2 January 25 (Got the year right on the first try!) Sadhana Mandir, Rishikesh
I can’t believe it’s been a month since I posted. Ah well.
I’ve just finished a five day yoga retreat here, and have the better part of a day to my own devices before I fly out to Rome via Delhi tonight. I am gonna try to summarize and catch up.
After a nice long rest in Singapore at my new favorite (inexpensive) hotel in Singapore, I flew to Cochi, Kerala, India on December 8. Fr Dorathick and Shantivanam and I have both been a part of a project for our German sociologist friend Petra Ahrweiler for the past five years or so (pre-Covid) called AI Fora. It was (if I can summarize) launching conversations between people who work in AI doing up with algorithms for social services with the people who get left out of those algorithms, and using monasteries as “safe spaces” to hold those discussions. The experiments were done in China, India, Nigeria, the US, Germany and Spain. Because of all kinds of mitigating factors, we at the Hermitage never did have to actually host an event, but Petra liked Dorathick and me to stay on as advisors, especially since she is strongly influenced by Bede Griffiths. The other international meeting I attended was in 2021, in Germany and Italy, with the other monks and nuns involved. This time we were the only two monks. This was the first time I met most of the social scientists involved in the project. What a group, from the US (a prof at ASU, Tempe, AZ!), Spain, Iran, Nigeria, India (of course, who hosted), Germany, sociologists, researchers, statisticians, Computer Science professors, anthropologists. I was pretty much lost on the first day as they all gave the results of their research. It wasn’t until the second day that something clicked. That was actually the day that Dorathick and I were supposed to present from our perspective. I gave them my spiel about the evolution of consciousness and what I am now referring to as “deep practice” in environments where the words prayer and meditation may fall on rocky soil. It sparked a really fine discussion. And then that evening I gave a musical performance, which was also very well received. We were staying at a beautiful resort on a lake in Kerala, spoiled rotten with the food and comfort for three days. I got a little sick overnight the last day, low grade temperature and some stomach stuff, which lingered for a few days, but nothing serious. I always seem to go through a bout of something like that here.
The best part of the stay was meeting this professor of Computer Science from Iran. We rode on the transport bus together and got to talking an about music, etc. He is officially a Muslim but really, he said, his religion is Rumi’s religion of love. He was reciting long poems for me in Persian from memory and then translating them, sometimes singing them, with his hands gesticulating in the air. Much to the amusement of the other participant passengers. We’ve stayed in touch and have been exchanging music and poems––his far more interesting than mine, as far as I am concerned.
Dorathick had driven himself and Petra from Shantivanam, about an 8 hour drive, over the Kumily Pass, which I had done 24 years ago on my first trip to India by bus with George Nellyanil and Roman, our Polish monk from Garda, by bus. It’s a beautiful drive through tea plantations, up to a high elevation and back down into Tamil Nadu. Well, Dorathick did not want to are the Kumily Pass because it had been raining heavily and he was afraid of rock slide which would have stranded us. So we took a road (trusting his GPS) that was lower in elevation but a little longer since it took us north and then dropped us back south. It didn’t work out that way. We didn’t take the Kumily Pass, but GPS still took us through the mountains at a little over elevation, through countless villages and up and down countless hills, narrow roads. We stopped about eight hours in for tea and a snack, but we didn’t get home until 3 AM. He did let me drive for a while, which I had never done on the left side of the road and the right side of the car. I did fine. I got use to the gears easily, the pedals are in the same position, it’s just that you shift with the left hand. Luckily is was very little driving in populated areas where we were at the time. He got nervous because he thought I was hugging the left side of the road too tightly––and maybe I did once in a while––but I thought I did great. And his driving makes me very nervous! So…
The time at Shantivanam went very quickly. I was asked to give the community a day of recollection, and to do some music, and also preach twice. There was also an old friend there who I have known for about 20 years, a former monk of St Andrew’s Abbey in Valyermo, though I knew him even before then and we had always had a great connection. He is now on a unique journey, working toward getting certified as a psychologist in Minnesota (he had been a school psychologist before religious life), but hoping to live a semi-eremitical life. He has now returned to his old love for India and the Vedanta. Very intelligent guy and well-schooled in both Indian and Roman theology. That led to amazing conversations, that neither one of us can often have with anybody. So that took up the first days. I also got inspired to work on a little writing project that I have been picking away at for this whole year and spent hours at the computer with that. Something about India always inspires me to write. (And, no, I will not say what it is… yet.) And having he privacy of a cell there at Shantivanam always makes me sink in really fast. I of course participated in all the community prayers, and especially the two hour-long meditations, one at 5:30 AM and the other at 6:00 PM. I had had a powerful experience with those earlier in February which kind of set me a a path for the year that stuck so I was happy to return to the place where it happened. Then came Christmas with all its crowds and festivities. Our old friend Michael Christian came down from Tiruvanamalai and we spent long hours together talking, since he could only be there one day. Along with him came Sherly, a former Camaldolese nun who I knew from when she was in Italy. She has been on her own now for quite a few years living in New Zealand, but she has been staying in Tiruvanamalai for a few months. She was hesitating about coming to Shantivanam until she found out I was going to be there, so we had a great reunion, again a few hours in conversation, comparing notes, joys and disappointments. I am very glad to be re-connected (and I have to connect her with our oblates in NZ, remind me).
And then I came up here. I had made a week retreat here in March, which again was a very good experience. It’s a small, clean, safe ashram right on the banks of the Ganges (right out my window). I had done a bit of their regular program when I was here last time (by requirement if it is your first time), but this time I wanted to make a private retreat, though I wanted to meet again with the Swami here, a woman sannyasi from Holland named Ma Tripura with whom I had had a good conversation last time. When I wrote ahead to see if there was a room available I also asked if she was available, and I was told that she was giving a Hatha yoga retreat the exact days that I wanted to come. I took that as a sign and signed up for the retreat too. I had no idea who demanding it was going to be, but I do not regret it. We met up to eight hours a day. There were twelve of us, half Indian and half Westerners. It was very much concentrated not on vinyasa, but on spinal alignment, all the things you can do to make sure your asanas are done safely aid in your seated posture. She kept saying that this tradition (the Himalayan Masters) was a meditative tradition, and they really do think of yoga as a science, available to all. For my taste there was a little too much talking and focus on the body and not enough time in silence together but it may be what she sensed the crowed needed. The meditations were all guided, which I must admit was getting on my nerves. So part of my meditation was watching myself get annoyed, asking myself why, and trying to center in the midst of her speaking! Of course we could spend time on our own meditating too.
I had two other encounters here (in case I need to justify this stop for DIMMID––our write it off for taxes) besides another good long visit with Ma, who I would like to recruit as an interlocutor for us. One was through Meath in Australia who virtually introduced me to Siddhartha Radakrishna. He is the son of a very highly regarded and well known (in these parts) man named Surya Prakash, who was a Gandhian scholar and is referred to as Shri Prabhuji. Prabhuji married a Swiss woman, and they settled here. (His story goes on and on, and if I recount it here I will never stop.) She is an expert in Iyengar yoga. They established a family home on the West Bank of the Ganges right near the outskirts of town at the time, which eventually became a large yoga center. And now the whole town has grown around it. (Side note: Rishikesh is almost unrecognizable to me from the times I spent here. Very disappointing.) Meath just thought we should meet. Siddhartha kindly drove across town a picked me at the ashram and then drove me back to their place––a 45-minute drive to go 6 kilometers through the crowded holiday traffic. Prabhuji left his body just last year. Siddhartha told me that in his whole life (he is in his mid-40s) he had only spent 14 days away from his father. His father raised him to be a pandit. He trained at the famous Kailash Ashram somewhat north of here and he has become an expert on the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga Sutras. He also seems to know a lot about Buddhism and Christianity. Needless to say, we had a marvelous long conversation over a very simple lunch with his mother. We parted both very grateful for the encounter and I do expect that we will meet again and again.
And then just yesterday I had a long visit with Swami Atmananda and his monks. He is another remarkable man that is hard to describe. Though he originally made vows as an eastern Christian monk, he came to India in the late 1980s in search of his true guru. He has been here ever since. He is very dedicated to Abhishiktananda, and as a matter of fact served as the head of the Abhishiktananda Society until its dissolution, and is still in charge of Swamiji’s literary legacy. We had first met in 2007, and have corresponded a little (and been on a few online events) so we were both pretty happy about a chance to get together again. He has for some years now been running a sarva dharma ashram––“all dharmas” and has hosted many interfaith gatherings especially with Theravadan monks. He has a good group of monks living with him, a dozen or so, some training under him, mostly Indians, and has expanded the facility from a simple building to a four story complex with a gathering place for lectures, a beautiful meditation hall and a new enclosure. That part of town, Tapovan (which means the “forest (vanam) of austerities (tapas)” used to be hills populated with monks engaging in serious spiritual practice. It is now shockingly packed with hotels and resorts, claiming to be the “yoga capital of the world.” But their compound is a breath of fresh air, quiet and orderly. They walked down in a group to meet me where the taxi had left me off, and then when I walked in the compound I was greeted with such ceremony––a grand, a tilak, an arathi, young monks touching my feet, all quite jarring for me. I had met one of the members last time and he remembered me well, and was acting as a sort of dharma protector, making sure I didn’t fall going up the narrow steps to the roof, etc. Very touching. And of course Swamiji and I had a long conversation. How many times am I going to write “long conversation” in the next years? But that is my mandate: engaging in and promoting dialogue. And Swamiji is a wealth of information, certainly about the Indian tradition and Abhishiktananda. He has a great respect for the work of DIMMID (hence the ceremonial welcome) and I expect that we will be able to collaborate in the future.
I love the Italian word spiegare. It means “to explain” but its root is piegare, “to fold,” so to spiegare is to “unfold.” You spiegare a sail on a sailboat, for instance. And I keep saying that this new mission is spiegando, unfolding in front of me, revealing how it’s going to be and what I should do. I am consoled that I can count on a lot of old acquaintances as contacts and connections.
One interesting note: both Siddhartha, regarding his father, and Atmananda, regarding his swami, mentioned that they had read and cherished Thomas à Kempis’ Imitation of Christ. I read it too, years ago, but I must revisit it. It’s one of those works that Bede declared are “no longer useful” because of being tinged with so much dualism and the dark side of asceticism, if I recall correctly. What is there that is so attractive to these Indian holy men?
That’s all I am going to write about all that. I fly to Rome via Delhi this evening\tomorrow morning. It doesn’t feel hugely momentous, but a little poignant that the sabbatical year is officially over now and my new life based in Rome officially begins. I am looking forward to being back with the brothers at San Gregorio, I am really looking forward to being in my own room again (how quickly it has seared in my mind as “my cell!), and I am very excited about all the work ahead of me. There is a ton a things, to so at my desk in the near future and a load of official encounters as well, but it’s all good. I am so grateful.
So, two things I have noticed, and this too is where I feel as if there is a contribution to the greater discussion I can offer. People’s vocabulary around religion is not very good, to say it simply. For one thing, it is interesting to note how often I heard folks on this retreat subtly or not so subtly put down another tradition, a Theravadan practitioner putting down the Mahayana tradition, a Hindu putting down Muslims, and an Indian telling me he was going to write a book to explain the spiritual significance of the Bible to Christians (as if…?). That is assuming I am right and you are wrong. That obviously is not dialogue. I always assume first that the other person’s is a valid approach, and also assume that I don’t know someone else’s tradition well enough to speak about it, so I have something to learn.
And secondly, it is notable (is it particularly in India?) how often people just assume that everyone accepts their broad beliefs and speaks about them as if they are established facts for everyone and to everyone––reincarnation, the world is an illusion, you are not your body, for example. If there is a space for a response, I find a way to say, “That is not how my tradition articulates that” or “That’s not my language for this” or “Not every tradition believes that, of course.” I suppose what I am realizing is that even people who think they are on an enlightened spiritual path still need to learn the language of dialogue, and even more, the humility of it. I have used my time tested telos and scopos explanation several time this last week, i.e., we do not articulate the ultimate end in the same way in our various traditions––reincarnation, the primacy of Jesus, etc.; but we seem to agree on the proximate goal––to go beyond the phenomenal self to whatever-that-is. And because we agree on that, we can also share praxis, the practices that lead to that goal. That’s our “common word.” A lot of education needed there, and I’m just the man to do it.
Horrifying to here about the violence of the New Year’s holiday in America, added to the ongoing atrocities in Ukraine and, especially, in the Gaza Strip. The world needs us to be… what? Whatever that is, let’s be it! I will if you will. As a matter of fact, I will even if you won’t, but I bet you will too.
More later from Rome. May all beings be well.
