"I have a swami!?!"

Kevin and I went to pick up Luke from his girlfriend Amy’s house after dinner. Our route home took us within blocks of the Vedanta Society.

“That’s where my swami is!” I said, pointing to some treetops barely visible above a freeway ramp.

“That’s ‘where my swami is?!?’” Kevin smiled that gloaty smile. “I wish I’d had a tape that I could have played for you before we ever moved here: ‘No, really, this is what you’re going to say to me seven years from now’ - you never would have believed me. You would have told me to get out of the car.”

He was having a good time over on his side of the car.

But, who could argue?


18 October 2006

What do Hindus believe...

Had comments from a few folks asking for a quick
summary of what Hindus believe so I've put
together some links over there ========>>>>>
in the right column (just scroll down) to help
those who want to cut to the chase.

For those of you who ARE Hindu, please email
me any additional links you think might be
helpful or let me know if you take issue with
the content in any of the links.

Doing it...

Each soul is potentially divine. The goal is to manifest this divinity within by controlling nature: external and internal. Do this either by work, or worship, or psychic control , or philosophy – by one, or more, or all of these – and be free. This is the whole of religion. Doctrines, or dogmas, or rituals, or books, or temples, or forms, are but secondary details.

Swami Vivekananda

I went to learn some rituals. Swami Sarvadenanda said he’d teach them to me after aarti. It meant I had to figure out what aarti was.

The ritual worship of Ramakrishna at the Vedanta Society is easy to miss, at first. It wasn’t in the schedule the temple sent out every month but that’s because it happens every day at six in the evening. In its own quiet way, it was every bit as dramatic as the rituals at the temple in Whittier.

In a class, the swami had described the importance of ritual this way: “God is love. But how are we to know that?” he said, pausing as though one of us sitting in the class might actually answer him. “If you see a person who shows more love than is commonly manifested in everyday life, then you can use them as a role model. Like Ramakrishna. This is the source of the evangelical idea that you can only go to God through Christ. It’s important to see these spiritual giants as a role model so that we get encouraged to try to develop that kind of love.”

Okay, so the idea of revering a historical figure is starting to make some sense. I don’t think I can go so far as to worship Ramakrishna as though he were Divine but perhaps I can find traits of his worth admiring and even emulating although I’m not so good at the hero thing. It seems that everytime I get one, I look too close and they crash down.. Maybe I’ve looked for them in the wrong places like books, plays, movies, and biographies. Or maybe it’s because I demand too much of them. I’ve always thought heroes had to be perfect. Perhaps it's both of those reasons and one other: I doubt I could recognize a hero if I’d met one; I’m always too busy looking out for the clay feet.

Does it take death to fully recognize a hero? I deeply loved and admired my father-in-law while he was alive. When I think of a life lived on faith, I think of him, of his decision to become an orthopedist to help disabled children as Christ did and he did it outside his regular practice, without compensation, for his entire life. But it wasn’t until his death that this essential fact became untangled from the mundane family and human logistics which distracted from the truth, his truth, and now my truth. John didn’t need to be perfect to be one of my heroes. From his example I’ve learned what it means to live on faith and to give for no other purpose but as an exercise of that faith.

But it’s not easy with Ramakrishna. Even his main disciple, Vivekananda, the guy who started this sect of Hinduism called the Ramakrishna Mission or Vedanta here in the United States after Ramakrishna died, took quite some time before he fully appreciated his teacher. So what can I appreciate about Ramakrishna? I admire his unshakable desire to know the Unknowable and his single-minded devotion to the search, to know for himself. So I might not find myself swept away by spiritual ardor but I might be able to lay a flower at the base of his photo or get some sustenance from having his picture around the way I do from the photos of John on my mantelpiece at home.

At the aarti that night, everyone who came into the temple walked to the front, kneeled down and then most touched their heads on the clean carpet. I figured now was the time. No one much cared what I did or didn’t do. Plus, it was dark. So I walked up to the far side and did it: I kneeled down, touched my forehead to the carpet, and sat down on the floor.

All I felt was relief.

Whether or not it will ever be any more than that, I don’t know. Something about the idea of getting to the Divine through thinking of or reflecting on an example of someone who really tried, with every fiber of their being, to live a spiritual life makes it much less of a big deal. I’m not worshipping a picture or an icon so much as paying respect to an effort made, hoping to learn what I can from the act.

In half-light, Swami Sarvadevananda came in through a side door and stood facing the altar while a short-haired Anglo nun did all of the rituals which included a near constant ringing of the brass bell in her hand. Two congregants beat gongs while everyone chanted “Jai Sri Ramakrishna” - like Hemu’s greeting “Jai Swaminarayan” only with a different name. In the description on the website, it said the service was called “Arati” or Vespers; its purpose was “to remember that all we do is for God’s sake.”

The nun waved a brass candle holder followed by a pitcher of water, a folded piece of cloth, a flower, and a long fan made of hair from a yak’s tail which almost floated through the air when she was waved around. The bell ringing symbolizes the sound “OM” which is the symbol of Hinduism and also represents God (Brahman.) “The lights symbolize the light of Brahman (the Godhead). They also symbolize fire, one of the five elements that comprise the universe.” The water stands for itself; the flower represents earth; the flowing fan, called a chamara, symbolizes air; and the cloth represents space (as in cloth covers the body as space envelops all creation.) The point of the fire and the chanting of Ramakrishna’s name was to ask him to be present in the service.The nun moved each item with a rhythmic but slightly sensuous dance-like movement confined to her right arm while her left moved just enough to keep the bell gently ringing at her side.

When the ritual was over, a silent meditation began. Swami Sarvadevananda sat on a mat to the far right side of the altar, his back utterly straight, until the hour was over. By the time we opened our eyes, at the back of the chapel was a basket of flowers taken from the altar for people to take home with them.

The lights came on, the night class began and still the swami hadn’t had a chance to teach me a single ritual. After class, came dinner and I went to that, too, hoping he hadn’t forgotten.

More than twenty people sat down to eat, a number of them guests from out of town. I scooped the little food I took – rice and spiced vegetables along with homemade bread – off the paper plate and into my face as quickly as I could. In an awkward moment, the Swami abruptly excused himself from the long table and motioned for me to follow him into another room for a few private words, not my idea of how I wanted this to go. I couldn’t forget the large group eating, waiting for his return.

For the daily rituals and an explanation of their meaning, he suggested I get a small book called The Worship of Sri Ramakrishna but, as to the first steps he’d suggest for someone like me? “Try to think that there is a divine in everything, and there is a divine presence with you and you are connected in that way. This is a whole day awareness, hmm?” His hand emphasized just how complete this moment-by-moment focus should be. “That means bringing the mind a little bit internal but focus on your work, whatever that is. At the end of your work, make your time for meditation. When you do that, forget everything that happens: what he said, what she said, what happened.”

This wasn’t exactly what I was looking for. I wanted a list, details, directives and “One other thing— “ I hesitated. “Uhm, a mantra? Isn’t that part of it?”

“A mantra, I cannot give you. Only the senior swami in each center can and he is out of town for at least a month more” the swami said. “But you— Which form of God speaks to your heart? Tell me: who? Who is your ideal?”

Who is “my ideal?” I had no idea and no idea what to say. I guessed he meant one of those altar icons I’d seen in other Hindu temples, those enormous elaborate statues, but they were all a blur to me; there wasn’t one that spoke to me more than any other because I didn’t know their stories. What I wished I’d said was: What do you mean? Or: What’s on the menu? Or, even: What do you suggest? But what I said was, “It’s not a form. Not a form.” All I meant by that was, so far, I still had a hard time saying or even typing the word “God” because it felt too concrete, too specific a term for something I can’t grasp, like an idea at the edge of a dream. “Form” meant that bearded guy, to me, and that notion of the Divine just doesn’t work for me. I saw the men walking on the moon far above the clouds. I saw the pictures of earth hanging in the sky like a blue swirled moon. Those swirls held God? I don’t think so.

“Okay,” the swami said, “get out of form. Say that it is infinite, like space, like ocean, an ocean of light and joy, like that, and chant a simple ‘om’.” The swami closed his eyes and immediately went somewhere else. His voice was low and lasting. “Oooooooooooooooommmmm Iiiiinnnfiniiiiiiite liiiiight. Iiiiiiiinfiiiniiiiiite joooooooy.”

I was unable to be where I was. Watching him chant, one-on-one, made me nervous. I kept thinking about the swami’s half-eaten plate of food and the twenty people back at the table wondering where he went and when he’d come back. “I’ll let you get back to your dinner. Thank you, Swamiji.”

I got up to leave and then, with out a hesitation, without a thought, I found myself bending down to touch the swami’s black socks. I touched them then stood up with my hands together and said, “Namaste.”

He smiled, bowed back at me, and then went back to his dinner and I went home.

I done it. I’d done something.

(17 October 2006)

Mea culpa...

A sannyasin, who has experienced the transitory nature of enjoyment, is qualified for Self-Knowledge; but such enlightened ones do not constitute the major portion of society. It is the duty
of others, who belong to the first three stages of life and who identify themselves with the body and mind and seek material happiness, to engage in sacrificial action.

Swami Nikhilananda
Introduction to the Upanishads, Volume 1

Kevin came home late from work and sat down at the kitchen table with his papers and trade magazines all around him to eat. I sat down to keep him company. It was dark outside the bay windows, a perfect fall night.

I asked, “How was work?”

“I don’t want to talk about work right now. I don’t want to think about it.” Kevin looked back down at his plate, the day’s replayed conversations going on in his head were visible. When he forgets someone is watching, he actually nods and shakes his head when he thinks about what he wished he’d said or done. It’s like he’s trying to make the past come out right this time. He was deep in it that night.

Distraction sometimes helps so I offered some. “Okay. Well, I think I have a problem.”

“Yeah?”

“I can’t do rituals and I can’t figure out why,” I said. Kevin looked up so I went on. “I mean, putting flowers at the feet of statues or making a big deal out of any icon as if it was “It”, as if it was God, just plain feels wrong. Like the white bearded guy on a cloud. Maybe I’m just spiritually retarded.”

He started to smirk. My “plight” was making him happy, no doubt about it. He’d been pretty nervous about me lately, about this project of mine but, aside from occasional cracks about my falling prey to some cult, he was too supportive to come right out and say something.

I tried to head off whatever playful jibe I saw percolating by rushing on. “Swami Sarvadevananda says he’ll teach me some of what I’m supposed to do in a temple tomorrow, some of the rituals, but it feels weird to try to do them. I’m constantly judging myself.”

Matt wandered in wearing his white terrycloth bathrobe, fresh from the bath. He may be fourteen but he’s from some other decade with his love of bathrobes and formal pajamas, slippers and combed wet hair. And he has flawless radar for times when Kevin and I start to talk. He sat down to listen at his place at the kitchen table as Kevin asked me, “So what’s the big deal?”

“Well, if I can’t make myself at least learn rituals, if I can’t get over this, I have a big problem with this project.”

“So, just act ‘as if’ and see what happens.”

“But I feel like a big fake. I can’t even do simple things-- I mean, when you meet someone you respect, you’re supposed to touch their feet.”

“Ew.” Matt said.

“It’s not ‘ew’, Matt.”

“You don’t have to kiss them, too, do you?”

“No, you just bend down and touch them. I thought it was a ritual that only the Whittier temple people did but they even do it at the Vedanta Center which is pretty Americanized. Half the people are Americans and even they bend down and touch Swami Sarvadevananda’s feet. And tomorrow I’m supposed to learn the real ritual stuff. I mean, the whole point of doing these rituals is that it’s supposed to lead to devotional feeling, to some experience of the presence of God and I can’t even make myself do the basics.”

Kevin said, “Don’t you think that every Catholic who goes to mass doesn’t feel awkward sometimes?”

They do? It never occurred to me.

Kevin had been an altar boy and even went to Catholic school for a little while but he doesn’t go into church buildings anymore if he could help it. He has faith so long as an institution isn’t involved.

“Did you ever feel something," I asked, "when you did the kneeling and praying and stuff? Ever?”

“Maybe once or twice when I was a little kid.” He immediately bowed his head, mouth buried into his chest, and started mumbling something. As he came to what sounded like the end, he pounded his chest and said, “…Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa” right as the back door flew open and in walked Luke, all teenage chest and long hair.

“What up? What’s going on? Was that Latin?” Luke’s been taking Latin since seventh grade, continuing it as an independent study when the school no longer offered it in high school.
Kevin answered, “Some of it. It’s what you say when you’re an altar boy. I never really learned the part in the middle but, if you mumbled it, no one ever really knew.”

“Did your dad know?” I asked. Kevin’s father was a Knight of the Catholic church.

“No, the priests always said ‘Kevin’s such a nice boy but quiet!’”

Everyone laughed. Stories about our messing up or having things we felt bad or awkward about when we were kids are always a big hit with Luke and Matt.

I tried to catch Luke up on what he’d missed. “I was just saying I’m having a problem doing the rituals. I walk up to the Swami and tell myself this is the time I’m just going to bend down and touch his feet and I can’t. It’s getting ridiculous. How am I going to get anywhere with this project if I don’t get over this?”

Matt thought he could help, his wet head tilted sideways and his hands spread wide on the edge of the table to broadcast his seriousness. “You know, you weren’t born with this like other people. You don’t know what they feel. You’re just going to have to do it to find out.”

Swinging open the fridge with a swagger and grabbing the cranberry juice from the bottom shelf on the door, Luke cut right to the point. “You’re too proud.”

“What?” I thought he said I made him proud. Okay, I was so desperate to hear words like these, I clearly was willing to just make them up in my head.

“No,” he answered. “I said, you’re just too proud to do what you’re supposed to do.”

Maybe I am. Maybe it’s just as simple as that. I want to be different, to not need ritual, especially because it’s so very, very foreign to me and requires humility. Humility and obedience, not my strong suits.

I had nothing to say so I looked at the clock and said. “Okay, too proud or not, it’s bedtime, way past time. What are you two still doing up?”

“Aw, Mom, why do you always do that?” Luke said, “Just when it starts getting fun.”

Matt agreed. “Yeah, you’re a real party pooper, you know?”

“That may be, but it’s time. Now. Do I need to start counting? Five, four, three, two…” And they were gone.

Why does counting still work, anyway?

And why do I hear what they say louder than anyone else?


(16 October 2006)

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)

Eat and run...

The relation between Hinduism and what is called Buddhism at the present day is nearly the same as between Judaism and Christianity. Jesus Christ was a Jew, and Shakya Muni (Buddha) was a Hindu. Hinduism cannot live without Buddhism, nor Buddhism without Hinduism.

Swami Vivekananda
Address to the Chicago Parliament of World Religions, 1893

Classes at night, services on Sundays – my temple obsession is cutting in to our family time. So, when Kevin said he wanted to go to the Thai Buddhist temple’s food market on Sunday to eat lunch, I agreed to take a day off from Hinduism, figuring Kevin, Matt and I could hang out together (Luke was out, as always, with friends) and I might be able to check out the monks, too. Buddhism’s next – that is, if I ever figure out when the time is right to move on from Hinduism. Pretty hard to imagine how I will ever be able to move on given how little I know now in spite of all my efforts.

The Wat Thai Buddhist temple is in North Hollywood. Now, North Hollywood might sound glamorous to some but its reality is anything but. It’s a haphazard section of San Fernando Valley full of straight anonymous streets with low, practical buildings so the temple, with its red roof edged in gold stands out. Its Sunday food bazaar has dozens of stalls selling grilled seafood and meat, noodle dishes, sticky rice and mango, and that sweet milky iced tea – with and without tapioca balls. Kevin loves going there.

It was crowded as usual when we got there so we had to park blocks away. Matt moved some noodles around on a plate as cover for his main meal: tapioca balls. He sucked those sweet black chewy balls through oversized straws. Sitting together, chewing and chatting, usually felt good but I was so distracted I was hardly there.

Matt wanted another boba. “Mom, can I have another dollar?”

I was thinking about the monks inside and whether or not I was going to walk up those steps to try to meet them.

“Mom?”

“Here, Matt,” Kevin said. He handed Matt what he needed then asked me, “Girl, what’s up?”

Matt stayed.

“I’m nervous. I don’t know why but I am.”

“Why?” Matt asked.

“I don’t know. I want to go in there, I know I should, but I don’t want to. It just feels too hard, like I don’t have it in me today.”

“Just do it,” Matt said, happy to be giving advice. “You always tell us to just do it.”

I might have been more careful with what I said to my children if I’d known that they’d store everything I‘d ever said to them – wise and foolish – to toss back at me with those gotcha smiles when I least wanted to hear it. The only compensation is it makes them very, very happy.

“Girl, we’ll just walk around a bit while you go in.” Kevin said. “It’ll be fine.”

Fine.

When I started this project, I knew it was going to be ridiculously hard to do but I was only thinking about logistics: how long it would take, how little I knew, how impossible it was to figure out how to even begin. I thought I was just going to learn about various faiths. It never crossed my mind how much I was going to have to deal with me, with my own fears and limitations, with the rising suspicion that I’m not fully aware of all the reasons I’ve become so determined to do this.

I picked up my cup, the pile of balled up napkins in front of me, and my paper plate and tried to tuck them into a stuffed trash barrel so they wouldn’t fall out on the ground, then walked towards the steps to the temple. What is my problem? I’ve been a journalist all of my life; I’m used to walking in to new places, meeting new people, yet there I was with the same dread I felt when I was a kid, when I’d waited too long to write some school paper. It felt like I was trying to lift my own dead weight, like I needed skills I just didn’t have, skills I knew were missing but couldn’t even name. Okay, so maybe I’m making this far more complicated than it needs to be, maybe I don’t have to plumb the depths of my being to figure out what, if anything, each tenet might mean to me – a lifetime’s task (a Hindu might say a task of several lifetimes) all jammed into months. Ridiculous. Just find out the rituals, do them, and see what happens, what I learn. I can do that, can’t I? Just do it. This belly-aching self-doubt is useless.

I walked up the stairs, looked inside… and stopped. A plump Thai woman with a jug of free orange juice and a plastic bag full of fruit was sitting on her folded legs, chatting with a monk on an orange cushion. A few other monks were scattered around the room. One look and I just turned right around and walked back down the steps again.

Kevin and Matt were just starting to walk towards a display near the Wat Thai school when I walked up behind them. Kevin said, “Oh! You’re already done?”

“For today.”

He put his hand in mine and the three of us walked back to our car.


(8 October 2006)

The Path of Love

By meditation, some men
can see the Self in the self;
others, by the yoga of knowledge;
others, by selfless action.

Still others, not seeing, only
hear about it and worship;
they too cross beyond death,
trusting in what they have heard.

Bhagavad Gita 13.24-25

I have the shoe thing down. Slip-off shoes or sandals are the way to go. I walked in to the Swami Sarvadevananda’s weekly class in the Vedanta chapel, knocked off my sandals with a kick of my heel on the carpet and put them up on the white wooden shelves almost without a thought.

The swami was already cross-legged on the dais, his long arms resting on the low table. He was in the middle of saying one of those many words which all sound the same to me. The one I heard was “Ishta” but wasn’t even sure how to spell it so I settled for phonetics. “…that from which all creation comes and which is beyond all change,” he said. “But we must create an image of it. We can only love what is concrete. We love human beings, beautiful flowers, the rising moon because they are tangible. But how do you love the Infinite?”

I guess you need to think there is an “Infinite” to begin with before you can start trying to figure out how to love It. As I sat there scribbling down notes, I was pretty sure I could accept that much, that there probably is an “Infinite” but “loving It?” Why does It need me to “love” It, to worship It? Isn’t recognizing Its existence or just being open to It enough?

“In the beginning, we need forms to worship, forms like Buddha, like Christ, like Ramakrishna,” the swami said. “God cannot be worshipped except in symbols. There is no religion in the world that is not practicing on the concept (a symbol) of God. To say: ‘my symbol is better than yours’ is silly.” The swami said we mustn’t confuse the picture of Ramakrishna - or any symbol for that matter - with God Itself.

So, according to the way Hinduism is practiced at the Vedanta Temple, all those icons in Hindu temples all over the world are not meant to actually be considered Divine themselves but to be images of the Unknowable or the Absolute Reality. They’re forms which appear in the minds of people meditating, a different one for you and a different one for me. They each represent some of the powers of God as most of us need something specific to love. And that is what Bhakti yoga is all about: Love.

This idea of a religion acknowledging that different people might need different approaches to worship is one of the more stunning features of Hinduism. Built into its very structure is the notion that there are those among us who might be more comfortable learning about God in an intellectual way (jnana yoga) which might include a concept of a formless Absolute that was everywhere present. There might be some of us who want to demonstrate our devotion through selfless action (karma yoga), and still others who might revel in learning to control their bodies and minds as a way of coming into contact with the Divine (raja yoga). “But,” the swami added, “most Hindus, like most people, find it more natural to worship a representation of the Absolute. And that practice is called bhakti yoga.”

There were about a dozen of us in the pews. I still wasn’t sure what kind of person I was but I was getting an idea. My natural inclination is towards the notion of God without form ­­‑‑ the guy on a cloud thing never sat well with me, ever, -- and I clearly feel safer inside a book than in a ritual or service so that would make me, by Hinduism’s terms, more comfortable with jnana yoga and likely to find the bhakti path a bit of a stretch. But I hadn’t started this with the idea of staying the same.

Hinduism considers Christianity a bhakti path, (the path of devotion) where Christ is the Beloved; the cross, a sacred symbol of worship. The idea is that, because we don’t know what Absolute Reality looks like or even how to express it, it’s natural for limited humans to worship God in a symbolic way. But the ultimate goal is to come face-to-face with the Divine yourself. “But,” Swami Sarvadenvanada said, peering up over the top of the small book in his hands, “first you have to be convinced, intellectually, that this can happen. Once your conviction is strong, you can then make a journey to practice this in your life.”

That is the problem isn’t it? How do you get that conviction? I could look at my life before all this as either a journey without conviction or a conviction without a journey. I had the desire to know more but I’d taken only those steps I could hide under a disguise called work, mostly as television news stories. Did conviction have to come first or was it something that could grow from a journey begun in its absence? Or maybe, just maybe, I already had it if I wasn’t afraid to admit it. Maybe my struggle was really over what my definition of God was and then, what to do about it. Should I be grateful to this explosion of interfaith dissension for being the final push out the door to figure at least some of this out?

The swami then talked about how Ramakrishna eventually left rituals behind and disliked discussing theories once he saw that Divine light. He simply wanted to love God. “Ramakrishna said, ‘What use is it to walk into a grove of mango trees and discuss the number of branches, the shape of the leaves, or who planted the trees or when they were planted? What is the need of all this? Just eat the mangos.’” Swami Sarvadevananda laughed.

It would be great to have the kind of faith that was clear as seeing fruit hanging from a tree. But, right then, I couldn’t see the mango grove let alone the fruit.

“People are emotional more than rational,” Swami Sarvadevananda said. He was getting warmed up. “Can we use this emotion for God? All Ramakrishna cried for was to see the face of God and, when he did,” the Swami’s hands were flying farther and farther from his body. “He was filled with JOY and JOY and JOY!”

Why was this extreme abandon the swami described so off-putting?

Ramakrishna lived in the late 1800s and frequently went into spiritual reveries so intense, he’d lose all consciousness, sometimes for hours. At least once during one of these episodes, he fell down and broke his arm. Thank goodness earlier that day I’d spent some time with Christopher Isherwood’s books on Vedanta Hinduism. In his introduction to Vedanta for Modern Man, Isherwood said, “Ramakrishna is presented always as an exemplar (and not the only exemplar) of Vedanta.” He said that, while the Vedanta Society did worship Ramakrishna, it was “a matter of individual choice” and “no student of Vedanta need necessarily take part… much less discard his loyalty to any other divine personality.” So, when Swami Sarvadevananda became rhapsodic about Ramakrishna, Isherwood’s thoughts gave me permission to learn from Ramakrishna without worshipping him or even, necessarily, being comfortable with him. It made it possible for me to stay in my seat and listen.

“In our early devotional life we need rites and rituals – puja, and the like – every day. We do this until devotion grows. For many people, just thinking about God isn’t enough. That’s why the Catholics have mass, Jews have Torah study. It’s a great help to have spiritual people leading us to the highest experience of God. So, you start with the formalities, like when you first meet someone. When you start a journey, we have these little formalities: do this, don’t do that. But, once you love God, it’s not so important. All of these rituals are the reason that India has produced so many numberless saints and seers. There are rituals all day in the temple and from birth to death. Many think: ‘Oh, these rituals are so bad.’ Okay. But it’s like cleaning the bathtub with the baby. You don’t throw away all of the flavor of love that goes with the puja. Suppose you only bring the philosophy? That’s like bringing the structure without flesh and bone. There’s no sweetness, no manifestation of joy. Don’t destroy the rituals until they’ve raised your consciousness to the Divine. If you discard it, then you’ve got nothing but dry bones.”

I was getting pretty excited about the notion that I might be able to cut to the chase, to by-pass all those rituals that felt confusing and made me feel awkward and just stick to the reading, the meditating and the discussing but that wasn’t what the swami meant. Reading and learning about Hinduism without entering into the ritual, devotional part of it, was going to get me nowhere. Karen Armstrong, a former nun, wrote in The Spiral Staircase,

Religion is not about accepting twenty impossible propositions before breakfast, but doing things that change you. The myths and laws of religion are not true because they conform to some metaphysical, scientific or historical reality but because they are life-enhancing. But you will not discover their truth unless you apply these myths and doctrines to your own life and put them into practice.

But, how?

The swami said, “Make a small altar in your room and put pictures of those who inspire you, those who you find divine. A picture of Christ, of (the Vedanta’s) Mother Durga, of the Buddha, and, after you shower, offer flower incense every morning and ask for their blessings. If you don’t do anything ritualistic and I ask about what you did, you will talk, talk, talk, about what happened in your office – that’s it. You have to make a separation between mundane life and spiritual life so that, eventually, you see the face of God everywhere. But you have to start with a ritual.”

I’m not sure I’m a ritual sort of girl after my experience trying to do Hemu’s rituals but this seemed at least a bit more within reach, something worth trying, at least.

Outside the cut glass windows of the chapel in the Vedanta Center, it was already dark when someone in the class raised their hand to ask Swami Sarvadevananda another question. “Can’t you do good work with out this?” Clearly I wasn’t the only one wondering if rituals were required, if we measured up if we didn’t do them.

“What happens to that good work when the world collapses into dust?” the swami answered. “When there is no world anymore? Ritual devotion adds spiritual flavor, makes our life more peaceful. More good will get done in a more substantial and permanent way by practicing devotion. One ounce of spiritual practice is worth more than tons and tons of frothy talks. How many times do we listen to great scholarly talks given by great (teachers) but, then, once we get out of the temple and someone asks what was said and many will answer: ‘I don’t know.’ (Whereas) someone else will speak simply, from the heart, and the world changes.”

Swami Sarvadevananda glanced at the small clock on his table and, before closing his book and ending with a chant which included “Om, shanti, shanti, shanti.” or “Om, peace, peace, peace,” he looked ahead in the book to next week’s topic. “Next time we’ll read ‘The Need of a Guru” which will answer the question: Who can help us and how we can reach the truth? Who can hold our hand?”

Wearing socks on his feet, the swami stepped down from the carpeted dais and walked down the center aisle to stand in the back to greet each person as they left with the night’s book tucked under one arm. Some bowed to him, others bent down to touch his feet.

At the end of one of the last classes, I’d told myself I’d finally do it, finally bow and touch his feet, but there was there was a ridiculous and growing chorus of voices in my head: “Will you bow? Will you touch his feet?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. What a moron for even thinking of doing it.”

“What’s the big deal? You signed up for going through this so just do it and see what it feels like.”
“Nah, get outta town.”

I could go on because “they” did in my head. It’s amazing how many things I can think of in the short walk from one end of a small room to the other. Well, I told myself, at least I’m certain about one thing: I’m just not a bow-er.

That night, I thought I’d gotten over it, that I was going to be able to do it but, when it was my turn, I still couldn’t. I stood rigid, an awkward distance from him. There was going to be no spine-bending from me.

He smiled and asked, “Are you staying for dinner?”

“Not tonight. I have to get home.”

“Okay.”

“Is there a time you could teach me some of the rituals, Swamiji?” At least I’d learned what to call him: Swami-ji or Maharaj.

“Oh. After class on Tuesday.”

“Thank you, Swamiji.”

I sort of bobbed my head but I couldn’t even squeak out a “namaste” so there was nothing to do but turn and walk out of the chapel.

I took my sandals from the shelf, dropped them to the carpet and slipped into them, opening the heavy wooden door into a cold night.


(4 October 2006)

Believers at war...

If I had chosen to go back to the Malibu Hindu temple, the one I first visited with Matt, instead of the Vedanta Temple, I might have ended up with Swami Sarvadevananda as my teacher anyway. He told me he taught a class there once a month so I decided to go.

The Malibu temple is right on one of the main roads to the ocean from the San Fernando Valley. I left plenty of time to get there – too much time. I settled in to one of the stuffed chairs in the nearest Starbucks to read Karma-Yoga and Bhakti-Yoga written by Swami Vivekananda, one of Ramakrishna’s monks who helped found the Ramakrishna Mission (known here in the United States as Vedanta) and the swami most responsible for igniting interest in Hinduism in the United States in the late 1800s and early 20th century.

The use of the word “yoga” is pretty confusing. What I know of yoga involves exercise but what I’m learning is that the kind of yoga most of us know is actually an off-shoot or descendant of one of the “types” of Hindu spiritual practice (there are four "ways" of worshiping the Divine for four different "types" of people.) In “Raja-yoga,” the path to enlightenment is through learning how to control the body. "Bhakti yoga" is the kind of spiritual practice most of us think of when we think of religion: the worship of Something. It's also called the path of love. "Karma yoga" is worship through work or doing one’s duty without regard for reward or a specific outcome – kind of like Mother Theresa. And the fourth path can be explained this way: if you’re reading this, you’re engaged in an act of “Jnana-yoga” or the path of knowledge. Hinduism says that while these four basic types of worship are open to every one of us, we each tend to be more comfortable in one more than the others.

The Karma path or the path of work, Swami Vivekananda described like this:

If you really want to judge the character of a man, do not look at his great performances. Every fool can act as a hero at one time or another. Watch a man do his most common actions; those are indeed the things which will tell you the real character of a great man. Great occasions rouse even the lowest of human beings to some kind of greatness; but he alone is the really great man whose character is great always, the same wherever he may be.

Kind of awesome, eh? But, as I continued reading in a strip-mall Starbucks a few miles outside Malibu, I stumbled onto this passage:

Every religion or country (has) only one way of loving their own ideal and that is to hate every other ideal. Herein is the explanation of why the same man who is so lovingly attached to his own ideal of God, so devoted to his own ideal of religion, becomes a howling fanatic as soon as he sees or hears anything of any other ideal. This kind of love is somewhat like the canine instinct of guarding the master’s property from intruders; only the instinct of the dog is better than the reason of man for the dog never mistakes its master for an enemy in whatever dress he may come before it.

I wanted to stand up in the quiet Starbucks with its little pods of people tucked in to themselves and grab every one of them, to point to these words and shout: "That’s it! This is it, the answer – or at least part of the answer – as to why supposedly devout people hate other faiths and the people who believe them. “They” have to be wrong – or I am."

Could this be one idea, anyway, of why some people of faith find themselves wanting to fight with others of faith?

I wonder what would have happened if I had done it, if I had run all over the Starbucks reading this passage out loud? Polite staring. Uncomfortable rustling. Packing and leaving. Who wants to be confronted by a crazy woman while sipping a latte on a cold gray day? Not the sleek woman with hair pulled back and the yoga mat bag under her arm. Not the loners perched in front of their laptops and stained paper coffee cups. Not the weekend father with his thirteen year-old daughter who made the small round table between them look like a continent. Well, maybe them. At least they would have had something to talk about. But the truth of the matter is: along with being afraid of annoying strangers, I also worry about seeming stupid, about revealing just how little I know, especially when I get embarrassingly excited about learning something new only to find out it’s been obvious to everyone else for years.

But how much of my life have I not lived because I’ve been afraid of appearing stupid?

All I know is: I can’t care if I look gullible or stupid or credulous anymore. I must know why so many of the people whose planet I share, feel so threatened they see killing others as a reasonable, faith-based choice. I must find a way to feel some tiny part of their passionate belief, to see for myself how one might end up like that. And Swami Vivekananda’s idea – that we constantly mistake other’s beliefs as a threat to ours when they may simply be the same thing just in different garb – feels, at least, like the beginning of an answer.

Searching for Huston Smith

Professor Hussain answered my email; Huston Smith had been on panels and at various meetings with him but Professor Hussain didn’t know where to find him and neither did Professor Chapple. I'm not quite sure what to try next but I'm not giving up.


(30 September 2006)

Emailing Hemu again...

I let Hemu know I wouldn’t be coming back to the Swaminarayan temple on a regular basis.

Hemu:

The reason I'm not sure about coming back to the service is I feel that, given the language problem, I am a burden to you.

I wanted so much to understand, for myself, why everyone was laughing last time. I could see the obvious passion, wit and wisdom with which the sadhus spoke so I felt a deep longing to be able to hear their thoughts for myself. That is the reason I so look forward to their responses to my proposal and my questions. I see such devotion, grace and compassion in your mandir while at the same time I feel at a bit of a loss, even with all of your generosity, to really partake in it. Perhaps if I learn some more of the basics through hearing the sadhus thoughts about my path, and learn the meaning of some basic Hindu practices, I might then be able to return to the service and get more out of it on a personal level.

Marley


When I talked to Hemu on the phone some time after, she said I wasn’t a burden at all but she also understood. “Do you want me to tell you when the big events and festivals happen anyway?”

“Of course.”

Hemu mentioned that the monk she’d asked to read an early draft of the first chapter, had tried and failed to read it at first because I’d seemed “so lost.” But sometime later, she sent me his thoughts when he was finally able to get through it.


Jai Swaminarayan
Marley:

I hope you are doing well.
It’s been a while since we communicated.

Below is (the sadhu’s) response on your writing proposal.

Initially it was stunning and confusing a little. After reading it again, it made more sense.

I re-read the package on my flight from Houston to Chicago. This time I wasn't shocked or stunned by the text but felt more comfortable reading what has been written. Aside from the personal confusions the writer has been through (to) date in terms of trying to understand God or religion, I believe that the project could be useful. I believe that by pursuing this project, the writer should definitely be able to better understand what different people of different faiths believe to be the purpose of life.

As far as the Hindu faith, I believe that the writer has come to one of the purest forms of Hindu practice and faith in the world today. The writer will be able to see people actually trying to imbibe or live the principles or teachings of Hinduism in their lives to the best of the ability. This book could maybe be viewed as a catalog for understanding different faiths.

This book could be of service to others IF each faith is portrayed correctly and totally.

This is what we have answered as of now. Have also sent the proposal to some senior Swamis for their input.

Sorry for the delay.

Jai Swaminarayan! Pallav Vaghashia for P. Kaivalyamurti Swami


Hemu!

I have been thinking of you a lot. I am so happy to hear from you.

And, wow, Hemu! What lovely and thoughtful comments from the sadhu. Please extend my sincere thanks for taking the time to both read and respond.

Marley


I missed Hemu.

Bike Riding

The soul...in its very essence, is free, unbounded,
holy, pure and perfect. But somehow or other it
finds itself tied down to matter, and thinks of
itself as matter. It is a fact of everybody’s consciousness
that one thinks of oneself as the body.

Swami Vivekandanda
The Chicago Addresses

(Swami Vivekanada, an excerpt from his opening remarks, the first World Parliament of Religions, 1893)

(Swami Vivekanada, an excerpt from "Why We Disagree", the first World Parliament of Religions, 1893)

Waking up to the first really cool Saturday, I decided to throw my bike in the back of the van to ride while Matt was in his three-hour theater class.

It was perfectly clear. The mountains that sit at the edge of the valley were plain, their features distinct: crags, trees, a ruffle of houses around their bases. The air slipped by my neck, my cheeks, my hair, and made the translucent yellow wind-breaker slick close to the front of my arms but sound like a sail behind. I rarely get on a bike without remembering how it felt to ride one when I was eight, a surge of power and independence, imagining that my bike was a car that could go anywhere I wanted.

No wonder I’m afraid to age, afraid to die. I like my body. I like having one. I like having this one. Sure, it’s had its share of defects: two lazy eyes that had to be surgically corrected when I was just two, some illnesses, but not many. And it heals quickly. After all, isn’t that the real miracle? Not that we get sick, but that, with all of these complicated interlocking systems that seem pretty fragile, we spend so much of our lives healthy?

And then, oh, those sensations…the touch, the smell, the taste, the beauty that seems to land like thunder deep inside; the sounds of tires humming, of a bird at dawn, of a tune played for the ninety-ninth time; the smell of my husband’s skin, of my sleepy cat’s fur; the slip of silk against skin, the cold of water in my throat, the fuzzy-soft of the pink angora sweater my grandmother used to wear, the squirm in my sons’ bodies when I tickled them. When I was still allowed to tickle them.

Yes, I am attached to this body. Very.

That these profound joys will become increasingly elusive and, finally, gone, is terrifying. I don’t remember anyone touching my grandmother in the years before she died except to help move her between the wheelchair and the bed and back. Accidental touching. No more touching with intent, with recognition, with communion.

I mean, I still have the same car I bought new in 1995 and I put every single one of its 130,000-plus miles on it. I don’t want a new car or a new body. I like this one. Its flaws are familiar, its resilience known.

But, whether I want or don’t want, whether I resist or accept, I know my car will not work one day. I’m not going to have a choice. It’s just going to be too expensive to fix one day. But the metaphor Swami Sarvadevananda uses doesn’t help that much. I’m not sure that the “I” that drives the next body, the next car, is the same “I” that’s in this one. As deeply pleasant as it sounds, the notion of personal reincarnation, of getting a body back (and, if you do a good job in this life, a better one in the next!) I simply can’t reconcile with Swami Sarvadevananda’s ocean metaphor – that we’re like ripples on a single ocean, rising up for a lifetime and then fading back in to the whole -- which does feel possibly true to me.

If we are like waves on the ocean, bits of the Absolute that rise up into form for the flash of a lifetime and then return to that of which we are made, then doesn’t it make more sense that it isn’t that I, Marley, would be reincarnated again, personally or specifically, but the root essence underlying each and every one of us – God, if you will – that “reappears?” I mean, even if you stick with science, you have to admit that the raw material we’re made of certainly reappears in other forms. But the idea of the me I think of, the me who likes drugstore marshmallow eggs and watered down orange juice, coming back again? That feels like pure wishful vanity. But I have a Swami now to ask such questions.

It was time to head back to pick up Matt so I headed out of the park, off the bike path and onto surface streets leading back to the studio where his class was. I’m still new to bike shoes with clips on the bottom so, at a major intersection, I squeezed the handlebar brake levers to stop at the red light and then, in slow motion, feet still stuck to my pedals, I fell over to one side like a cartoon character. The skin tore off the knee that caught me, my other shin got whacked black-and-blue by the handlebars.

Okay, maybe there are some sensations I can live - or die - without. Or maybe the key is to get to a place where it’s possible to feel that the sensuous and the painful, the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ are equal, the same, no different; to not get too attached to either as neither one is permanent, eternal, meaningful.

But I have a confession: I’d rather have a skinned knee and contusions than nothing. I guess, by Hinduism’s terms, I have a few more lifetimes ahead of me.


(30 September 2006)

Telling them...

So I finally came clean with Mom and Dad.

I didn’t do it until just before I started all of this in earnest. I was afraid to tell them. I'm an alleged grown-up with kids of my own and I'm still worried about what they think about what I'm doing, even more fearful of what they'll say. To be fair, I've had decades of experience telling them things they didn't want to hear. When I came home from an expensive fancy college to tell them that I wasn’t applying to medical school, that I wanted to get a job in television, my mother said, “What did we send you to college for?”

Now this? They're going to think I'm an idiot.

I'd put off telling them for months. When I quit my job running the regional public television newsmagazine, I kind of forgot to mention that I knew what I was doing next, specifically. They heard “writing,” they heard “more time with Luke and Matt” and that my husband’s work was doing okay, so Mom and Dad didn’t really ask too many questions.

On the phone, Mom had said, “Maybe now you won’t have to work so hard all the time. I hate to see you run ragged.”

“Me, too, Mom.”

But I talk to my parents so many times during a week it just got plain weird not to tell them what was going on, especially when this project was becoming my life, especially when we were all going to be together for their fiftieth anniversary at their honeymoon spot in Florida.

__

In my suitcase, I brought two things to give them: a pair of patchwork pillowtops I’d made for them with their wedding photos ironed on the center squares of each and a copy of the pages I’d given to Hemu and her sadhu, the same ones I'd given to Swami Sarvadevananda. I took the pillowtops out right away – they were a big hit – but the manuscript stayed in the bottom of the empty suitcase until the day before we were meant to leave.

Not long after breakfast, I walked into their hotel room, handed over the paper held together by brass grommets, and took Luke and Matt to the beach.

Hours later, fingers wrinkled, salt baked into skin, I sent the boys ahead to take showers and opened the door to Mom and Dad’s room. Beyond the entrance hall, Dad sat with his back to the sliding glass door, scratching words into the squares of his spiral-bound double acrostic book. It wasn’t late but the sun was already behind the tall building we were in, its shadow crossing the pool and even the beach beyond. His pose was so familiar it was like a hug: one leg crossed wide over the other to support the hard pad, left hand curled around a pen, head down and slightly tilted. His hair might be baby fine and white with a whisper of tan skin beneath but the scene was the same since I was little. He seemed so happy when he was like this. He seemed so alone.

“Hi, Dad.”

Dad’s hearing is flawless for someone nearing eighty but his puzzle concentration is absolute. I tried again. “Dad?”

“Oh, hi. Boys have a good time down there?”

“Yeah, where’s Mom?”

“She’s getting ready.”

Screaming through my head was: Did you read it? Did she? Nothing in his eyes or voice said anything so I didn’t either. Forcing it felt wrong. Besides, I knew better than to start with Dad; he let Mom handle stuff like this. So I just asked, “When are we leaving for dinner?”

Looking up over his reading glasses, “Half an hour.”

After the fastest shower I knew how to take, I was back, a kid waiting for approval of a lumpy handmade ashtray.

I know I’m not supposed to care what they think, what she thinks. I mean, when am I going to get over this? I’ve investigated bad guys while at 60 Minutes, I’ve worn hidden cameras in dangerous places, I’ve interviewed a serial killer on death row and many other criminals in prisons and jails, in my last job, I’ve made decisions that an entire staff didn’t like, and yet I’m still tiptoeing around looking for signs in my parents’ eyes.

Why do I care? What am I waiting for? Permission?

And then I knew: the dread of having this very conversation and others like it is what’s stopped me dead for decades. I feel like I was born with only one subject on my mind: Is there a point and, if so, what is it? Is the visible all that’s real? Yet it’s taken me half a lifetime to become either stubborn enough or driven enough to make anyone else’s reactions meaningless…. that’s probably overstating it…to make anyone else’s bad reaction less important. But, for all that progress, I was still standing there, desperate to know what they thought.

The smell of Jean Nate and the sound of charm bracelets always told us when my mother was ready to go out. My parents didn’t go out often when we were little but, when they did, Mom loved dressing in red and black, sometimes with big wide belts or dresses she’d made, some dramatic. The bracelets were still there but the playful smell and dramatic outfits were gone. In their place were long pieces of silk and comfortable shoes.

Dad picked up the plastic hotel key from the table and called for the car while Mom finished putting a few things into one of her tiny sparkly purses. I gave up looking for them to say something. It was plain: she knew I was waiting, knew I wanted to know, but she either couldn’t figure out what to say or maybe she hadn’t even read it yet. Maybe she wanted to wait until she could figure out what she even thought about it.

Maybe she didn’t want to ruin dinner.

But, as I held the hotel room door open and turned off the light, Mom stopped and looked up at me and said, “I really never knew you had this problem, I really didn’t. I mean, you told me how you thought I should have taken you to art museums more and, you’re right, I probably should have, but I never knew about this.”

All I could do was laugh. I put one arm around her shoulder and kissed her jaw, the only part she would really let me near, as she continued with various permutations of this all the way down the long hotel hallway, with Dad following behind, until the elevator door opened and there were strangers inside.

And we had a really nice dinner.

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)