in the basti hazrat

8 feb 2010, new delhi

What I thought was hidden in mystery
I found in the marketplace.
(Sufi Qwali)

Delhi is as crazy as ever, but at least I know the place now and can plan around it. I got one night at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram (thanks to Michaela, that is), which was a very nice quiet place with three light vegetarian meals for a very reasonable price. Now I am back at the same YWCA Hostel that I have stayed at four other times. It was a lot closer to the Sufi gathering that I came for, and near all kinds of other things like the Railway Station, Connaught Place and, as it happens, the Cathedral.

It worked out that I was going to be finishing my time down south and wanting to head up north at the same time that this Urs gathering was taking place that some friends of mine from California were also going to be attending, particularly our friend the great singer Lori-Gitanjali Rivera with whom I have performed and recorded several times now. It is in honor of Sufi Hazrat Inayat Khan. Some definitions will help: an "urs" is actually a wedding and is celebrated on the death anniversary of a Sufi Master who is now one with the Beloved. "Hazrat" is something like a saint or holy one; even "sufi" is an honorific title, not just an adjective. To regard someone as a "sufi" is as if to say he or she is an authentic mystic. Inayat Kahn (1882-1927) was a "great Sufi mystic who came to the Western world in 1910"--hence this particualr Urs was celebrating the centenary of that--"and lectured and taught there until his passing in 1927." He is particuarly known for his teaching in three areas: general teachings about the Sufi way, the "Unity of Religious Ideals," and "The Mysticism of Music, Sound and Word." I knew of him already to some extent from the latter topic, as a matter fact somehow winding up with two copies of the same book. His legacy gave birth to several Sufi orders--The Sufi Universal Way, Sufi Movement, Sufi Order and the Ruhaniyat, to name the ones I learned about--which have not always gotten along well. This particular Urs was special in that the various groups collaborated to organize it, whereas in the past one or the other has done so alone. I had heard of this gathering before, but mainly as a music festival, and indeed there was a lot of music. But it wasn't advertised that way. It was simply a Sufi gathering, but a Sufi gathering, especially an urs, and especially that of Inayat Khan, would always have music. Sufism has traditionally used music as a "means of transmitting the essence of mystical insight" and in a particular way Hazrat Inyat Khan integrates music "with elements like sound and silence, vibration and the word, thoughts and inspiration... recomposing a musical concept extending beyond the tradition of time and culture." (Quotes from a description of the above mentioned book.)

I almost never have the correct concept in my head for what I am heading into... Gitanjali said we'd meet here, and I had all the information as to where it was taking place, but I had the wrong area of Delhi in my head and was imagining a huge auditorium like the Anaheim Convention Center and an enormous gathering of thousands of Sufis from all over the world, and when I got an e-mail from her saying "I'll see you there", I wrote back and said, "How will I ever find you?" to which I never got a reply. So I got an autorickshaw from the ashram, who took me right to the front door. It was being held in an area called Nizamuddin (that "z" is pronounced like a "j," by the way) in Basti Hazrat--"basti" meaning "neighborhood" and "hazrat" again meaning holy--so in the "holy neighborhood." I assume it is holy because there are three dargahs (a "dargah" is a tomb) in this little neighborhood: that of the great 13th century Sufi Nizammuddin, as well as that of Inayat Khan and that of his son, who was also a much beloved Sufi teacher, Valayat Khan, who only died in 2004 and was the immediate pir ("teacher") of many who were there at the gathering. The street stretching out either side is narrow and bustling, and I assume some elements of it haven't changed much since the 13th century when it was home to Nizamuddin himself. (I am told he is famous for meeting with even the most simple of his neighbors but refusing to meet with the emporer. And it is one of his students--I neglected to write his name down!--who is credited with inventing both the sitar and the tabla.) It seems to be pretty much a totally Muslim neighborhood. There were lots of chicken and pork shops, and Arabic script everywhere. (One of the guys I visited with explained to me that at one time Delhi was the center of Indian Sufism.) There wasn't an convention center in sight. Hazrat Inyat Khan's dargah is a small quadrangular cloister of sorts. After entering in under an arch, the tomb itself is on the second floor (which to an Indian, on the other hand, is actually called the first floor as opposed to the ground floor), and immediately to its right there is a performance hall for music and then the small music academy hall itself. The place is very well kept; I'm told it is funded by many of his Western followers and has grown to its present form from its original simple structure in recent times. The place where the actual tomb is, is covered with a gazebo and Arabic style stone worked grated walls surround it. On the back wall etched in black marble are six of his most famous prayers. It is a powerful space; when people enter they reverence the tomb, usually by kneeling and placing their head on it. Many folks go to simply sit near it and meditate. The one rule, as is typical of Muslims, is that one's feet should never be pointed at it, just as one's feet should never be pointed toward Mecca. (There are several great Sufi stories about that--perhaps you've heard them already. My favorite one ends with the Sufi asking, "Show me where Allah is not and I will point my feet there!")

Anyway, I walked into the performance hall where a presentation was about to begin and ran right into Gitanjali. There were probably only under 100 people there, and the crowd varied from day to day. This is India after all: Swami Atmananda who I met in Rishikesh some years ago was also there with one of his students (I didn't get a chance to speak with him; and I was delightfully surprised to see our friend Michael Giddings there as well, who is a good friend of Shantivanam (famed for playing Father Christmas when he's there) and one of the most dedicated members of the Bede Griffiths Sangha in England. Besides Gitanjali, there were several other folks from Santa Cruz including Radha's friend Junayd, who spoke to our Sangha once and leads the Universal Dances of Peace in Santa Cruz.

The musical performances alternated with presentations by various Sufi teachers from the different orders, but I'll just describe the music performances here. Friday evening after the simple but delicious dinner buffet there was a performance of some qwali singers right in the burial room itself. I believe it is the first time I have ever heard qwali music live. So powerful, and I hadn't realized how largely improvistory it is, with a leader shouting-singing out a line from a devotional poem and the rest of the singers echoing and repeating and doing variations . I didn't make it back until Saturday afternoon, in the midst of transfering from the ashram to the Y. Saturday afternoon we heard from some of the students from the academy there, young men all, starting from about six years old up to what seemed to be late teenagers. They were impressive, especially the first little guy we heard and the last older teenager who already had the confidence of a Bollywood star. What was most impressive to me was first of all to see these strapping young men learning their traditional classical music and making it look so cool, and then to see what reverence they showed their teachers, touching the feet of the teacher before beginning and after finishing each piece. Such a heritage! Saturday night there was a woman sitar master with an amazing tabla player (I was more fascinated by the latter).

After that to finish the day off an ensemble from Turkey called TUMATA played, led by a Dr Oruc Guvenc. They say they are dedicated to keeping alive the heritage of Turkish music in general, but what they played for us was all Sufi songs, "ilahis," a word I already know from Kabir Helminski. As a matter of fact, I recognized two of the songs immediately from Kabir and Camille's recording "Garden in the Flames," songs for which Kabir wrote new English words. They had three ouds, one saz, (all men who also all sang), plus two women singers who played small frame drums, I believe called a tar. At various times Dr Guvenc or another of the group also picked up a ney flute as well. They were tremendous. After the first three songs I said to myself, "Surely this must be what the music is heaven sounds like." The muted tones of the three ouds together, the gentle pulsation of the tars, and the blend of the unison voices, no one sticking out, no sharp corners anywhere, mesmerizing, soothing and kind of urgent at the same time. They went seamlessly from one song to another like a long medley with dhkr (some repetition of either the name of Allah or another phrase) in between, all the while. And from the third song on a woman wearing the white robes and tall hat of a dervish was whirling in the small space left her between the tomb, the crowd and the ensemble.

Sunday morning there was a breathtaking performance by a woman named Ruth Wieder Magan from the Theatre Company of Jeruslem called "Ancient Jewish Prayers from Israel and the Diaspora." She sang some of the melodies--"landino, hasidic and cantorial"--that she has set about collecting from archives and recordings, but she presented them in her own unique very visceral dramatic style. Her pieces were alternated by reading from the story of creation from the first chapter of the book of Genesis done by another woman with an obviously trained theatre voice. Both Gitanjalai and I immediately thought of how much our friend Shannon Frediani would have enjoyed her, since there is a similarity in style and execution. It was very well received, and people flocked around Ms Magan afterwards. (It was about that time I started imagining the kind of program I would put together if I were ever asked to such a gathering, by the way. I thought what John Pennington and I do would be very well received there as well.)

Sunday afternoon there was a performance titled "Western Spirituals and Gospel Music" by a young woman named Sonam Kalra who has studied both Western and Indan classical music traditions, but fell in love with the American style some years ago. Even as she explained it, it was quite a hybrid: a young Indian woman singing African American music that she learned in Singapore from an Australian teacher. She launched into some non-traditional songs as well, Sarah McLaughlin's "On the Wings of the Angels" and, what was quite a surprise, Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah." During her entire performance I must admit was wishing they had asked Lori to sing, but it was good to see the other side of the marriage of East and West, an Asian doing stylized Western music.

The last performance I attended was a rudra veena master with a mrdungam player. The veena is the stringed instrument, called the grandmother of the sitar, from the south of India. The rudra veena, unlike mine, has too large equal sized gourds top and bottom rather than the large body and the top gourd resonator. The most notable feature of the performance was this: There is in classical Indian music what's known as an "alaap," in which the soloist improvises on the raga in an unmetered way for time as an introduction before the other instruments, especially the rhythm instruments, join in. The alaap introduces the tonality, shows that the performer really knows it, "moves the sound around in the room a little," as I say, and, in a sense, invites the raga. I've heard it said that Western music has a tendency to state a theme and then restate it and then vary it and say it over and over again in many different ways, whereas Indian music dances around a theme, touching it and backing off and coming close again. I know that alaaps can sometimes last for quite a while, but I never knew how long: this one lasted an hour! (I timed it.) That was just the introduction, mind you, while the percussionist and the tambura player sat idly by. It went so long that when he was done the mrdagam player had to make a phone call to see if he could stay longer to play the rest of the raga.

When that performance was over, I was saturated for the day and didnt stay for the final perforance of Indian classical music. A new acquaintance named Robinson, who happens to be a Christian theologian and an expert in Sufism, by the way, semi-scolded me for paying for an auto-rickshaw, and accompanied me across town in a careening city bus, all the while regaling me with stories and facts, poems and opinions about all things Indian, Sufi and Christian. I think there will be more to say about him later. But for now, it's a rainy evening in Delhi, the ever-present music of the Sikhs at the Bagla Sahib Gurudwara right behind the Y is pushing its way into my room, and I'm gonna put myself to sleep reading Hazrat Inayat Khan on "The Unity of Religious Ideals."

the real threat

5 feb 2010, en route to delhi

Faith is the opening of an inward eye,
the eye of the heart,
to be filled with Divine light.
(Thomas Merton, New Seeds)

There are two other ways that I found Bangalore to be unique. One is that it is cooler, as a matter of fact in the morning it was downright cold. The past few nights I was wrapped in a sheet and a woolen blanket. That made for great sleeping as far as I was concerned. And the second thing is oddly related. The "little Vatican" of Bangalore is also "Little Kerala." I realized soon on that about 95% of the people around me were from Kerala; the guys in the house spoke Malayalam to each other, the food served was mainly Keralese style (including delicious brown rice), and there were many restaurants on the surrounding streets advertising "Kerala food" and "Kerala room mates." I asked George if this was true for all of Bangalore or just this little theological union area. He said it was the latter. Kerala is of course the largest Catholic population in India--many of the Indian clergy and religious in the States are from there, for instance. I asked why the Keralese had moved to Bangalore to start their theological consoritum, and he said simply, "The moderate climate." Our Bro Pinto, a tall, dark and slow moving sweet Tamilian, seemed a little out of place, even though he apparently speaks pretty good Malayalam. There are age-old undercurrents to the state divisions that we can only guess at. For instance, Catholics especially outside of Tamil Nadu don't seem to have much problem with either Sanskrit or Hindi. Though it has different script, Malayalam unashamedly shares a bulk of its vocabulary with Sanskrit. Many of the houses and schools in the Little Kerala-Vatican had Sanskrit names--even Gurukulam, Dharmaram College, Bhavan Assisi, etc.

The men living at Mar Makil were a very friendly bunch and seem to enjoy each others' company a great deal. It's more like a fraternity house but with very few group activities outside of meals. There are chapels around for people to celebrate as they wish, when they wish. There were a handful of already ordained men doing advanced degrees there, as well as some faculty and "secular" students. Every afternoon a bunch of guys gathered for a game of basketball. I went to watch one day; they were pretty good. Several of the guys were pretty forward in approaching me and engaging me in conversation. I found it a little unusual, though not at all, rude for them to be so initiatory. Possibly because they were in academia they were used to grilling people with questions and gathering facts. Quite a few asked about my community and each time I start to explain that I don't live with a community the conversation takes about the same turn--where do I live, what work I do, why do I do that, and, oddly enough, what do I eat. There were quite a few queries about why I don't eat "non-veg." (It is notable that the default in India is actually vegetarian--"veg." It always reminds me of our friend Janice Daurio confusing me mightily by marking the coffee "non-decaf.") It seems Christians are a little suspicious of vegetarians (another fear of Hindu- or Brahmin-ization?). One of George's classmates named Bobin also came over from the Camillian house to ask me to teach him some music, ways to chant the psalms.

On my last day there after tea I ran into Tomy, a bright young guy from the Claretian congregation, a very active group that does a lot of work with the poor, and we wound up taking a long walk together in the nearby park that I kept thinking of as "Muslim park" because there were so many guys in their topis and kurtas, and women in burkahs. We had a wonderful conversation about vocations and music--winds up he had written some bhajans himself and played tabla. He is firmly unapologetically committed to the active life and ministry but was appreciative of my emphasis on meditation and spirituality. He was especially keen on those who were using the Indian style in music and liturgy. I invited him to join us for Eucharist again that evening and he offered that maybe he could find some tabla so that we could make some music.

Then George took me out on my tour of the city. Our first stop was actually my idea, the Ramakrishna Math. This is the exact community where my old friend Madhurananda had been a monk, before leaving to wander for a year, finally settling in Tiruvanamalai. He subsequently dis-robed and relinquished his vows but still lives in Tiru, very dedicated to meditation and a bit of teaching and writing. We had had a nice visit the day before I left, and he had given me the name of a friend of his, Swami Shantimayananda (does that mean "the peaceful bliss of illusion"?) who is now head monk there. The Ramakrishna order, founded by Vivekananda, is one the most well-organized of the orders of sannyasis in India, and to my eye pretty much a counterpart to Catholic religious life. Madhu had told me that no one enters until they have an advanced degree. They do a lot of teaching and charity work, and have a relatively comfortable life. The place, like the RK Math I visited in Delhi, is an oasis in the midst of the hustle and bustle of the city. They are based on the inspiration of Ramakrishna, the late 19th-early 20th century holy man considered actually to be a deity, who was devoted to the Divine Mother, Kali, and taught the universality of religion. They have more of an emphasis toward meditation and Yoga rather than on ritual and devotion, in keeping with the sannyasa way. The campus is very clean and quiet, with three special areas of meditation: the temple itself which is lined with photos of various saints and sages, a photo of Ramakrishna himself enshrined front and center in place of a deity; a stone slab bench from a nearby town where Vivekananda sat often to take rest and so considered to have been sanctified, now donated to the Math and covered with a large gazebo; and a large rocky protusion where Ramakrishna's female counterpart sat at one point, and thus it is also considered to have been sanctified. We tried all three spots but both George and I agreed that the Mother's Rock was the most powerful place. There were a handful of others sitting around and some doing pradakshina around a small shrine containing the Sri Chakra yantra (the design on my CD Echo of Your Peace, which I am now running into all over the place). I was absolutely comfortable there, more than at Gurukulam and even more than Tiru. For me that's a real ashram, with a focus on meditation and not a lot of "religiosity" or bhakti to a specific deity to obsturct non-devotees. George and I talked about the place as a great example for Shantivanam, and he is keen on setting up more places for meditation and generally encouraging more meditation there in general. We had a brief courtesy visit with Swami Shantimayananda who was in the main office receiving visitors, but we didn't get much past formalities and generalities.

Then George took me on a bit of a whirlwind around Bangalore by city busses: first to an Ayurvedic medical shop, then across town to a Science and Techonology Museum (he didn't actually care for it too much but for some reason thought I would like it; I think it is the de rigeur tourist route); then lunch at a stand in a big beautiful park. I almost ate fish on purpose: we ordered two "meals" which usually come with rice, a variety of curries and veggies and a sweet; this place only had one "meal"--a mound of rice with a mackerel in curry sticking out of a bowl and a little container of buttermilk. I thought for a moment if this was one of those moments when prudence and charity over rule tapas, but the sight of it was so unappealing, that poor little mackerel tail sticking out of the golden curry sauce, that I settled for rice with buttermilk, and a slice of cucumber. (George felt bad so he gave me his buttermilk and cucumber slice too.) By the time we got back to Gurukul it was pushing 5 o'clock and I was pretty wiped out, just from the noise and bustle of the several busses we had had to take. We did have another beautiful simple eucharist later on the floor in my room again, followed by a meditation. That's what really makes my world go 'round, being able to share the practice with just about anybody, especially my younger brothers. Tomy did join us after all as well, which was nice, to get to share "Shantivanam style" with someone outside of the community. Neither the "Indian style" of liturgy (bhajans, sitting on the floor, me in the kavi shawl, etc.) nor meditation is encouraged or practiced there at Gurukulam, it seems, so I was a little wary about making a show of it. Kind of like our catacomb Masses in Santa Cruz.

At dinner I spoke with another young man, one of the "secular" students who was studying for his GRE (which I confused with the GED, duh!), and asked me for advice on that as well as being keen to talk about American culture. Tomy had procured a set of tabla after all, so after dinner we headed up to a hall on our floor and played happily for an hour. Thanks to Theophy and Steve I now have quite a set of music I can pull out to offer to a tabla player, and it is fascinating to hear what variations each player comes up with. He especially liked the Indonesian piece "Loving Kindness" and asked me to play it again before we parted ways. It was already nearly ten and I still had one more appointment.

Another man, a priest from Kerala (who I will remember as a short guy but a real scrapper on the basketball court) is in Bangalore doing his docotral dissertation on Islam, and wanted to probe me about Islam in America. I offered what I could, only positive reports due to interaction with Kabir and our friends from Pacifica, and recommended that he look both of them up. He asked me at one point why I thought so many people were leaving Christianity and converting to Islam. I hadn't thought of that before, and am not sure of the numbers, but the first thing that came to my mind was that the uniqueness of Jesus is such a stumbling block to so many people, and Islam gives some of the familiar territory but putting Jesus in a more palatable place. He then launched into a pretty well thought out defense of Jesus' divinity, partly using the Qur'an itself, that he wants to be able to teach priests so that they can be armed from the pulpit to defend Christian doctrine. He used the word "threat" a couple of times, concerning both the threat of terrorism and the threat of people converting to Islam, and then he asked me what I thought the biggest threat from Islam was. I said that I would never use the word "threat," but I talked about the challenge that Islam presents.

This uniqueness of Jesus came up recently in another context too a few times now this trip, in regards the incarnation as compared with the Hindu notion of the avatar. I remember the first time I heard someone describe Jesus as the 11th avatar of Vishnu. I immediately bristled at the thought, but wasn't sure why. They are such similar concepts but it's almost like "comparing apples and tennis," as I heard one Zen teacher say. There are a couple of differences which may seem quibbling but I think are important. I read a brilliant paper these past few days that George had from his class on Indian theology that laid out a couple of subtle points. For one thing, the avatar doesn't really become fully human, only appears in human form; the body is discarded when the god returns to heaven. Whereas orthodox Christianity fought for the proposition that Jesus was fully human, and that that bodiliness of Jesus remains important, hence the resurrection and ascension, symbols of flesh and all creation participating in divinity. For another thing, orthodox Christians don't believe Jesus is one of many incarnations, and certainly not of only one aspect of God--Vishnu the protector. "The fullness of the Godhead dwelt in Jesus bodily," St Paul says. And another little one: avatars always come to help the righteous, as this one theologian pointed out; Jesus specifically came for sinners, prostitutes, drunks and tax collectors. But our friend Fausto (SJ) makes an even more subtle point: there is an entirely different understanding of history operative in Hinduism than in the Judeo-Christian tradition, and it is out of that tradition that the understanding of both incarnation and avatar sprout. It sure makes things easier to have conversations with folks from other traditions if we say that Jesus was just one in the line of prophets, or that Jesus was an avatar. It sort of resolves the tension for us, too. But there is something unique about what Christians claim about Jesus, his divine bodiliness, his incarnate divinity, and that is somehow to me the real treasure of Christianity, and its scandal/stumbling block. Reducing one of its central messages takes away the unique treasure we have to bring to the party.

That doesn't make us better than anyone else, of course, and I still don't think of the other religions as "threats."

Another priest had also grilled me the day before about why I was dealing with people outside of Christianity and why I thought people were leaving it, sort of suggesting, I think, that if I preached right dogma that would make them stay. But, gosh, the other side of all this is that faith is more than intellectual assent and winning philosophical architecuture. What I read from Thomas Merton in "New Seeds" the other day offers a corrective to the whole discussion: "We must not be so obsessed with verbal correctness that we never go beyond the words to the ineffable reality which they attempt to convey." I liked this too that I read in Vivekananda's essay on the life of Ramakrishna called "My Master":

We must realize God, feel God, see God, talk to God. That is religion. The Indian atmosphere is full of stories of saintly people who have visions of God. Such doctrines form the basis of their religion; and all these ancient books and scriptures are the writings of persons who came into direct contact with spiritual facts. These books are not written for the intellect, nor can any reasoning understand them, because they have been written by people who saw the things of which they wrote, and they can be understood only by people who have raised themselves to the same height.

There must be some universal wisdom here because Merton agrees, writing that ultimately "faith is communion with God's own light and truth," and that's an experience that goes beyond words. Simply coming up with arguments to "prove" to Muslims that Jesus was the Son of God and not just a prophet--or vice versa--, or that Jesus was or wasn't an avatar in the sense that Hindus mean isn't going to convert anyone to anything. (We're back in the realm of scopos and telos here, by the way.) I keep going back to that image of St Francis before the Sultan; there's got to be more if we are to witness to folks the intergrity of our spiritual path.

The real threat is always our ignorance and our lack of desire to realize God. The real threat is our lack of faith, that we are not in communion with God's own light and truth.

outside the vatican walls

Wed, 2 feb 2010

The modern mind has exiled from its practical motive power the two essential things, God or the Eternal, and spirituality or the God-state. It lives in humanity only and the Gita would have us live in God, though for the world in God. (Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita)

I didn't protest a whole lot when JP insisted on sending me to Bangalore in a hired car, but in keeping with my pretense at being a renunciate I did offer a few muted objections, saying that I could take a bus. But, no, he wanted to thank me for my work, etc. etc. So I accepted, a little relieved, I might add. It is always the guitar in addition to the backpack that is the issue on a crowded bus. I was told there was a nice big comuter line from Chennai to Bangalore that stopped in Tiru, right in front of the Arunai Ananda Hotel where I had done the concert, but if it was full it would not stop, and then I would have to take one of the regular lines. I really was willing--it sounded like a fun adventure--but ultimately conceded. JP even wanted to pay for my plane ticket to Delhi but I talked him out of that. He and Agente had made a big deal about my work for them this past week, along with Elle's work and MC's ongoing friendship, Sunday night after the meditation in the little red hut (that feels like it should be in capital letters: "The Little Red Hut"), which I had agreed to lead for them. We had also had Eucharist again in the new pavilion. Inspired by MC and I, they now want to start having a regular eucharist of some kind there every week. It was interesting to be a part of the discussion as to what kind of eucharist they would have--not a discussion that would get too far in Roman Catholic enviroments. Nicholai, JP's Danish assistant from Danmission, said they couldn't do the Shantivanam one because it was "too brahminical" with all that Sanskrit. They were discussing using the one in which we participated at TTS, all in Tamil; but then the issue of how to serve the Westerners that frequent there place came up, because that is a real vital concern for Quo Vadis as well, Westerners who have a need to reconnect with their own roots while experiencing Ramana and the mountain. I really love that part of being in Tiru myself; it's when I feel a bit like a missionary, celebrating the Eucharist or leading meditation at the foot of Arunachala. MC and I had a lot of great discussions about the whole thing. I'm glad to have been of service, though I feel like a did very little for them this time given their own schedule conflicts.

The driver, Sarandha, was quite young and spoke very very little English. I had asked (or motioned) to sit in the front seat instead of feeling like I was being chauffered across India. That actually made him a little uncomfortable and we had almost no interaction the entire four hours of the drive. We were making attempts to call Bro George here in Bangalore on his mobile from Sarandha's mobile to get specific directions, but I couldn't figure out whether or not he was talking to George or to someone else, and he didn't understand when I tried to ask. We stopped at one point to charge his phone because his phone had run out of minutes, and I tried to buy him tea, but he brushed me off with a hand gesture. When I said and motioned, "Lunch?" which I would have been willing to buy him, he said "No! Going going!" And we drove off to Bangalore.

When we got into Bangalore, having crossed over the state line of Karnatika leaving Tamil Nadu (with a sigh), he made another call and then pulled over to the side of the road and turned off the car. After a few minutes I finally asked (motioned) "Why?" and he said, "Coming, coming!" I assumed that meant George was coming to meet us. We sat for a good long time (apparently we were actually in the wrong place) and suddenly Sarandhar started trying to ask me questions, beginning with "Your good name, sir" and "Country coming?" He let me know that he liked Bangalore, "Good city! Very nice." After another phone call he hurried into town to another spot and started saying something like "big bujjah, big bujjah." I had no idea what he was talking about. Another phone call or two and then he started saying something like, "fwum, fwum." We sat in another spot for a while, blocking a pedestrian crossing, when he started tapping me on the shoulder pointing up at a sign saying, "What say?" And then I figured it out--he couldn't read. He was trying to pretend as if he could but he couldn't find where George was telling him to go and he was embarrassed. So we found "Big Bazaar," a shopping mall that was right across another shopping mall called "The Forum." George found us and we drove into Mar Makil Gurukalum, a hostel for men studying here. I thanked Sarandhar and slipped him a tip (JP insisted I not do that, so please don't tell) before he left on his long drive back to Tiruvanamalai.

Bangalore is sometimes called the "Vatican of India," and this hostel is right on the edge of it, girded by a large stone wall barely keeping the life of the busy streets outside at bay. The neighborhood is actually largely Muslim. There are many young boys wearing the knee length white kurtahs as they come and go from the madrasa, many women in various degrees of bodily and facial covering, all the way to having only eyes exposed, many men having the head covered with the white "topi" (I am not sure of the spelling of the word). The muezzins call out from all around at the designated times, a beautiful unintentional polyphony. Inside the walls of "the Vatican" there are countless houses of sisters and priests and brothers from many congregations I have never even heard of. There is even a congregation in honor of Therese of Lisieux; they have a "renewal retreat center" with a huge warehouse for a meeting hall and church, lots of very colorful very graphic pictures of Jesus and Mary and biblical and other religious sayings painted all over the place. I went to Christ University where Bros Pinto and George both had class yesterday morning and hung out in the library until they finished. It's a beautiful facility and a very nice library, very up to date books and periodicals, as well as popular magazines. It's not totally European Christianity, but it certainly is a lot more so than Shantivanam. A lot of the art I see around is sort of typical popular devotional art, painted statues and lots of scenes of Jesus in agony. I did note that Jesus always appears as a light skinned European. A very different environment also than Sri Ramana Ashram.

I have to say I've had a little bit of culture shock. Outside of the Vatican walls, Bangalore is also quite different, certainly from the village life around Shantivanam, but even from the big towns in Tamil Nadu such as Madurai and Tiruvanamalai, or even from a city the size of Chennai, at least to my eyes. While we were parked on the side of the road I was watching the folks go by and was immediately aware that there was far less Indian dress, even for the women (fewer saris), many more men had belts on with their shirts tucked in, and more people were wearing shoes, both men and women. And it seemed right away that there was a lot more lighter skin. I must say I really love the dark faces, angular features and the fiery eyes of the Dravidian Tamils, but don't realize how striking it is until I come to other parts of India. More than style, though, Bangalore is also the home of a burgeoning middle class due to the high tech industry and, of course, the call centers--the 21st century version of selling carpet cleaning over the phone. There are signs all over the place advertising and soliciting new employees: "Must speak two of three languages, Hindi, Kannada (the local language of Karnatika), English." Across the major boulevard from the little Vatican is the aforementioned Forum shopping mall, with a KFC, a Pizza Hut and many familiar fashion chains.

Fr George, prior of Shantivanam, was here when I arrived as well, to my surprise. There is a meeting going on of the Benedictines of India and Sri Lanka at Asirvanam Monastery, about 20 km out of town, and he had arrived early for that. In the afternoon he and Bro George and I went walking together in the Botanical Gardens, and then in the evening he took Pinto, George and me out for dinner. That was when I got introduced to the inside of The Forum. They had a food court with quite a variety of types of food. The guys were heading toward Chinese food, but I got attracted to Rajastani food and they bowed to the visitor. It was delicious but the whole scene really felt odd, I'm not kidding, to have been that morning drinking tea at a stall on the dusty main road of Tiruvanamalai with the sadhus, and now to be eating Rajastani food in an air conditioned shopping mall with my brother Camaldolese monks.

The next day, Fr George left early for the meeting at Asirvanam. Bro George and I followed about noon, after his class, by bus. We had to switch buses in the Bangalore market, which was one of those fascinating environments, full of all kinds of strange and wonderful energy from the hawkers to the beggars to the commuters to the nuns going by in full habit. Back on the main road, as we passed by George pointed out to me the place where Fr Bede had had his own first Benedictine experiment in India; I had forgotten that it had been here. He came with Fr Benedict Alipat in 1955 and they began what they thought was an Indian form of Benedictine life. As Bede described it, it was still terribly British: "We had cloth napkins and silverware," he said. He was only there a year before joining up with Francis Mathieu at Kurisamala over in Kerala.

Asirvanam itself is of the same congregation as St Andrew's Abbey in Valyermo, and started right about the same time Monchanin and le Saux started Shantivanam, and just before Francis and Bede started Kurisamala. It is decidely European style Benedictine, a Gregorian style chant all in English, a regular Benedictine habit, though in the pale sandal color favored by Catholic religious here, and a pretty typical cloister. From the people that I've met from Asirvanam and the stories I've heard about Bede et al, there was no animosity between the two groups--the Europeans living Indian style monasticism and the Indians living European, but I kept thinking to myself, especially as I sat for None (mid-afternoon prayer) behind the monks, "Bede turned his back on this for something else." That doesn't make that bad or what Bede did good, but it really struck me full force: Bede, and Abhishiktananda and Francis as well, really didn't want to do that. They wanted a whole new expression of Christian monasticism.

I celebrated Mass with the brothers here tonight, opting to celebrate on the floor of my room rather than in the little chapel (wth the altar facing the wall) across the hall. I mentioned to them as we began that no matter where we go, who surrounds us, there is this that ties us together, gathering to listen to the Word and break the bread and pour the wine as we do, like a stream running through our lives. But I had had that thought earlier today too as I forced myself out of bed and got about my morning sadhana, that this is the stream running through my life: no matter where I go, as soon as I roll out that yoga mat and open my scriptures, I'm home.

madurai

Resentment is the mute, animal protest of a mistreated psychological organism. Driven too far it becomes mental sickness; that too is an adaption in its own way. But it is an adaption by way of escape.
(Thomas Merton, "New Seeds")

1 feb 2010

I'm leaving Tiruvanamalai today. This will be the longest I stay in any one place during this trip, longer even than Shantivanam, though I did leave for a few days last week. On Tuesday I went down to Madurai with the Quo Vadis team for a series of events at TTS--Tamil Theological Seminary. That is a major school for the CSI--Church of South India. I originally thought that CSI was the Indian version of Anglicanism, but it actually consists of Methodists and Presbyterians as well, and in very good relationship with Lutherans. My tabla player friend Theophilus' father is Principal there, so I have heard of it quite often. It was a good six hours drive down from Tiru, with our friendly Muslim driver Basha at the wheel again. When we got there we found out that there was some confusion with the rooms and while we were trying to fgure out what to do about it Theophy himself showed up. He and his new bride Belinda were staying as well, on their honeymoon of sorts. He invited us all into the Principal's house for refreshments, and set himself to solve the problem. One of the solutions was that I would stay with them there in his Dad's house. It was actually a very private room on the second floor with its own bath, a separate entrance and a veranda out front, so I was quite happy with it, and he was thrilled that could stay there. "It's wonderful that you've come home!" he said a number of times.

JP and Agnete and a German woman from Denmark named Elle were going to do some sessions with Lutheran pastors from around Tamil Nadu of something called biblical drama. As I understand it, it is something based on Jesuit scriptural meditation but was developed by the Palatine Fathers, in which participants take on one of the roles of a character in a story and see what comes up in them from their experience of it. Many of the pastors had studied there at TTS so it was for them a kind of reunion and homecoming, a place where they could naturally have a spirit of input and renewal. I wasn't to do much with that particular group, so I wound up having the whole first day to myself outside of meals and a rehearsal with Theophy. (Since he was there I co-opted him into playing for the concert with me which was to take place the next night.)

My own work started the next day. I was to give a public lecture to the whole student body and whoever from the faculty wanted to come as well. It had never been made quite clear to me what exactly they wanted me to talk about, nor how long or for whom until the last hour or so before, but I had assumed that the talk I give on the theological justifications for inter-religious dialogue--a talk I call "The Ground We Share"--would suffice. It's about 20 typed pages but can be broken up in various places to shorten it. I figured, hey, a seminary, a theological faculty, I had better do my homework, so, as is my wont, I spent a good part of Wednesday going over that talk to make sure I could deliver it with some coherence. An hour before the talk I was told that it was going to be translated into Tamil, so Jiva, one of JP's assistants, and I scurried around trying to get the whole thing photocopied so that my translator would have a script to follow. But when we got to the hall a few minutes before the lecture was to begin, my translator, a sharp guy named David Rejendra who is on faculty there, said that it wasn't going to work that way, that instead I should just talk informally and take questions. What we wound up doing was having two gentlemen on the stage with me, one on either side. Of course, I didn't know exactly what I was going to talk about now again, so I asked them to conduct it like an interview to give me some focus and help. I actually didn't need as much help as I thought but it was good to have them there for confidence, and I launched into pretty much my normal spiel about Spirit, Soul and Body: Universal Call to Contemplation. Indians are pretty informal about staying put and going and coming during even formal evnts such as church services and lectures--I had been warned of that--and we were butting up against lunch time, but a good two thirds of them stayed all they way through the hour and a half. We started taking questions after about 45 minutes, I think.

After my experience at Gurukul Theological Seminary in Chennai, the Lutheran counterpart to TTS, I was aware of the sensitivity especially among Protestant Christians to any kind of "brahminization" of Christianity. This is someting Fr Bede and Abhishiktananda got accused of: not an Indianization at all, but a Sanskritization, setting up a whole new priestly class and ritual, not indigenous. You almost have to live in India to understand how resentful some non-brahmins are toward Sanskrit and toward Hindi, even, which I have heard described as "that vegetarian language." Here in Tamil Nadu. for instance, they are proud of their Tamil language whihc maybe older than Sanskirt and is still a spoken language. Snaskrit is the language of the upper caste. The majority, so I'm told, of Protestants are Dalits, who have experienced repression, discrimination and at times out and out persecution due to the caste system and are naturally suspicious. We had even heard from Fr Michael Amaladoss, SJ, how Catholic seminarians as well don't want to hear about Abhishiktananda or any talk about advaita/non-duality or yoga or meditation; they want to talk about action, especially the Dalit version of Liberation Theology. And especially the young, the students, are adverse to any kind of quietism; one student last time told me that meditation and yoga was a way of keeping people quiet, whereas Dalit folk theology was full of dancing and singing.

It's interesting how many times one or another form of that argument has come up these past days, regarding also folks in the West who need to isolate meditation and contemplative prayer from any kind of ritual, dance or music. It is an absolutely false dilemna as far as I am concerned. There are degrees, obviously, but I was reminded of the retreat I did with Ishpriya some summers ago at San Damiano in Danville. It was a silent mediation retreat and the staff there had brought us in to do it together, me doing music and liturgy, she giving the conferences. Ishpriya herself was a little suspicious at first, but we found after the first sessions that we were absolutely complementary and were anxious to work together again. But the staff got complaints about having music during a "silent retreat." We were both baffled. This is the other side of argument at TTS, that you shouldn't waste time in silence when there is so much work to be done. I always want to say, "Then you shouldn't waste time sleeping or eating either. Or maybe you should just try exhaling for a while instead of breathing in, and see how long you last."

Anyway, there were a lot of good questions and I only fielded on very well worded challenge to my remarks, in three parts: We shouldn't set up a dualism of body and soul, which I agreed and clarified that I was actually combatting dualism by trying to understand the human person as an organic complex whole; that we shouldn't fall into quietism, to which I again agreed and said that that was why I emphasised the stream of living water flowing back out of the believer's heart; and that we shouldn't set up a hierarchy of superior people who sit up on mountain tops in meditation, to which I simply agreed. Many of the other questions were about inter-religious dialogue. To do this kind of thing in India is very humbling because they are living cheek to jowl in a much more intensely diverse environment than I. A number of students brought up the idea of identity with God, the "aham brahm'asmi-I am brahman," and I got to launch into my telso-scopos-praxis argument.

A number of them, including one man from Malaysia, brought up how to deal with political and social tensions in regards to religious differences, and I had to admit that my responses were going to be very much abstract, that they themselves knew more about this than I. You may recall that there has been an ongoing controversy in Malayasia as to whethert or not Christians could use the word Allah for God, which is not a problem for English speakers but is for native Bahasa Malaysia speakers for whom there is no other word. It was finally resolved in the courts that, yes, Christians could legally use the name Allah in print and in speech, which led to some Islamists (as opposed to Muslims, so I am told) burning down four churches. That apparently led to a retaliaitory burning of some mosques as well. This is not abstract stuff for folks in this region, especially in India where there are still people alive who remember the bloody aftermath of the partition of India. One of the students asked me directly how they should deal with the caste system which is still operative even within Christianity. Again, I told them that I didn't haev any good answers for that because there was little way I could understand this type of societal arrangement, though we did speak a little about eocnomic divide in America, racial issues and immigration. I have to check my natural sunny American optimism at the door and get a good dose of pragmatic realism without losing hope in situations like that. In my mind I'm thinking, "It's not enough hear to all join hands and sing 'Kumbaya' around the campfire here." From what Agnete tells me it is more heightened in the Mideast, where we hope to be going together in the Fall with Imam Naveed.

That evening I did a concert in the same auditorium. It was one of the harder concerts I have done. It was hot and crowded, and the crowd was hesitant at first and then a little restless. Especially young Indians are used to very loud, rhythmic music, with electronica and/or a full band, more than to a gentle evening of Indian classical music with tabla and flute or sitar. They seemed much more pleased with singing along than in listening to long meditative pieces, so I was discarding pieces and adjusting along the way. There were some folks from other traditions there as well, Hindus and Muslims, I was told, invited as guests. "Bismillah" was again a big hit, and I pulled out the "Jaya Nam" bhajan that saved me in front of the 3000 school children in Tiru in 2007. It was great to have Theophy with me, and his Dad and Mom sat proudly in the front row. As I introduced Kabir's song "The Drink Sent Down," I just briefly mentioned the situation in Malaysia, where I had first run into trouble myself singing that particular song. At that point Rev Dr Gnanavaram himself stood up and launched into quite a lengthy explanation in Tamil, which he thought was his duty as Principal of the school. I found out later he mainly wanted to address some evangelicals who he were also in the crowd and might not understand why a Christian would sing to Allah at all. The only words I understood were "Muslim extremists" and "Christian extremists." I was saoked with sweat and exhausted after the concert in a way that I rarely am. I didn't think it had gone very well, but there were many positive remarks and Elle, who had been at the concert in Tiru, told me that she liked this one better. "It was more intense," she said.

The next day, Agnete and Elle were scheduled to do a session of biblical drama with the final year students but they decided that there were too many of them (35) to do it at once. So they had asked me to take half the class and then switch, an hour and a half a piece. So I decided to do a group lectio divina with my half, which seemed a good counterpart to biblical drama. The Jesuit style meditation is discursive and expansive, the monastic is more focused and heads soon to the place beyond words. I sort of stumbled on a way of doing group lectio a few years back that has worked for me in many situations, and with texts other than Judeo-Christian ones as well. I introduce the four stages: lectio-reading, meditatio-meditation (I use this as an opportunity to talk about discursive as opposed to one-pointed meditation), oratio-prayer, and contemplatio (which I use as an opportunity to talk about the Christian understanding of samadhi, infused contemplation and grace). Those four stages then apply to four levels of meaning of Scripture (if there are any lectio purists out there reading, this is my simplified version of the four): historical, moral, symbolic and the mystery beyond words that the reading is pointing to. And then I apply those to four levels of consciousness: ordinary, moral conscience (Freudian, but I didn't say that here), symbolic dream consciousness (Jungian, but again I didn't say that here), and then again the mysterious depth of our own consciousness beyond names and forms--the Word into Silence.

I thought the sessions went very well. The students were politely attentive at first, taking notes studiously. But they perked up a little more when I talked about the levels of meaning of Scripture, and they really seemed fascinated when I applied that to levels of consciousness. I said out loud that I thought people in India were naturally more open to the symbolic level of consciousness and the dream world, so they should really pay attention to it. JP was with me translating line for line, and I thought he was really enjoying it too. (He later asked me to write out my notes and give him a copy.) Then we did the four different reading of the Scripture texts, choosing one word, then one phrase and then opening up for discussion. They spoke in Tamil with JP leading the discussion and one of the students whispering translation in my ear along the way. At the end I asked them to create the shortest prayer possible to use as a prayer word (I was assiduously avoiding using the word "mantra" for the reaons above stated), and led them into a brief period of meditation. At the end I asked one of them to lead the others in singing a Tamil song. That was the highlight of my time there at TTS, after which we piled into our cars and headed back to Tiru.

What is so interesting, as it was at Gurukul, was to be in a non-Catholic (and non-Hindu) Christian environment in India. Neither of the things that I stand pretty firmly on, my own Asian expression of my Catholic Christianity, necessarily work there. So I need to re-find the universality and then re-state it in a language that is not bogged down and loaded with brahminical Sanskrit India or priestly Latin Rome. What really stays with me is their beautiful, receptive sincere faces, and the millions of individual paths to the Divine, "each in his own language, each in her own tongue."

inward release

monday, 25 january, 2010, feast of the conversion of st paul

"what name, cast, how old?
from questions such as these when one is free,
one gains release."

This place, like India in general, is a place of such contrasts. I was lounging on the veranda in front of the main meditation hall last evening watching the goings and comings. In one glance there were some Western tourists taking pictures of the monkeys, inadvertently encouraging them to act out. In the next glance there came Swami Brahmananda, the small sannyasi who is the caretaker of Skanda Ashram, nine hours a day, seven days a week, always wrapped in brownish dhoti and shawl, rarely speaking, with the gaze always down. On the one hand there were bus loads of Indian school children looking as if they had been forced into a cultural excursion, all dressed up looking sharp in their uniforms, holding hands and giggling; then there are the questionable sadhus gathered on the street and at the entrance to the ashram, with matted hair, dirty robes, sometimes smoking, sometimes begging. There was a young Japanese man dressed in the wildest tie-dyed yoga pants with a muscle shirt and his hair tied up like a samurai with his European girlfriend on his arm; then there is Madhu still here after ten years spending eight hours a day in meditation in the small hall. There is Ayyappa, who runs the tea stall just down the road where I have tea every morning at 5 AM, who has been pretty friendly, though now it appears that that friendliness was leading to me buying him a referigerator so expand his business; and then there is Ajit who lives in a cave on the mountain, wandering through the compound as he does twice a day to bathe and get his free meal at another local ashram who, when I offered to buy him a tea, wasn't sure he really wanted one.

"Come, go, go, enter, what seekest?
From questions such when one is free,
one gains release."

The days haven't been completely devoid of some interaction. Saturday I got to spend the morning nestled in the mountain, but then MC took me to lunch at the compound of an Englishwoman he knows who has lived here for many years. Her father was an Oxford don, contemporary of Fr Bede, who with his wife moved the family here to Tiruvanamalai in the '40s, "before it was popular to do so," she told us. She and her two siblings grew up speaking Tamil. Her folks were great devotees of Ramana Maharishi, as a matter of fact there are photos of both she and her brother with the Ramana. When I asked what her lasting impressions of him were she told me simply that he was like a grandfather. "There was so much formality around, of course, but children know nothing of these things." Her father went on to write several books on India that were very popular in their day, one of which really spread the fame of Ramana Maharshi, as well as founding the magazine called "The Mountain Path," a periodical with articles about Bhagavan, the ashram and Tiruvanamalai. She lives in the house that the parents built which feels sort of like a trip back to colonial times itself. A younger very erudite gentleman from Australia was also with us. He has been here 30 years, and now lives with her serving both as the manager of her property and the current editor of "The Mountain Path." We had a wonderful wide ranging conversation, though our hostess admitted many of her opinions are dated, having spent so much time out of the mainstream of Western culture. At one point the issue came up whether or not the Roman Catholic church was a force for good. The BBC, per a recent documentary, and our hostess have deemed it not. The other three of us tried to bring some perspective to this assessment with a combination of logic and personal witness.

"Departest when, when arrived, whence and even who?
From questions such when one is free
one gains release."

Then Sunday we had Eucharist again at Quo Vadis, this time in the litte red hut again. They are very happy to have us use the space for that and quite a crowd always seems to gather, 'til this time again we were packed to the gills. There was as usual a good Danish contingent, plus our Brazilian friend Marcus and German Heike, and then a large group from France and Belgium, who had already been to Shantivanam. The problem was, as you may have guessed already, not too many English speakers. Luckily there were MC and Fr Augustine who is still here, but other than that not a lot of "And also with you"s coming back at me. We mixed up the languages a bit, singing a French Taize piece at the beginning, having the readings in both languages, and I even tried to sing or recite some of the prayers in French. Then of course some Latin and Sanskirt thrown in: it was quite Pentecostal. We shall do it one more time next week Sunday before I leave for Bangalore. Then last night MC and I went for the Christian meditation at Quo Vadis, mainly to show some support to their work there. It's a wonderful environment they set in the red hut, with dozens of oil lamps placed in all the nooks and crannies of the walls. Again there was quite an international group and we were very crowded. Afterward young Peter, who I have known for some years now, whisked me off to his humble home where he lives with his mother to meet his wife and their nine-month-old baby girl, Paula. He's a big fan; he has all my songs on his mobile phone. They treated me with such honor and respect, like a combination of a bishop and a rock star, and fed me (only me) delicious dosas with sambhar and omelettes, and some tea and a piece of chocolate. Peter asked me to sing something before we left and then had everyone kneel and asked me to pray over them.

"I or thou, this or that, inside or out, or none at all,
from cogitation such, when one is free
one gains release."

Then in the afternoon I headed out on the inner pradakshina path (the pilgrimage path that leads around the mountain; this is the dirt path as opposed to the outer pradakshina, which is the road.) It was like being in the desert and I hardly saw another soul on it for the hours I was out there. After forty mintues or so of walking I found a nice rock to sit on and spent some good time there in the quietest place I have found here in Tiruvanamalai, more shielded from the road noise even than most spots on the mountain itself. The young very pretty Indian woman who was sitting next to me at lunch had struck up a bit of a conversation with me, mainly inaugurated by her asking me if I was a resident and did I know anything about Parvathamalai, a nearby hill that is also "said to have very good vibrations." I was telling her about the inner pradakshina path instead that I hoped to hike. This also somehow led to a discussion about food and when I said I preferred south Indian food because it is more fiery, she said, "That is because you mix your pickle with your sambar!" And then she explained to me how the pickle should have been eaten mixed in with the curd rice which is very bland, to give it some taste. It's odd: I had the feeling that I was being watched I ate. Anyway, when I got back from my hike I ran into her and her family again outside the eating hall, and we exchanged questions about our various quests--Parvathamalai and inner pradakshina--when suddenly her mother said, "Ask the gentleman!" So the young woman then asked if I wanted to join them to climb the hill tomorrow. I was non-commital, but I sat and had tea with them, which only seemed polite, and they started asking me lots of questions about why I was in India, and where had I been and where was I going and what I do, etc. I got out "performing music and offering conferences" as the answer to what I do, but they focused mainly on the singing part and missed the offering conferences part, so we never quite got to "monk." I certainly don't mind being known as a monk (folks don't assume here in the ashram that khavi clothes are a sign of being a monk), but after those beautiful hours in the silence of the forest path I was groaning at the thought of the whole conversation that would ensue from that.

"To the known and unknown equalized, differenceless,
to one's own or that of others, even to the name of such indifferent.
From all considerations such, one freed,
becomes that one, the one released."
(five verses on Inward Release--"nirvrti panckam"--by Narayana Guru, translated by Nataraja Guru, given to me by Vinaya)

I find it interesting and often very moving to be part of explicitly Christian activities here in this overwhelmingly Hindu environment and with the ashram right across the street, and I wonder sometimes what form my own explcitly Christian activities would be if I lived here, as opposed to, say, Shantivanam. I have met so many Indians whose lasting impressions of Indian Christianity is that it is shallow and dogmatic, and whose impression of Westerners is that we skim across the surface of the vast venerable Asian traditions, picking up a little lingo and a costume, and then spending most of our time sipping chai in the internet cafe and skipping from one pilgrimage spot to another, perfect candidates to be sucked in by any guru or hawker or fakir. I always feel challenged and goaded by all that: outside of the tourists--even, especially, the "spiritual tourists"!--there are some very serious seekers here at Ramana Ashram, the brahmin boys up memorizing the scriptures at 5 o'clock in the morning, the pious lay people who gather for puja and chanting daily around the mahasamadhi or walk barefoot up the mountain, and especially some of these sadhus and sannyasis, who seem to have caught a glimpse of that Something beyond all of that too and at least seem to be singly devoted to that Beyond, and want nothing to do with most mundane interactions or trivialities, especially those of spiritual tourism. It's not a question of imitating someone else's practices or costumes--if there is something we can gain from another spiritual practice or scripture, well and good; it's a question of being inspired by them, being as dedicated to my spiritual path as I see someone else is, being as dedicated to what I do as they are about what they do.

my true self

23 january, 2010

(reading Merton with Abhishiktananda on Arunachala)

I am hollow,
and when all the things with which I clothe myself are gone
there will be nothing left of me but my hollowness, my nakedness, my emptiness.

Stay there on that cross
to be filled with the very fullness of God.
Put your mind in hell and do not despair, says Staretz Silouan.

To discover myself in discovering God...
If I find myself--if I find my true self, hidden in God--I find God.
Within me is an apex of existence at which I am being held in being by the Creator.
God utters me like a word, like a partial thought.

Can you enter into yourself and find the God who utters you?
Can you rest on the ground of your being,
stay still on the ground of your consciousness
until the Divine sings your name across the span of the sky?
Can your ears hear the sound of the OM that resonates in the mountain of your being?

If I am true to that utterance,
I shall be full of divine actuality
and find God everywhere in myself
and find myself nowhere.
I shall be lost in God: I shall find myself.

"I had lost my God,
and in my search for him
it is I myself I have recovered,
but a myself, what a myself!
I have disappeared from my sight into my own radiance." (Abhishiktananda)

This true inner self must be raised like a jewel from the bottom of the sea,
rescued from confusion and indistinction,
rescued from immersion in the common, the trivial, the sordid.
We must salvage ourselves from the abyss of confusion, absurdity and triviality which is our false outer self.
The creative must be saved from the hedonistic addictive grasping craving ego-driven self.

"When I look down to the bottom of the abyss,
in the guha, that cave of my heart,
it is my very own image that is reflected back to me--
that is why I say say ABBA--
but an image that is so beautiful--
so beautiful!--
completely radiant with glory,
a glory that has no beginning or end,
beyond all birth and equally beyond all death." (Abhishiktananda)

Can you enter into yourself and find the God who utters you?
Can you rest on the ground of your being,
stay still on the ground of your consciousness
until the Divine sings your name across the span of the sky?
Can your ears hear the sound of the OM that resonates in the mountain of your being?

But it is more than an emptying and withdrawing to the center of myself that is called for.
From resting on the ground of God
I must call for mercy and wait on the descent of grace.
I must have God--Word and Spirit--dwelling in me in a new way
so that God begins to live in me not only as my Creator,
not only as the Spirit breathed into the mud of my being,
but as my own true self
until it is no longer I who lives but Christ, the great Person, who lives in me.

"And it is to this Great Person who is myself--so'ham asmi--
sun colored beyond the darkness,
that I reach out fervently, irresistibly,
with a view to our coming together, our advaita.
This call of myself to myself,
of myself as human to myself as God." (Abhishiktananda)

My true self is this self
that receives freely, gladly,
in silence and peace,
naked, poor and empty.

Entertain silence in your heart
and listen for the voice of God uttering you.
It is good to wait in silence
for the coming of the Lord.

Can you enter into yourself and find the God who utters you?
Can you rest on the ground of your being,
stay still on the ground of your consciousness
until the Divine sings your name across the span of the sky?
Can your ears hear the sound of the OM that resonat

eschatological signs

"Exceptional people abandon all
to follow the truth they have seen
that is now for them the one thing that matters."
(Sri Aurobindo)

Friday morning, 22 january, 2010

I don't know why I never noticed before that there were so many Muslims here in Tiruvanamalai, but this time I've seen so many guys walking around wearing kufis on their heads (not sure if they are called that here in India...). Our driver to Chennai proudly told us his name was Basha, "a good Muslim name!" It's Friday morning here and above the normal din of temples playing their music over loudspeakers and the traffic rumbling by on the main street, this morning there is also the sound of the muezzins calling people to worship on this the day when all are called to the mosque. Basha told me that there are ten "masjids" here in Tiruvanamalai.

Speaking of Islam, I think that the two Islamic songs got the best reception at the concert last night, my regular outdoor concert at the Arunai Ananda Hotel sponsored by JP and Quo Vadis. "Bismillah" was, as usual, a big hit with the folks. But also I've found a way to deliver "The Drink Sent Down" solo in a way that it really works too. I do them in that order. (If anyone cares, I've thrown the capo on the second fret for both of those songs, so they are actually now in C#m where my voice is a little stronger.) I'm very pleased with the set of music I've put together for the concerts ahead (MC echoed that too, that this is a very strong concert). The first time I did the concert here in Tiru was the time the high E string on my guitar broke something like four times before the peformance and I was tying the last broken string back on to the end pin minutes before the concert with the help of a pair of finger nail clippers. It amazingly lasted throughout that concert and for a week more. This time I was prepared for the worst but all went smoothly. I've brought the old Taylor along for this trip in the soft gig bag wrapped in my orange shawl for extra protection (Leonard will not be pleased; it got damaged by Singapore Airlines in 2008 and he ordered me never to travel with a soft case again, but I really wanted to bring this guitar and not carry a big case, so... so far so good.) Heng Sure loved it when I said this before: this guitar really loves India. It just sings. Even last night with not such a good sound system or microphones, the guitar sounded great, the bass notes really deep and the high strings not too thin. A good number of people came but oddly enough a whole bunch of them left toward the end all at about the same time, mostly sitting to my left. Perhaps they were all from the same group and had another event to attend, I don't know. But I was in the middle of "Vedahametam," had just exectued that long solo section rather well, I must say, and was heading into the "Tvameva Mata" verse when someone else stood up and left--right in the middle of the song, right in front of me! I allowed myself to lose my concentration and I dropped the third line of this song that I have sung now hundreds of times. I've been a lot more circumspect about my Sanskrit pronunciation since Bettina and Fr George and Vinaya at Shantivanam, (and with the head priest of the temple sitting in the audience), but that song I'm pretty much down on, so that was embarrassing. But that was the worst thing I did all night and all in all it was a very nice evening.

The trip to Chennai for Theophy's wedding was interesting. I do try to stay close to the ground when I am in India and avoid some of the comforts that we Westerners can afford, but it's not always easy when my hosts want to afford me luxuries that they think I might be used to or need. Originally I was going to take a bus into Chennai for the wedding on my own. But then it seemed as if a whole group of us was going to go from Quo Vadis, stay the night and pick up Agnete at the airport arriving from Myanmar on the way. But then it turned out (this is how things go in India) that only I was going to the wedding but a young woman named Pivey from Finland who is working with JP wanted to go to Chennai to buy a new camera, so JP had hired a car for us for the day, with our own driver. (That was Basha, mentioned above, a very nice attentive man, a friend of JP.) That felt a little extravagant, but I just rolled along with it and was grateful for the comfort and speed. But then when we got to Chennai, Basha dropped us off for lunch at a restaurant that someone had recommended to Pivey, specifically telling her that I would like it. I don't know why she thought that; I was actually horrifed by the place. It was like a five star hotel with all Western food, table cloths and cloth napkins, and it costs about five times more than I normally pay for any meal in India.

It's interesting to watch my own reactions to these kinds of things. I have to let go of the image of myself that I want to project and protect, and I so don't want to be "seen" as just another tourist skimming over the surface of India but really surrounding myself with a cloud of comfort out of which I can watch everything as if I were driving through a wildlife preserve in an air conditioned bus. And I don't want to "be" that either, but I think I am as much bothered by the perception as by the reality. Staying here at Ramana Ashram, simple but comfortable, we are surrounded by sadhus who really live by grace and begging, men (it is rare to non-existent to find a female wanderer here) who live with absolutely no possessions outside of what they can carry in a little bag, some who consciously get rid of their money as soon as they get it, and want to live naked and poor. I know that not everyone is called to that--even Jesus didn't ask that of all his followers, only of his close disciples going on mission--but I understand more and more what a sign that is, what we refer to in Roman Catholicism as an "eschatological sign," a sign of the end of things and the fullness of things. That's what the renunciate is doing--pointing to the end of things when there will be no possessions, no partnering, no homes, when we need to cast off, let go of everything--even "attachments to dear ones and aversions to others" as my favorite Tibetan metta prayer goes--in order to be able to squeeze through the narrow gate of eternity which is the source and summit of our life.

It's interesting to read Aurobindo on this subject. I have found a number of times passages in which he gently critiques what he calls the "exaggeration of the impulse at renunciation" which he says caused the whole system of the four "ashrams"--stages of life to collapse. He says we always tend toward that in spiritual traditions: "If we regard escape from life as our desirable end, ... if life has not a divine significance to it, the impatient human intellect and will must end by driving at a short cut and getting rid as much as possible of any more tedious and dilatory processes." The problem though it that life can then get falsely "split into the spiritual and the mundane and there can only be an abrupt transition, not a harmony or reconciliation" of the diverse parts of our nature. And of course what he is always aiming at is integral Yoga, specifically this harmony and reconciliation of all of the aspects of our being, spirit, soul and body. Still in all, we cannot do without the eschatological sign toward which outward poverty points, "our ultimate aim and destiny," "our spiritual longing for the Beyond," "an ultimate release from an ignorant mundane existence."

I think often of my first yoga teacher's admonition to us in asana: "find that edge between your minimum and your maximum." When I go to a Yoga class I often realize that my asana practice has gotten a little lazy, that I haven't pushed that maximum very much, and others around me inspire and challenge me. India too inspires and challenges that maximum in me in so many ways, to give a little more to the spiritual life, to my meditation, to the simplicity of my life, to my devotional practices.

It's this mountain, too, Arunachala. It roots out the ego of those who meditate on it in their hearts.

(afternoon) A few of us who still remained had a simple Eucharist in the flat of a German woman named Heike who lives near Quo Vadis with Marcus, a new friend from Brazil, and two other women from I'm-not-sure-where, with Fr. Augustine from Shantivanam presiding, who is here visiting and staying with this same Heike. But now the last of the other participants of the centenary are gone. I saw Vinaya off just before lunch with a few last words of wisdom about Samkhya philosophy, sannyasa and the Bhagavad Gita, and a hearty hug and kiss; Joseph seems to have been swallowed back up by the road. Even JP and Agnete are going to be gone for the weekend, off with their staff to give a retreat in the mountains. (They would have liked me to go with them but also offered that I could stay here until they return and we all go to Madurai next week for three days. They didn't seem too disappointed that I chose that instead.) I've gotten to that point already here at Ramana Ashram that I get to every time I'm here, when I start longing for the quiet and simplicity of my own rhythm and routine, not even wanting to go to the eating hall or the public spaces but staying here in the back where things are much quieter and it feels almost like a monastery, and I can slip in and out of the back gate to climb the mountain path. MC has arranged for us to celebrate Eucharist at Quo Vadis on Sunday morning again but other than that I now have three days with not much to do but stare at Arunachala outside of my window, hide in its crags with the coneys, and let everything that has gone in these past three intense weeks settle in.