the divine presence

16 feb, last day in India

There comes a moment when life becomes intolerable without the Divine Presence.
Give yourself, therefore, entirely to the Divine and you will rise up into the Light.
(the Mother)

As it turned out, when Prakash got home from his Valentine's Day trip he had to go on duty right away, which means we couldn't hang out today; and so I have had two almost full days to myself here at Sri Aurobindo Ashram. The silence of the place and the solitude it has afforded me have been luscious. There is a new meditation hall here now, with large images of Aurobindo and the Mother, who are of course revered as deities, a large wooden floor and even a mezzanine space. The latter is where I have been spending my time there, sitting near a window to do my readings. There are only a few other people who trickle in and out, spending some time before the images, especially in the early morning before 7 AM breakfast when I believe it is staff and workers who stop in and pay their respects. Though last night I wound up in the midst of a gathering. Besides the day school and health clinic that operate in association with the ashram, there is a boarding vocational school for young people from all over India who appear to be in the late teens and twenties. They are called "aspirants." They are on a very strict schedule which I'm told must absolutely be followed, and last night just before 7 slowly slowly they started coming into the large hall 'til there was nearly 100 of them seated on the floor in front of the images. Off to the left a stage had been set up with microphones, and an elderly woman, accompanied by a younger woman and a tabla player mounted the stage. She spoke and then read in Hindi. Later she explained in English that she was reading one of the Mother's prayers, and noted that they had been written in French, translated into English, and only then translated into Hindi. She then read the same prayer in English and spoke about it. And then slowly she worked up a beautiful kirtan, accompanying herself on the harmonium, then joined by the young woman and the tablist, and some voices from the crowd. It was a captivating melody. There seems to be a certain quality to North Indian kirtan singing that is different than the South. I like it very much.

The Mother is always referring to "the Divine" and "the Lord" in her writings and prayers, though every now and then she mentions Mahakali, the Great Mother. Last night I was reading a book that is in my room called "Growing Up With the Mother," which is a collection of the hundreds of notes and short letters that a young woman received from the Mother on a variety of issues. This woman would submit regular questions and/or her own notebook as part of a very long correspondence on topics ranging from sadhana and questions about Aurobindo's writing, to education and even personal hygiene. This young woman was also a teacher in the ashram school, and the answers that she received were also passed on to other teachers, with the Mother's blessing. I have heard more than one person comment that they find Aurobindo himself very difficult to read with his florid English style and flights of poetry. I have read a number of his short works, and have been picking away at Synthesis of Yoga for a few years, and have not paid much attention to the Mother. It was very clear to me reading last night, as I have found once or twice before when I've stumbled on something of her writing, that she does bring the great man's philosophy down to earth, make it accesible and very practical. It is she who was the mastermind behind the schools, the physical fitness programs, the vocational training, and Auroville in general. I liked that fact that she uses the word "contact" so often in relation to the divine, and one time she even used the phrase "conscious contact with the Divine," a phrase I use often too to explain the goal of meditation, though I borrowed it from the 12 Steps of AA. I heard this earlier somewhere on this trip in a slightly different form in regards Ramana Maharshi: "the inalienable bliss in which one dwells as soon as one is in conscious contact with the Divine." And again, "One moment of conscious communion with the Divine can shatter any resistance, however powerful it may be."

Back to the 'logue: I arrived a little later than I had hoped on the bus to Haridwar, so I hopped in a bicycle rickshaw and had the driver hurry me over to the train station. Gitanjali and Laura had also arrived a little late and were waiting patiently there. We called SN at Sri Ram to let him know we were that far, and he put Rashmi, the headmistress, on the phone to give us instructions one more time: we were to try for a prepaid taxi, but if they are not running, walk to Chandipul Bridge and try to get an autorickshaw from there, and if that didn't work, turn right at the bridge and walk for 9 kilometres. I was kind of psyched for the adventure, partly because it was a beautiful day and a walk after that bus ride would have felt good, and partly because we would walk right past the Kumbha Mela Camp. But as it turned out, my dreams of being Daniel Boone were soon dashed when the guy at the pre-paid taxi eagerly agreed to drive us out there for 300 rupees. That was too easy.

There were mobs of people for sure, Shiva Ratri and the opening of the Mela being the next day, and quite an fascinating array of both pilgrims and sadhus who seem to all be in competiton for the most colorful costume and water carrier for the former, and the most outrageous way of tying up their dreadlocks for the latter. With some cursing and swearing (at least that was what I assumed it was, in Hindi), our driver wend us through town and out to the ashram within a half an hour. A smaller group of Westerners are there this year, partly because for the first time Babaji did not come due to failing health and simple old age. We all fell right in with the kids, I of course knowing many of them already and happy to see that some of them remembered me, even by name, Laura and Gitanjali becoming an immediate hit with the girls. My main interest was to see Vijay and Krishna, the brothers I have kept contact with. To my dismay I was told Vijay was actually away at college in Chandipur, farther north, but as fortune would have it, he came home a few hours later for one of his frequent regular visits. I didn't recognize Krishna when I first saw him, quite a spurt of growth from 11 years old to 13, and he wasn't sure who I was either. But then I mentioned "birthday card" which I send every year and the photo I sent of he and I and Vijay, and his face lit up and he put his arms around me and stayed that way for a good long time. Another of the young guys that I had done some tutoring with before saw me and asked me to help him with his math. What I didn't know at first but found out soon on was that he has been dealt a pretty serious punishment for some very serious offense, and has been ostracized from the other children, living and working with the cooks, who have kindly taken him in. After I found that out, I made it a point to spend lots of time with him out behind the kitchen, even eating my meals with him sometimes. We did a lot more talking and laughing and taking pictures with my iPhone than any hard Math, but that was okay. He never did tell me what was wrong or admit to me that he was being punished, but he did draw me a picture and write me a letter before I left thanking me "for study and for coming."

They do great work there, I must say again. It is one thing to send money to a favorite charity; it is a whole other thing to set up something like this that actually forms and shapes children, and gives them skills and knowledge that can be used to make a life for themselves outside of the ashram. Whatever pain those kids may have in their memories, and undoutably they have it from the sometimes incredible hardships of their families of origin, they probably have a much better life present and future than they would have had with the families who were not able to care for them. But they are a family, this is their family, headed up by the amazing Rashmi. She has been there for 15 years now (with one year off for good behaviour), speaks very good Hindi and knows every in and out of these 40 or so childrens' lives. Her latest innovation with them these past few years has been Cross Fit training, something that came into her own life in a very powerful way a few years back that she has now passed on to the kids, and they have eaten it up, especially the older boys. She lists a program every day on a board and the kids put each other through the paces. For our friend Vijay it is as if he has found his niche in life. He's a monster--"a beast," Rashmi says--with his own program (no sooner had he recovered from his seven hour bus ride than he was at it doing the program of the day), but also has become quite a good coach for the others. The younger kids kind of idolize him, and he told me that he prefers to come home from school to Sri Ram as often as possible, especially, he told me, because he doesn't like the food there at college. And this also in spite of the fact that he fulfilled his dream of playing cricket by being the only freshman to get chosen to play on the varsity team there at school. But he's soured by the whole scene of it; he doesn't think the others on the team train hard enough and there is too much politics in the whole scene. It's a beautiful thing to watch, the whole of it, that a young guy would turn out so stellar in an environment like that, and want to come back and be with his sisters and brothers instead of being in the the big world outside with all that it has to offer.

There were two big activities for Shiva Ratri. The first is the bath in the Ganges, often accompanied by putting on new clothes. This was quite a big deal the first time I was here, and we had driven some distance in a bus to get to a spot along the bank. This time it was a little more low-keyed. We went to a spot that was just on the other side to the village of Shyampur, the young kids in a trolley pulled by a tractor and the rest of us walking the paths. I have a sweet memory of walking with Krishna at one side and a little Nepalese guy named Kesav sidling up to me and grabbing my hand on the other side. He was all of six or seven years old but clever and smart. His English, for instance, was very good, very clear already. When we got to the river, I followed the example of the older boys--Vijay, Uttam, Gautam, and Vijay Pal--and decided that the water was too cold and dirty (I actually didn't have shorts or anything into which to change, I had brought so little), but was a cheerful spectator as the others did their bath, or swam to the other shore, made their offering and, some anyway, changed into new clothes. Then at noon there was the puja. Two Brahmin priests from town came to lead it, but as I remember happening my first time here and, so I'm told, happens every year, one of the men from Sri Ram does the actual offerings. This time, as has happened often, it was Sreven Kumar. He is also from Santa Cruz (I run into him often working the cash register at Staff of Life) but an Indian national by birth. Now in his retirement years he can spend several months a year there at Sri Ram, and he is just beautiful with the kids. A gentle but forceful disciplinarian who knows just how things should go, he has come so often. The ritual was quite elaborate as usual for these kinds of things and took over an hour. The adults, mostly Westerners, were trying very hard to be attentive, every now and then shushing the kids or moving somewhere where they could see or hear better, but the kids' patience wore out quickly. I had sat near the back and was trying to look attentive and respectful, but was soon surrounded by kids, Kesav back and forth on my lap showing me things and wanting to see my phone to take pictures, and others around me talking, hitting each other and/or itching to play some music. It gave me a whole new perspective on 11 o'clock Mass, though the advantage with Mass is that there is actually something for the congregation to do besides watch the priest perform the ritual. We didn't have anything to do until the end when the water from the Ganga was offered and the prasad was passed out.

We had a little musical fun during the days there. We sang some at the beginning and especially at the end of the puja. I loved watching the next generation of drummers take over--Shubam and Krishna on tabla and dolak, respectively, while big brother Vijay looked on quietly, though he did fill in at the end. There was also a young American guy there who is a kirtan singer back home and is currently studying more kirtan singing with a Sikh teacher here in India. At the end, while the crowd was dispersing, he sat down at the harmonium and led us in a couple of choice ones. At Vijay's urging I led one as well, something I remembered from one of my Krishna Das or Jai Uttal CDs. I hadn't brought my guitar, prepared as I was for trekking, but there were a couple of other Westerners there who had had the same idea that I had had back in 2005: they had brought "baby"s with them, one had a baby Martin and the other a baby Alvarez. They both had asked my advice about them and offered for me to use them whenever I wanted, so there was always a guitar at hand. Gitanjali and I had half a plan to do some singing together at some point during the weekend (we've worked together, but never just sat down and sung for fun), so after tea following the puja I got one of the babys and we sat under Babji's tree for about two hours, I think, going through the Great American Songbook (or, as one radio station had it, "the best of the '70s, '80s, and whatever we want"). It was a LOT of fun! Sita played along a bit as well as did one other guy, and eventually Dayanand brought down one his slide guitars and that was even more fun. He could play solos, and then we started improvising a song, making up verses as we went along. Dayanand himself and some of the boys too had told me that there was going to be kirtan singing later that night as is traditional on the night of Shiva Ratri everywhere. (Quite often it is accompanied by drinking an intoxicating beverage known as bhang, which is made with marijuana, and then staying up all night in the temple singing. We didn't do that.) In my Westerner's penchant for schedule and clarity ("We have a plan, we have no schedule"), I stood outside the guesthouse after dinner waiting for us all to head over to the puja shrine for the music, but it wasn't happening. Dayanand was up practicing his mohan veena and the boys were watching a movie. But after sending around a couple of messages, Srevan Kumar gathered the troops, and soon we were sitting at the puja shrine with no light except for a couple of ghee lamps and a distant electric light bulb. I don't think any of the Sri Ram girls were there, but a good handful of the women and men guests were and, to my surprise, quite a few of the boys. Vijay was on tabla most of the time, with Shubam on dolak on the other side, and the brothers Uttam and my old buddy Gautam were on either side of me singing their hearts out. One of the other guests led a few and then passed me the guitar. I did one or two that I've done before, but then started mentally going through my Krishna Das and Jai Uttal CDs again and started leading some of those. No one knew that I had never done any of them before. I had a blast. Eventually Dayanand showed up with his mandolin in open tuning too and then we had a real quorum. Who needs bhang?

I had originally planned on five or six days up that way, and had really wanted to get to see more of the Mela and get over to Rishikesh, maybe even for a few nights. But we were only going to be there two days-three nights, so I feared not much of that was going to happen. I never did make it to any of the Kumbha Mela. To be honest by the time we got there I wasn't that interested, surprisingly. The crowds were huge on the roads because of the coincidence with Shiva Ratri and security was very tight, though there wasn't much actually going on yet. To be honest, I was also a little turned off by all the hype and publicity around it, the huge billboards of famous sadhus who were going to be appearing or speaking, and all the kind of "bliss junkie rush" associated with it for so many Westerners, but if I had had more time I would have eventually gone. (It lasts until April 15; the biggest days of it are still way ahead.) Some folks went on Shiva Ratri afternoon. Two got turned away, but two others managed to climb over a barrier and then over a security wall and sneak in for the arathi. On Saturday there were a couple of different carloads going to Rishikesh. I was tempted, but didn't want to spend a whole day out when we were leaving in the morning--there is only so much I want to cram into a day.

But after breakfast Rashmi told Gitanjali, Laura and I that she had to go to Rishikesh to bring two of the girls back to school, and if we wanted to go (again, this being their first time here, the women had never been) we could tag along and spend a few hours walking around. That was perfect for me, and so we went, Rashmi herself driving, braving incredible traffic, I might add. The sight of a woman driving, let alone a Western woman, is still something rather incredible for Indian males, I must tell you, but she was impressively fearless. There is a little disdain for Rishikesh among some of the long time Sri Ram ashramites who consider it like an amusement park with all kinds of international babas and teachers selling their wares to Western spiritual tourists, whereas Haridwar still retains its seriousness as a real Indian holy city. They are probably right and I say some of the same things myself, but I have wonderful memories of my times there, and there were three people I wanted to see. The women kindly let me lead the way, and I got to see all three. Just across the street from where we left the car is the restaurant of Ranjeet, the kind guy who took me to the arathi over the Ganges (and wouldn't let me pay for dessert) and with whom I took my lunch every day I was there in 2007. With all the tourists they see I was delighted that he and his brother both remembered me, and they happily told me that they had each gotten married that past year. Ranjeet then invited me to come to his house for dinner that night. What an honor. Unfortunately, obviously, I couldn't. Then down the street and around the corner going down toward the Laxma Jula Bridge, I stopped to see Ram Ram, the Yoga teacher and CD kiosk oracle. He got up, grabbed my hands and gave me a huge warm hug. I asked for recommendations on music again and we all bought one CD from him. Then I took them all over to meet Turiya at Jheevan Dhara, the Christian ashram where I stayed in 2007 while I was doing Yoga with Ram and, as a matter of fact, where I finished writing the book that was just published. I had told her I might be coming when I saw her at Shantivanam, and so as she opened the gate she semi-scolded me: "I thought maybe you had gotten lost in a cave on Arunachala." All three women really loved the place, especially the chapel. I told them that that place was like ground zero of my spirituality, the marvelous marriage of Christianity expressed through the genius of Indian spirituality.

The crowds were immense there in Rishikesh too--because of the five day holiday--mostly Indians, though, not with us Western bliss junkies this time. We crossed over the Laxma Jula Bridge so Laura and Gitanjali could see that side and do a little shopping, and not only was that tiny little road mobbed, but there was also two way traffic of Jeeps and tourist cars going back and forth. The river rafting has become a big business there. It really was off-putting and I couldn't wait to get out by then.

After that, not much else. As I wrote yesterday, we took a taxi back down, and I've had two wonderfully relaxing days at Aurobindo Ashram. I have taken a few walks for supplemental chai, some toiletries and in search of an internet place (no luck), but haven't wandered very far or spoken to almost anyone for two days. It's now 4:45 PM on Fat Tuesday, and I'm packed and ready to check out. If all goes well, a taxi will come and fetch me this evening and then I fly to Singapore at 11:30 PM. I told someone last week, I'm at the point where I always get with India: if I'm not gonna stay forever, it's time to come home. Well, two weeks work ahead of me first, but I'm heading that way.

dilly daze

15 feb, 2010, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Delhi Branch

Know only that unique Self
on which are strung
heaven, earth and space
the mind and the other organs
and discard other speech

this is the bridge to immortality

Within
where the nerves are pinned
like spokes on a wheel
that One moves
becoming multiform

thus with the OM
think of the Self!
no hinderance for you
for the further shore
beyond darkness
(mundaka up. II.ii.5-6)

I don't keep it up when I am at home unfortunately, but the last few times I've been here in India I've been trying to learn a little more Sanskrit, just enough to make out the devanagari script, and read the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita in the original, with transliteration and translation, of course. The above is my own rendering of some verses from the Mundaka, possibly hopelessly misbegotten, but fashioned after one version of the Tao te Ching I have that doesn't fill in all the implications in the blanks, instead leaving the words raw and, to my mind, even more powerful. Of course, Hindi is a simpler form of the same script, so I'm able to read Hindi painfully slowly, just enough to impress the kids. I like to pass the time in the bus or car or walking trying to read signs. I had two humorous discoveries. The first was: I wrote a paper for the Abhishiktananda centenary on the various meanings of the terms "purusha" and "guru." I listed six different meanings of purusha, for instance. With all that deep metapysical speculation floating around my brain, I arrived at the Delhi airport and was trying to find the Men's Room and sure enough I was able to make out the sign: PURUSHA. In spite of our modern American and English penchant for avoiding exclusive gender language and someone like Valerie Roebuck's insistence on translating "purusha" as "person," in ordinary everyday Hindi, it simply means "man" as in "male." I wanted to add that into my otherwise quite erudite paper as yet another meaning of the term, just to bring a little levity--"Holy things to the holy!"--but I refrained. The other discovery I made was that the exact transliteration of Delhi is not "Dayl-hee" but "Dilly," which I find pretty funny. Hence the title of this blog.

This is just going to be a bunch of travelogue rambling, so please don't be disappointed if there is no deep message herein, just a description of some of my Dilly Daze.

Yesterday morning I was sipping the long anticipated morning tea outside of OM Bhavan Guest House at Sri Ram Ashram in Haridwar at 6:30 AM with another Californian, waiting for the kids to arrive so that we could do PT (physical training!) with them, and I mentioned to him that Gitanjali, Laura and I were going to take a taxi back down to Delhi after all instead of the bus. He asked why we would have even thought of taking the bus, and I said that I had taken the bus up from Delhi. He said, "A tourist bus? (one of the those big air-conditioned jobbies) and I said no, the regular ISTB bus. He said with a perfectly straight face, "Did you do that as an austerity?" I found that very funny. I was always think I am not traveling "close enough to the ground." Once we got here in the taxi, I was glad for the sake of the two others that I had not subjected them to that. It wasn't a bad trip up really, just a little long, dusty and bumpy, but that was early morning, not very hot nor crowded. Coming back yesterday afternoon, it took longer in the car than it had on the bus, and it was miserably dusty, crowdy and hot. It's a holiday weekend here. There was Shiva Ratri on Friday and a government holiday--as always the second Saturday of the month--and so, we were told, folks turned it into a five day weekend. (If you can figure out how two days off turns into a five day weekend, you're ahead of us; we kept scratching our heads about that one.) Anyway, that's the end of the story, and I'm back in Delhi until I fly out to Singapore tomorrow night. Sri Aurbindo Ashram is quite a ways south in Delhi, far from everything else I'm familiar with, but it's clean, quiet, inexpensive, with three simple vegetarian meals a day, it's a direct line from here to the airport, and it is an ashram. So a full day to myself with a an evening and a morning on either side to regroup and close out this time in India.

After the Urs, I still hadn't figured out my travel plans, but Gitanjali and Laura really wanted me to accompany them to Haridwar on what would be their first visit to Sri Ram. They already had train tickets, but after a lot of negotiating and consulting it seemed that even if I was on the waiting list I wouldn't have been able to get on. Everyone was heading north for the Kumbha Mela, which happened to coincide with the big feast of Shiva Ratri this year. The Kumbha (perhaps you will know of it from the movie "Shortcut to Nirvana") is the gathering of sadhus that happens in a different city along thebanks of the Ganges every three years. Reportedly millions pour in for them, well-known babas who are advertised on billboards and speak before huge crowds as well as countless little camps for lesser known sadhus, often performing incerdible feats of tapas-austerities. (The monk who hasn't lowered his arm for five years, for instance. That's a lot more impressive than riding the ISPT to Haridwar.) The river Ganges is said to flow from the locks of Shiva's hair, and once year people from villages all around make a pilgrimage to her (she is worshipped as a goddess, Ganga Mata) and bring some Ganga water back to their village, carrying these wonderfully colored containers balanced on the shoulder that looks sort of like a large bow, with a bag tied to each end where the water is. The roads are lined for days with various groups of people and trucks blaring music. And this year twice as crowded due to the crowds gathering for the opening of the Kumbha Mela.

At first Delhi seemed like an impenetrable asphalt jungle to me, with a river of cars running through it. Even though I have been through here a number of times now, I've never really gotten to know much outside of the YWCA Family Hostel and Connaught Place. But I had made the trip over to Nizamuddin a number of times by autorickshaw, so by Monday, after I had traveled again over to the hotel where Laura and Gitanjali's group was staying, I felt like the layout of at least that part of the city was making sense to me. After quibbling with a rickshaw driver over how much he would charge to take me to the famous Khan Market, I decided to head out on foot. I asked a traffic officer to point me in the right direction and made it quite close without having to ask again, just by following the big signs that said "Khan Market" with a big arrow. My experiences in Italy have led me to only half trust signs like that, mind you, so at one point, I turned around and asked a young man who had crossed the street behind me and was walking my way if this indeed was the way to Khan Market. He said, "I am only going there now myself," and he allowed me to tag along. We headed off the main road pretty soon on, and I must admit I was beginning to wonder if I had met another young hustler who was going to walk me to an goverment emporium or a travel agency selling trips to Kashmir--those are the two big things the guys on the street are up to. But, no, he was polite and didn't seem to want anything. His name was Prakash, he was not from Delhi, but from Himanchal Pradesh, farther north, and was only stationed here, midway through a 15 year enlistment in the Indian Navy.

I wanted to get a duplicate of Amasamy's shirt made while I was still in India, Gitanjali's teacher Shabda had given me the name, phone number and some vague directions of someone there. When we got the market, Prakash contiued to help, called the place and found out where they were, stayed with me while I talked to the tailor, and even helped me pick out the right color of fabric. When we were done I offered to buy him a tea or some other refreshment to thank him. We wound up at a place called Amici's, an Italian restaurant, and talk a good long time over a couple of fresh lime sodas, and when we were done, he wouldn't let me pay. "You are in India. You are my guest." I was a little embarrassed, but after all the shysters on the streets of Delhi, I was also awfully grateful. I told him I had a bunch of little errands to run and he was welcome to accompany me if he wanted, but he said he only had about a half hour before he ahd to get back to base for some personal business, but he would walk me as far as Ashika Road, from which I could easily find my way home to the Y. We walked to India Gate, the large impressive monument to Indians killed in war. He told me it was his favorite place to some for some quiet. It was actually quite crowded, mainly with school kids out on field trip, but he was quite happy to be there and share it with me. I thoguth we would part there, since Ashoka Road was in sight, but he stayed on with me and walked me all the way home, a good 45 minute walk. He also seemed concerned that I have a contact number of someone in India, and made sure I took his number down in case I needed anything. I was going to take him for lunch yet, but he got called back to base for some kind of emergency, so he left saying "We can meet again when you want."

The main problem with the trip to Haridwar was that we were told the roads going out of Haridwar were going to be closed due to the Kumbha, making it impossible for us to get transportation from the railway station to the Sri Ram, about 10 km out of the city. Both Gitanjali and I had come up with the same solution--that we would walk it. But they needed me to be there to guide them, since I was the only one who had ever been there. I finally decided that the solution was going to be for me to take a bus and meet them at the railway station. I had booked an extra night at the Y (or so I thought) because they weren't going to go until Thursday. So I got up Wednesday morning full of energy to get everything ready, feeling like I was really getting good at making my way around the city.

Everybody kept telling me that getting a bus to Haridwar was easy, but everybody also had different information about how to go about doing that, so I decided I needed to make an advance run to the ISBT station myself and figure things out. An act of kindness: after Mass and breakfast, I asked an autorickshaw driver to take me to the ISBT station near Kashmere Gate. He could have charged me and arm and a leg, but instead he said, "Get inside and I will take you to the Metro right here. It will take you ten minutes. If I take you it will take 40 minutes." When we got to the Metro Station, I asked him how much he wanted and he said whatever I wanted to give him. Delhi was slowly redeeming itself. I consulted the Metro route map, and had the folks at the ticket counter sell me an all day pass since I looked as if it went everywhere I wanted to go. I headed up to Kashmere Gate, wandered around the bus terminal long enough to figure out how it worked and how much, (143 rupees, a bus to Haridwar every fifteen minutes starting at 4 AM), and then headed back down to return to the Y. That's when things started going wrong. The first thing was, I got hit by a taxi! It's always quite an adventure to cross the street in Delhi anyway since no one stops and you just have to part the waves, and of course they drive on the left so I always have to think twice and look three times, but I had gotten pretty good at it all. So I was crossing the street, looked left, looked right, and looked left again as I started to cross and suddenly got smacked on the right arm by a taxi who had skipped around of the traffic jam on the other side of the cement barrier and was going the wrong way! It wasn't serious, just some scrapes, but my heart was in my throat. Another second and that could have been very very serious.

So I got back to the Y nursing my sore and slightly bleeding arm and, since my next stop was to go back to Khan Market and pick up my shirt, I called Prakash to see if he wanted to join me. He did and we set it for an hour hence. But then as I was going up to my room I found out that they hadn't actually extended my stay another night and were wondering when I was going to be checking out. So we discussed that... by now they couldn't let me stay another night in that room, but might have something else if I came back later. So I rushed up to my room, packed my bag in a flash (I was actually prepared for any exigency and had my bag half packed already), but then had to go through the whole round of paperwork checking out and putting my backpack and guitar in storage. Got that all done and headed back to the Metro with my all-day pass, and then on to Central Secretariat where I was supposed to catch the Violet Line that went straight to Khan Market. But when I got to Central Secretariat, I couldn't find the Violet Line, so I asked and was advised to go back to Rajiv Chowk and transer there. Rajiv Chowk is the busiest station, jammed with people transferring and cheek to jowl in the train itself. So, same thing, when I get there I asked how to get to Khan Market but this time I was told, "Go back to Central Secretariat and take an autorickshaw." The Violet line hasn't actually been built yet. By the time I got to Khan Market, I was laughing to myself about my plans for conquering Delhi and was delighted to see Prakash waiting for me in the exact place where the autorickshaw let me out.

We picked up my shirt and then I told him I needed to go back to Nizamuddin to talk with the women, but if he would come with me I would treat him to a great vegetarian thali at a little reasonably priced place that I knew. This was all a part of Delhi that he didn't know, so now I was the guide. But as we turned down Mathura Road his gaze drifted over to the left and he said, "Do you know what's there?" No. "The zoo. I have never been. Do you want to go to the zoo?" Yes, as a matter of fact, I did want to go to the zoo. Again, he wouldn't let me pay, even though "foreigners" were 40 rupees more than Indians. We had a great time. He was very happy to see all the animals, and was naming all the trees we were passing for me as well, and telling me how each of them was used for medicine and cooking. When I asked how he knew so mch about trees, he told that he had lived with his grandparents in the jungle for some years. I couldn't get much more out of him about that. After an hour or so we headed to talk to the ladies and then ate the delicious thali (which he pronounced good and reasonably priced as well, though he gradugingly let me pay for it.) He escorted me back as far as India Gate again, but made me assure him we could get together again tomorrow (he too is gone home to see his fiance for her birthday over the "five day weekend") adding that he wants to go to the airport with me to see me off. I don't know how or if that will all work out, but I'm quite touched by the whole thing.

By the way, they did have a room for me for the night at the Y, though I was anxiously preparing myself to spend the evening wandering Delhi in search of bed for the night, or spend the night either on an overnight bus to Haridwar to wait for them to arrive, or huddled up in a doorway somewhere waiting for the 4 AM. Of course when I finally got to my room, a smelly sweaty mess from my day, the hot water wasn't working, so I had another delay while maintenace came up to work on my hot water geyser (pronounced here as "geezer") before easing into the evening, pretending to say my evening prayers and meditate. I wound up only getting 12 hours out of my $32 room, but rarely has a hot shower felt so good nor a night's sleep been so welcome. The only reason I had to spend time out in the chilly Dilly night was because I got up way too early and sat at the Metro station for 45 minutes before it opened--someone told me they started running at 5 AM but they didn't start until 6. When they finally opened, the turnstile at the entrance I was at wasn't functioning correctly, so they sent us underground to the other entrance, where my unlimited ride pass didn't work. I finally got to the ISBT terminal at Kashmere Gate in time to get on the 6:30 bus to Haridwar, breathing a sigh of relief to be finally out of the city.

the Sufi message

9 feb 2010, delhi

We often confuse unity with uniformity.
Unity is the goal and uniformity the means to reach that goal,
but often the means has obscured the purpose.
(Hazrat Inayat Khan)

One of the speakers at the Urs urged us, in the Sufi way, to be non-definitive, inclusive and experiential: to trust intuition rather than categorical beliefs; to allow view and method to respond to the need of the moment; and to favor simple presence over "intellectual figuring out and position-taking." So it was with some trepidation that I did some intellectual figuring out with Lori over lunch on Sunday, though I did try mightily to avoid taking any position.

These past years back in Santa Cruz (I'm going to say this baldly but with all respect) I have often been confused about the use of the title or adjective "Sufi." I associate Sufism with Islam, the mystical movement within Islam. This is in agreement with Kabir and Camille Helminski, and our friends from Pacifica, I'm pretty sure, though they are all extremely open in sharing thier gatherings with everyone and all. But I just couldn't get my mind around the Sufi Dances of Universal Peace. As wonderful as I think they are, I know that it would be anathema or "shirk" to many observant Muslim to sing songs to Shiva or Krishna, and maybe to Jesus as Lord, so I couldn't figure out how they could be "sufi." And I have had some trepidation about being involved in them at the risk of offending our Muslim sisters and brothers, just as I try to be careful about co-opting anything from another tradition.

So I watched carefully as the Universal Worship, based on Hazrat Inayat's own model, was celebrated Friday afternoon, the first thing I attended. It was quite mild really, a prayer was invoked, a candle was lit before the scriptures of each tradition, then a reading was done from each of them by two different readers, and another prayer was chanted at the end. Nothing was read that anyone in the room could not have heard and absorbed easily. It was what I call, after Fr Bede, universal wisdom. No one was asked to acclaim Mohammad as the Prophet, call Jesus Lord, take refuge in the Buddha, or offer praise to any of the Hindu deities. But apparently when the group visited Humayun's tomb, a famous 16th century landmark that is considered to be the prototype of the Taj Mahal, after singing some Sufi songs, one of the Westerners in the group led the singing of a kirtan to Shiva. That, someone else in the group told me, made a few of them quite uncomfortable, to do that in the presence of observant Indian Muslims.

I also noted that, outside of the dhkr and the words to some of the qwalis and ghazals, in the speaking there was little if any mention ever made of Mohammad (peace be upon him), Allah or the Qur'an. Another man I spoke with had been through this when he studied with a Turkish teacher. When he announced himself to be a Sufi already, the teacher insisted, "Then you are a Muslim" and proceeded to encourage his practice of the Five Pillars of everyday Islam. The man in question eventually left that teacher and now does not consider himself to be a Muslim but still follows the Sufi path.

"The scriptures given to the Jews, the Muslims, Parsis, Hindus, Buddhists, all have as their central truth the message of unity, but we have been so interested and absorbed in the poetry of these scriptures that we have forgotten their inner voice."

Honestly, I really was withholding judgement on the whole thing during the conference and ardently wanted to see what it meant to these good people to be "Sufis." It does seem to have little to with Islam. There are those who say the Inayat Khan himself was using the term "Sufi" loosely or even wrongly but as a convenient umbrella term to explain his notion of the universality of religion, and that his message has always had more appeal in the West than among Muslims in India. (Indeed, there were very few Indians in attendance except for the musical performances.

So, then the question formulated itself in my mind in this way: can one do adapt Sufism the way I have adapted Yoga, or how others have adapted Zen. Can Sufism be a praxis and a philosophy that can frame and articulate any content? Can one be a Christian Sufi as I think of myself sometimes as an aspiring Christian Yogi, or how Amasamy and many others are Zen Christians? I heard at least one Christian theologian and author describe himself in that way. Can Sufism actually be lifted off of Islam and serve people of other traditions? Mind you, there are both fundamentalist Hindus and Christians who claim this cannot be done with Yoga, as I am sure there are Muslims who will say no. With all due respect to their sensibilities, I'm just exploring what that might means.

"If anybody asks what Sufism is, what kind of religion is it, the answer is that Sufism is the religion of the heart, the religion in which the thing of promary importance is to seek God in the heart of humankind."

Now, who could argue with that accent? Who could not use that as an incentive and goal? I can hear some folks thinking out loud that that is still a little vague. Here is something a little more solid. Hazrat Inayat teaches that there are three ways to seek God in the human heart: to recognize the divine in everyone and to be conisderate toward every person with whom we come into contact because for that reason; to think about the feelings of those who are not present--to speak well of those who are absent and sympathize with those who are far away; and finally to recognize in one's own feeling the feeling of God:

"to realize every impulse of love that rises in one's heart as a direction from God, to realize that love is a divine spark in one's heart, to blow that spark until a flame may rise to ilumine the path of one's life."

I actually asked a number of questions about the specific practice/technique of meditation and got some great answers. Certainly the marvelous practice of dhkr-repetition of a name or attribute of God/Allah. There as the deep teaching on fana and baqa--absorption and revival both in God/Allah and in one's sheikh. And then one teacher spoke, in connection with dhkr, about the three stages of prayer with words: dhkr, then fhkr and then fhkr al-sur. Forgive me if I have those transliterations wrong, but as she explained it, it was very much the same as Theophane the Recluse's stages in connection with in the Eastern Christian tradition of hesychast prayer: prayer on the lips, then it goes to the mind and rolls around there, until finally we "put the mind in the heart." (That works pretty well in connection with mantra meditation as well.) Of course in the Christian tradition this is when we say we discover the Holy Spirit already in us praying "Abba!", Jesus' own mantra and we join our prayer to the divine song of love that is the center of our own being.

One other person told me firmly that, even though it may seem like it sometimes among his followers, Hazrat Khan did not want to start a new religion, but simply wanted to offer the Sufi way as an inspiration to anyone from any tradition to find a new approach to their own tradition. So in this way, yes, a Sufi Christianity, a Jewish Sufism, a Buddhist Sufi are all in some way possible, though we may still be using the word in a way that would offend Muslims, and I think we have to be careful of that, or at least not consider the conversation ended. (The same with authentic pure blood Zen Buddhists and Hindu Yogis, not to mention the real mystics and students of the Kabbala, etc.)

If there is some universality in the Sufi message, and I think there undoubtably is, here is this one other long quote of Hazrat Inayat that I want to end with, that has some real teeth in it and is very inspiring for our work in the world:

"The Sufi message does not give a new law; it awakens humanity to the spirit of family, with tolerance on the part of each for the religion of the other, with forgiveness from each other for the fault of the other. It teaches thoughtfulness and consideration, so as to create and amintainharmony in life; it teaches service and usefulnessm which alone can make life in the world fruitful, and in this lies the satisfazction of every soul."

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."