball, a game of absurdly poor pool and I could feel the pressure ease. But Matt still had his regular afterschool activities so it meant I actually could go to Swami Sarvadevananda’s private study group that afternoon so I went.

The class was already underway when I walked in to what used to be the living room of the small home that also houses the bookstore and Swami Sarvadevananda’s office. About four people were in a semi-circle of chairs with Swami Sarvadevananda in the center, his back to a fireplace. Painted onto the mantelpiece over his head were the words: “All Kare Abandone, Ye Who Tarye Here,” a remnant of the home’s original owner.

A somewhat elderly white woman with short, graying hair finished reading an excerpt from a book on Vedanta Hinduism called For Seekers of God. The subject was aging and death. Swami Sarvadevananda said, “It’s very difficult for people to accept growing old. I mean we accept youth, we accept the prime of our lives but can we accept change? Everything changes. Even since we have been sitting here in class, we have been changing. How many cells have died since this class began? Why do we care so much what happens to this body? This is a temporary, rented home. It’s decay and loss is natural.”

Decay and loss might be natural but I hate it. I’m about to turn fifty and I care very much what happens to my body. And I’ve never been much good at accepting change. I cried at the end of high school, of college, of every year of summer of camp, of jobs, of relationships, at the end of kindergarten for Luke because he was the first and for Matt because he was the last. But then change is easy to like when bad things finally come to an end, right?

The swami’s slim hands were doing their sinuous dance, turning over and over as though offering us his words. “Everyone loves a new car. Youth is like that. But when it becomes old no one looks at it, at us anymore,” Laughing, he looked around the room through his large glasses to see if we understood. “And then, when the car stops working, we exchange it for another. We are still the same driver but the car is new. I mean, we can beautify ourselves, some people have plastic surgery but, really, how long can you do it? We must accept our bodies as they are and see whatever stage we’re in as beautiful.”

Okay, that’s not so easy. My current body is a little tougher to love than the twenty-five year-old one but, if I stop to really consider, I was laughably harsh about my body even then. I look at photographs and can remember what I was thinking about how I looked and it makes me sad at the disconnect. For that reason and others, this stage is actually better. So some lines have replaced the blemishes, a trade-up if you ask me. And I was pretty uncomfortable in my own skin then. I was afraid and that made me judgmental, harsh, and not very trustworthy, even to myself at times. Looking back at old photos, there’s not one that makes me want to switch places with that girl.

There was a warmth, an intimacy in the room as the swami spoke. He said that there were six stages of life: existence, birth, growth, the prime of life, the stage where you gradually lose everything, and death. “Here I am in the fifth stage of life, nothing left but death. Well, okay! What is lost by dying?" he said. “Nothing! Who doesn’t like replacing an old car with a new car? That is what we believe. But why, why do we believe this? Ask yourself: who was there in your body when you were born? You would say: ‘I was.’ But your body isn’t the same as it was then. Yet you would say ‘I’ was in there, the same ‘I’ that is in there now. So, if your body is constantly changing, but the ‘I’ isn’t, could that ‘I’ be the same thing as your body?“

There was one of those pauses, a silence like a delta of thought branching off in all directions. The graying woman then ventured a quiet question. “Why do I have so much fear of death?”

Swami Sarvadevanda looked only at her. “Because you haven’t analyzed this. ‘I’ is continuously there. ‘I’ was there when you were just a girl. Your ‘I’ was there when you were a young woman and ‘I’ is here now. ‘I’ is birthless, deathless so what will you be losing in death? The ‘I’ doesn’t die, just the body does. And here’s the Vedanta answer to that question…” The swami seemed almost disconnected from his arms. “You can’t accept that you are going to die because you aren’t. You are infinite and the concept of death feels wrong because it is. The body dies but the ‘I’ doesn’t.”

Swami Sarvadevananda pulled his pale orange tunic away from his body to indicate the spare frame inside. “What does it matter if this goes? If it’s proven that ‘I’ exists through the first five stages why not the last?”

I spent a lot of time worrying about death as a child. I hated going to bed. I was afraid of the dark. I checked for evildoers under my bed, in my closet, and even behind the pictures on my wall – after all, a secret compartment could have developed behind the wall during the day. But even once my room was investigated and secure, I was too full of adrenaline to sleep so I had a lot of time to think and death was the subject more often than not. It went kind of like this: Most people don’t really think they’re going to die. Do I know that? Do really know that I’m going to die? Or am I a “weak” person unable to handle the truth? My mother certainly was afraid I was going to be one. Along with asking too many questions and my interest in religion, I also wanted a light on in my room at night. Weak people needed religion and lights on in their room at night. I would worry this point until I was quite sure that I believed that I was, indeed, going to die.

My courage reservoir wasn’t very deep. The only tenable faith within my reach at the time was that, somehow, my parents could save me from the abject terror of facing death truthfully and alone. Going to their room was a poor substitute for faith, but it was a substitute. However, there are only so many nights parents of four children will put up with being shaken awake after midnight so, most nights, I had to settle for watching them breathe by the light of the television my mother can’t sleep without.

I’m not sure if I can completely abandon myself to it but the swami’s concept of death - the ‘I’ doesn’t die, just the body does” - is a lot easier to handle than the idea of humans as just a walking, talking set of complex chemical compounds on their way to breaking apart into their component parts. Surely we’re more than that, aren’t we? What about those moments of intense communion with another person? Or those perfect moments in plays or in stories where the veil is pierced and you feel you really know something, get that gut sense that you’ve seen It, felt It, even without having the slightest idea what It is? Randomly-assembled chemicals?

“Don’t be ridiculous. Eat your peas.”

And even now, like the gray-haired woman, I’m still stunned by the idea that one day I will cease to exist. That is, when I let myself think about it. The only moments of grace, of freedom from this paralyzing fear come when I can grasp some piece of the idea that there’s a difference between this physical form and what’s underlying it; that this specific, physical me might not be quite as important as I think.

The swami was getting ready to end the class. “Creation itself is nothing. It is a ripple on an ocean of God, it rises up and then collapses and, without the ocean, waves cannot dance. We come from God, we dance in God, we fight in God, we love in God, we dissolve in God -- only we don’t know that everything comes from God. That’s why birth, death is just a matter of course, it’s natural, like a wave returning to the ocean.

“Here is the key point: Everything that is accomplished, everything we achieve in our lives, these accomplishments are nothing. They will pass away just as our greatest failures will. They will die when our body dies. But the Self, the eternal Atman presence, remains as it is forever. We are all connected with that eternal presence – Atman. Okay, let’s stop here for now.”

And, with a short chant, we started to gather our things to leave. And then my fellow students – most of them American – each bent down to brush Swami’s feet. I was panicked. I couldn’t do it. It felt fake and false. And how do you put your palms together when holding a notebook, pen, and a cellphone? I thought of shaking hands but that appeared hopelessly out of the question, too. So, from a polite distance away, I tried to awkwardly beam my gratitude and he did the same.

When there were only three of us left, the swami asked, “Do you want to come see the Durga puja? It’s just ten minutes long, right here, in my office, on my computer.”

What I wanted to say was, ‘No, I can’t process anything more,’ but I didn’t. Instead, I followed him and two other women around the corner and into his miniscule office. The other two women were almost as excited as he was to see whatever this “Durga puja” was. Almost. I encouraged the excited ones to sit in the chairs so I could stand in the back, nearest the door, wanting to be sure to be able to get out when I wanted without having to disturb someone to do it. While I never did come to understand what a Durga puja was then, I did get that it was something happening in India, at the central office, the Rome, if you will, of Vedanta Hinduism in Belur Math, India and they were going to be able to watch it on the internet. I watched people eager to watch a ritual performed half a globe away on a tiny pop-up window on an old fourteen-inch monitor. Would I ever get to the point where I’d actually be excited to see a ritual performed? It was hard to imagine. When it was all strange and new, it fascinated. But that was different from finding meaning, peace, comfort, or transcendence in it.

One of the women leaned in to point out where the Swami should click to start the web streaming. Swami Sarvadevananda’s head was tilted up so he could find the small arrow to start the video through the reading portion of his large glasses. His hands looked odd cupped over a computer mouse. With a click, the ceremony began to play.

He was delighted. “Oh, we’re right there! This is wonderful! Can you see? Look! There are a group of monks meditating.”

The swami began pointing out monks he knew, old friends who were participating in the service. The camera started to sweep to one side to show the crowd and, when it got to some trees and water, the swami exclaimed, “Oh, that’s the Ganges! You know the river, the Ganges? There it is, right there! I mean, this was happening just today, and we can see it, we can be there, can you imagine?”

He was transported, a traveler a long way from home with little hope of returning soon who was feeling the air, smelling the smells, knowing the light of a familiar, intimate place.

Within minutes, the video was over and, as the women helped the swami save it and email it to others, I said goodbye and slipped out, grateful I didn’t have to find myself unable to bow again.

The small relief I’d gotten from bowling earlier in the day, from not thinking, was gone.

I felt like a computer that needed a hard-drive upgrade.



(28 September 2008)

First teacher...

He who teaches this primal
secret to those who love me
has acted with the greatest love
and will come to me, beyond doubt.

No one can do me a service
that is more devoted than
this, and no one on earth is more
precious to me than he is.

Bhagavad Gita 18.68-18.69

Swami Sarvadevananda told me to ask for him at the bookstore. I was nervous opening the glass-paned wooden door and stepping up into the small store. The raw wood shelves were jammed with books on Hinduism as well as on every faith imaginable. There was other stuff, too: incense, incense burners, some photos, and small figures for sale. I looked around for someone to talk to and then realized that, down behind the boxy checkout counter, a gray-haired woman was bent over, peering at an old computer.

“I’m here to see Swami--,” I realized I’d only seen his name on the website and had no idea how to pronounce it. I stumbled through some approximation of it.

The woman looked confused so I did my best with all those syllables a second time and then said, “I have an appointment.”

She dialed the phone. The voice on the other end did not belong to the swami I’d met. When she hung up she said, “Oh! You don’t mean Swami Swahananda! You mean Swami Sarvadevananda!” but she pronounced his name “SHARva-day-veh-nan-duh” The other swami was Swami Sarvadevanada’s boss, the head of the Hollywood Vedanta Society temple. I confess I was still completely confused, their names still indistinguishable to me.

A few minutes later Swami Sarvadevananda came walking down the brick path. He pulled his keys out from somewhere inside his orange robes and opened the door to his tiny office. In his hand was my proposal. He’d read it overnight.

The swami began as if we were in the middle of a conversation, not the beginning. “I think this should be the question: Why religion? What’s the need of religion? Religion must help one to rise from animalistic instincts to human, and human to divine, and from divine to godly, from godly to an infinitely compassionate personality like Christ and Buddha’s. So, this is a great question and many people don’t understand: what is religion? Thousands and thousands of fanatics and followers and they don’t know what is religion!” Swami Sarvadevanada’s hands were flying. His lilting, accented voice made the already new words and thoughts even harder to follow sometimes. “They don’t know that the transformation of life is religion. Transformation means fighting with my evil tendencies inside, which is meanness, ugliness, which creates pain and suffering for others. That which brings even a little pain for others is not religion, it cannot be religion! ‘Blessed are the peace-makers.’ So, who remembers that word in the scripture? Eh? You should be peaceful, you should radiate peace!”

It was hot in that room even though the windows were open but the swami was untouched by it, his hands kept dancing farther and farther away from him as he talked. It was exciting to see him grab on to this crazy idea of mine instead of what I’d feared would happen. I’d come up with all sorts of ways imaginary spiritual teachers might reject me and my crazy project but I don’t think I had even one scenario that came close to this – complete acceptance.

He was really on a roll. “The transformation of life is religion and anything that causes even a little bit of pain for others isn’t. Sri Ramakrishna, who was born 1836, did not know the complexity of life and other religions. He was a seeker and lover of God.That is called religion. ‘I am religious’ does not mean that I go to any temple and bow down my head twenty times and come to my room and beat my wife, eh? Or I’m a religious person so I can go and straighten you by telling you are on the wrong path, and I can go to heaven, by killing you, if need be, forcing you to believe in my way. That’s a nasty concept of spirituality that has nothing to do with spiritual life. Have you read The Life of Sri Ramakrishna?”

Ramakrishna was the guy on the top shelf of the altar, the main guru of the Vedanta branch of Hinduism. I’d picked up a few books that morning. “I just bought The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna.”

“Christopher Isherwood also wrote a book about his life. What Ramakrishna did was simple, he didn’t go for any philosophy. From the early days he wanted to know the secret of the universe. From the early days he felt the pull for seeing God and, after going through rigorous spiritual practice, he declared, ‘As many faiths, so many paths.’ He was born into a very spiritual family. His father (was apart from his wife when) he had a dream in which a deity said, ‘I shall be born in your home.’ About the same time, his wife also had a vision of a beam of light from Lord Shiva entering her womb and felt she had conceived a child!” And Ramakrishna was born, his given name was Gadahar.”

Okay, it must be said: I get nervous around immaculate conception stories. I always wonder if they were trying to compete or maybe the devout think us regular folk won’t pay attention, might not value the message, unless they hype their leader’s story. This was one thing the former biology major in me might never ever get over. I can accept the notion of divinity in people, of certain people, perhaps, being more in tune with that Something More than the rest of us. But beams of light causing a pregnancy in a person? A metaphor, a “true” story I can handle, but insist that it is True, that actually happened and that my faith depends on acceptance of that “actual” fact, well, I don’t know what to do with the big “no way” in my head.

Swami Saradevanada decided to give me the highlights of Ramakrishna’s life, a kind of book-flap synopsis. He said Ramakrishna began his spiritual journey by worshiping God, the Mother, in the form of Kali, a black female Hindu goddess. He went to the Kali temple in Dakshineswar on Ganges River near Bengal every day, demanding that she appear before him. “He’s like a mad guy, daytime and nighttime he is meditating on Mother. When the excruciating pains set in he used to cry, ‘Oh, Mother, another day is gone in my life and you have not come. What is the meaning of this life?’ And he’d cry and weep and rubbing his face on the sandy bed of the Ganges, so much is his urge to see the face of the Divine Mother who is the cause of this universe – that is called religion.” He cocked his head to one side and smiled. Swami Sarvadevananda really liked that story.

I sat politely on the other side of the desk. All I could think was: now why did he have to go and tell me a story like that? If that is religion, I haven’t got a prayer.

Of course the story ended with him seeing the Divine as a beam of light coming from the image of Kali. But – and this was what got my attention – it was through that vision that Ramakrishna came to realize that God had no form. “He reconciled all religions as true: ‘he’ and ‘she’ – gone. Now, you can understand what Hindu philosophy is. It is like a gateway. And after that what happened? Mother is gone, the form is gone. He’s lost into infinite waves of light, an ocean of light and joy.” Swami Sarvadevananda’s “joy” is so much more than a bland single syllable. It’s an explosive word that starts out like the word “jaw” and ends with a curlicue of sound as his mouth wraps around the sound of the “o” and “y.” Jahw-oy! …and he was remained in that ocean of jahw-oy for twenty-four hours!” The swami said Ramakrishna soon came to realize that there was nothing but God.

“He was going to Calcutta afterward. He was so humble that he will run, run towards anyone calling God. So one day a public (carriage) took him by mistake through a red letter – what you call it?” he asked, “A red zone? What is the word? You know, with prostitutes?”

“A red-light district?”

Swami Sarvadenanda nodded, “Yes, a red-light district. And the car he was in was moving and the ladies were looking and Ramakrishna was looking at them and saluting them, ‘Oh, Mother! You are here in this form?’ So if you see the end result is, what? The end result is you see the one Mother - call it whatever name you wish – the oneness in every being. That’s spirituality.”
He sat back, waiting for me to speak. I guess everything my written manuscript provoked in him had been said. I started to ask him about 9/11 but he didn’t want to talk about events like that, at least not right away. “We are trying to understand what is religion first.”

“Right.”

“We must understand our weak point. We must diagnose the disease and then put the medicine there. So if any religion does not allow anyone to think freely, if any religion contradicts normal rational and reason-based thinking, even like this Vedanta, this philosophy, we should discard it as poison! Say ‘I have no need of that religion.’”

Did he really say that? Throw away even his religion if anything he said sounded false or contradicted my own sense of truth? He was saying I had a choice to reject some or all of what he believed. I was surprised, surprised and relieved. That meant he was giving me permission to have my doubts about Ramakrishna’s immaculate conception, for example, which, therefore, gave me room to consider what of his wisdom, his practice, his ideas might have meaning for me. It wasn’t all or nothing.

Okay, so I didn’t have to run out of the room. At least not right away.

The swami continued, “And nowhere is that so strongly said except in this Hindu religion. (Other religions) say my book is the only book, you cannot deviate one letter from there, no? But Hinduism says you need not believe a single word we say, you (can) discard the whole Vedas, the foundation on which the whole spiritual tradition of India is based, unless you find it verifiable. Verified and verifiable. If you can’t, forget it.”

In the briefest of pauses, I tried another question. “Were you born into this part of Hinduism? Was your family also of your same tradition?”

“What if one is born or not, what does it matter?” With that one statement, the swami tossed away my personal question, returning to what he considered the more pressing topic at hand: the necessity of different paths for different seekers. “It’s like you want to eat fish? Fried fish? You want to eat McDonalds? Go. You want curry? Someone makes curry. But the question is: are you eating fish or not?” He laughed. ”Why fight? That my fish is better than your fish?”
The swami lifted a fold of his orange clothing with two fingers and said, “I wish to dress this way, you that; you should have your freedom, I should have my freedom. So, in our dress we don’t fight with each other. In our food, we go to restaurant and we choose one out of so many types food. So, why in the world would we have to have only one religion that survives and others will have to go?” He seemed very pleased with his analogy.

But I was trying to get to specifics. “So, if I came to you and said this is the path I want to follow, what would happen next?”

“Spirituality would unfold in your heart. What we’d do is give you some guidance.”

“Like, things to do and read?”

“Suppose I will put to you the very first question. You are asking me: what is religion? I would put that question to you back. I would say: who are you talking?”

Silence. I had no idea what he was asking me.

He tried again. “Are you a man, are you a woman?”

“Uhm, I’m a, ah, woman?”

“Yes. Are you the woman talking?” Meaning was the person sitting across from him. Is this everything that I am, the sum total of my existence?

“No.”

“Who’s talking?”

“I, well, there is a drive to know this that (comes) before the issue of ‘woman’ or ‘man’.”

My answer wasn’t good enough for him. “My question is a specific, intellectual question: who is that “I”? You say, ‘I drove here.’ Who is that ‘I?’ Is it the physical flesh and bone only? Is it the eyeballs?”

“No. That, I’m clear about. It is not just what I can touch, taste, hear, see. I know that.”

“That is what the rational mind wants to explore. In Vedanta, we say explore more. Go in.” He began to demonstrate what beginners like me should do, the questions we should ask ourselves. “Who sees? I see. What is the ‘I’ that sees? First comes: The eyes are seeing? No. No, eyes cannot see. My mind is seeing? Go one step more. Mind cannot see. Mind is also matter. Because when you sit for meditation, what do you see? Your mind is rambling here and there and there. So, your mind can be seen by somebody. You say: ‘My mind is not very happy today, I’m not happy, my mind is upset today.’ You say:‘My shirt.’ ‘My spectacles.’ And ‘my mind.’ So you are using the word ‘My mind.’ So the question really is: who or what is beyond the mind, the thing that claims possession of it?”

So, I am not my body. That makes sense to me, it makes sense that there’s more to life than this specific collection of skin and bones, dark hair and hazel eyes. But, until Swami Sarvadevananda pointed it out, I’d never really thought about the phrase “my mind” that we all use with its implication that there was something to which my mind “belonged”, something that can observe my thought process.

But rolling ideas around like this is comfortable. I think I’m looking for what might make me uncomfortable, what might challenge my assumptions, what I think I ”know.” I said, “I would like you to tell me things I can do or read. I want to take direction.”

“You have this wonderful basic understanding of spiritual life, about life, about who we are.”

I wasn’t at all sure what he meant but I said, “That’s good to hear.”

“We say, in Indian psychology, that we are the product of all our past thoughts and deeds. And Hindus believe and Buddhists believe that we are not in one life. Eh? One life theory is Christianity, a Judeo-Christian idea: one-life theory. There comes more responsibility, you know? If you have the one chance only, you have to do the best you can do and, if you don’t, then you are going to hell, they say. But Indian hell, Hindu hell is a little less disruptive,” he chuckled, “because you do some bad karma, you go to hell, and then come out and, then again, start your journey. You are not forever lost. Also, to go to heaven is not our goal because that is also temporary, the result of good actions. The goal is to realize God. So this is the many life times theory has a little hope and a little relaxation, also. ‘I could not do this much?’” he continued with a happy shrug of his shoulders underneath his orange robes, “‘Okay, I’ll do it the next time.’”

The swami’s smile was so broad it jostled his eyeglasses. I told him how much I appreciated all the time he was spending with me.

“This talk,” meaning the talk we were having right then, “is not talk, merely. For me, for my spiritual journey, I am worshipping God through serving you. I am talking to you, actually I’m serving God in you. We serve God through all of our actions.”

“And following what I’m driven to do is--"

“Exactly. All our duties are nothing but a chance to serve God. God has given you the life. God has given you the strength – it is to be utilized with proper understanding. God has given you the quest to know the truth and the skills to do it. It is like the waves – God is the infinite ocean and I am only one ripple and you are another ripple and we are dancing in God, we are crying in God, we are serving in God, there is nothing but God. So, to bring this awareness, read the Upanishads. It is the ancient wisdom of our spiritual practice.”

I felt like I’d gotten a seal of approval. “I’m almost through the Bhagavad Gita.” The central text of Hinduism, it seemed like the right place to start.

“When you have a question, make a point, and when you come we can discuss one of these points. How long it takes you to come here?”

“You won’t believe this but I have been all over, temples all over. My office? I can almost walk here.”

“Is it?”

“I couldn’t be closer. It takes five minutes, unless there is a Hollywood Bowl event. Then it can take half an hour.”

The swami told me the times of the classes he taught and then said, “Above all, if you have any questions you can come talk.”

I gave the personal questions another shot. “Now, did you always know you wanted to be---what do you call yourself? Are you a sadhu?”

“We are sadhus. ‘Sadhus’ means we are celibates from our childhood and they call me assistant head, so-called assistant minister.’

“You always knew that you wanted this life?”

“Because I was born in that culture, as you asked me. When I was a very young boy, the sadhus, the monks, the renounced people used to come and their life is so attracting, so much alluring, their faces beaming with joy (jahw-oy!) as it were. That attacted me very much. As I grew, fifth grade, sixth grade boy, the sadhus were very kind. They said: ‘What you are doing? Come here.’ So our home was not that far from the headquarters of the Ramakrishna organization which is near Calcutta. So on vacation I used to go and stay there on the banks of the Ganges. The sadhus meditative life and unselfish love filled with purity, peace, and no outward pretense attracted me most.”

“How many brothers and sisters do you have?”

He looked pained at the question, like I’d gone one step too far. “I have brothers and sisters but that has nothing to do with what actually God calls you.”

I was nothing if not nosy and persistent. “Have your other brothers and sisters—"

He interrupted, “They are also very spiritual. Nowadays western materialistic ideals are creeping in through the television and other media otherwise in each Hindu Indian family but every morning and every evening, they start with God, they end with God, they pray in between, and before food they pray because the culture is there. All that intense practice goes only for a few very sincere people but, even our father, grandma, mom, our aunti, won’t eat before they take a bath, repeat the holy name, pray and meditate some time. Before that they will not eat at all. So, that is the tradition there. But these sadhus are more profound in their practices. From the early days I never thought of becoming anything but a monk. Seeing them, their joy, their freeness, their openness, their relentless service to others and how they are so princely even though they have no possessions!”

The swami said the Ramakrishna Mission was a huge organization in India. “We have 150 or 160 (temples) in India and activities are multifarious for the poor, for the downtrodden, for flood relief, for tsunami relief. For anything, these monks just jump and go to be the first to help with whatever they can: with material help, with medicinal help, with building up their homes and houses, and with establishing schools and community halls and everything. So that dedication also inspired me.” He tried to explain his thinking at the time. “What is this life, you think for yourself? Only eating, sleeping and dying? Do something for others. At least if you don’t see God, at least you don’t hurt anyone, don’t harm anyone and be a better person, be a loving, caring person.The world is full of misery. You can give a little peace to others.”

“And how did you end up in the United States?”

Swami Sarvadevananda smiled and raised his eyebrows. I’d hit a sore point. “Thaaaat is not my choice. Our organization has a central control in Calcutta and we have all over the world centers. We are not big like the Catholic church - about fourteen hundred, fifteen hundred monks, nuns and novitiates. According to the need of the work, the senior sadhus think who will be fit for what work and send us. I was in one village center, I was the head of a center actively working with the poor people, the needy people, building their homes, giving them education and self-employment skills to the women. Education gives them the strength to become self-reliant.”

“What village was it?”

“Sikra, a village near the border of Bangladesh. So, this was the way I was working very happily in the center and suddenly I was called here!”

“And you weren’t happy about it.”

“In the beginning, I was not at all! Because I had no idea to come and I never imagined in my life to come over here. It is not my choice. I was saying: ‘Please don’t send me, don’t send me. Send some other person.’ I was quite happy with the poor people, being with them, building up their hearts, giving them some shelter, giving them some education and the center was not very affluent but there was a great joy to serve these people. But, anyhow this is also a service to God, what I’m doing.” He laughed. “I didn’t plan. God plans! If you accept, it’s joy. If you resist, suffering.”

“I can’t tell you how grateful I am that you were open to this and how much I’m looking forward to working with you.”

“Please come to the class and give me a call, ask me any questions. It is a lifelong journey. Many people in this country, they want instant effect. Ah, so many impressions, good, bad, have accumulated in our mind and now our mind has to be cleansed. Cleansed how? By loving others, caring for others without keeping any selfish motive.”

“I know this project will be, at best, only a beginning. What happens after—”

“--will be your own journey. In your writing, you referred to Huston Smith. Huston Smith was closely connected with our Vedanta ideas.”

“He was?”

“There was a senior swami who passed away in St Louis, Swami Satprakashananda. And Huston Smith used to go there and he learned Vedanta and this universal idea of oneness. He’s very close to us. Our nuns know him. I also met him. A very humble and spiritual person!”

“See, there’s no accident that I’m here.”

“I tell you one thing: we do not publicize this Vedanta in the newspaper. We are a very silent group but at one time Vedanta created a great impact in this country. Alcoholics Anonymous which is so popular everywhere? Who is the founder? A Vedanta student.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“He employed all the Vedanta principles. Read their books, ideals, goals – all Vedanta. Vedanta has had an impact in subtle ways but it’s not that popular a religion.”

The swami told me Ramakrishna himself had actually spent time practicing other religions. “He one day prayed to Mother: ‘Mother, you are also worshiped by people in the churches. How do they worship? Why not make me like that?’ He had one Christian devotee and he used to go and ask him what is in the Bible. And one day he saw the image of the Christ, the baby, with the Madonna and that vision became tangible and that ray of light came.” Ramakrishna then spent “day and night, not a second thinking of any aspect of god or goddesses; only Christ and Christ and Christ. Then he practiced Islam. No one in the world ever appeared before who in one lifetime has ever practiced all those disciplines that you find in Huston Smith’s book. That’s why Ramakrishna finds truth in every religion. There is truth in every religion.” But, the swami said, there is only one important question. “Are you sincere? Are you following that? Are you living that life? Or are you only fighting for the purpose of fighting in the name of religion. So this is to be understood and this message should go to everyone. Swami Vivekananda (the first Hindu representative to come to the United States) said, ‘I did not come here to convert Christian into Hindu or a Hindu into Muslim or Muslim into Buddhist. We want to make a Hindu a better Hindu, a Christian a better Christian, a Muslim a better Muslim.’ So, we are not to convert. If you are following a path called Christianity, why not love God and see God? ‘Knock and it shall be opened unto you. Blessed are the pure of heart for they shall see God.’ Where have these principles gone? You’re are talking about other things, abortion, gay marriage, this, that --- these are social issues. Why are you bringing them into religion? Why not make your life spiritual? God sees gay? No, God sees the heart of your love. Eh?”

I felt heavy when I stood up, a thanksgiving meal’s worth of new ideas in my head, but then I remembered a question I’d wanted to ask Hemu but hadn’t gotten the chance. “Now, I watched them last night, the other students. They touched your feet.”

“In the Indian tradition, they do.”

“Is that what the greeting is?”

Swami Sarvadevananda stood up, too. “Anyone senior to us, we touch our head to their feet – it’s our deepest respect. It means I am bowing down my head to you - not you, the person - but the God in you, manifested better, because you’re senior. Our mom, our dad, our elder brother, our elder sister, anyone in the society that is a teacher, a school teacher, because their wisdom is higher. So, we go and touch their feet, but in this country we follow our own way. Okay?”

He was letting me off the hook, giving me an alternative I might be able to handle. He put the palms of his hands together in front of his chest and said, “Namaste. This means: ‘Salutation to you, the Lord in you.’ So, when you do, you remember the God in me is bowing to the God in you. This is the Indian custom.”

I tried it out. “Namaste.” Not too weird.

He said it back., “Namaste.”

And, with that, I dropped my notebook and pen on the floor.


(27 September 2006)