| Dharma
Masala
Kabir Saxena
If, as His Holiness the Dalai Lama has remarked, the world's
religions are like various nourishing foods, then I was born
into a family matrix resembling a veritable feast, the tastes
of which have permeated my life hitherto.
However, neither parent was religious in any overt sense.
My English mother would have called herself agnostic. My grandfather,
perhaps in reaction to his father, a renowned preacher (of
whom more in a moment) was, broadly speaking, a humanist.
As a child I remember playing table tennis with him on the
dining room table in his Golders Green home (a Jewish neighborhood
of London), while he held forth on one of his favorite themes--the
awful crimes against humanity perpetrated in the name of religion.
While the ping-pong ball was noisily struck back and forth
Grandpa would entertain me with descriptions of real and alleged
burnings, fryings, hotplates and other sundry acts of former
religious personages and inquisitions. He would always, however,
remind me later that, in fact, he loved the authorized version
of the Bible for its magnificent, moving language. This was
not the sole means of moving the heart at Grandpa's. I would
consider the evenings spent with him listening to Mozart and
Beethoven on BBC Radio 3 as religious in the sense of aiding
the process of linking up again ("re-ligare") with
a source of strength and joy within. These are perhaps the
earliest memories I have of transcendent feeling (albeit at
a far lower rung of experience than that of the yogis or saints,
but very significant and nurturing nonetheless).
My great-grandfather was the Rev. Walter Walsh, whose photos
and voluminous sermons dotted Grandpa's shelves, as they do
now our living room in a New Delhi suburb. Brought up in a
strict Scottish Presbyterian tradition, it took him years
of painful reevaluation and logical reasoning at university
before he felt he had emerged from the dark tunnel of his
rigid doctrinal cocoon of an upbringing. He went on to become
the foremost radical preacher in Dundee at the Gilfillan church,
which, to this day I am told, maintains a healthy alternative
line in sermons. Rev. Walsh communicated with many of the
great religious and philosophical thinkers of his time, including
Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi in India. His weekly sermons were
liberally sprinkled with quotations from all the major religions
as well as from mystical traditions like Sufism. He founded
the Free Religious Movement for World Religion and World Brotherhood,
and it seems as though he aroused some interest in India:
"I have many eager friends in India who are palpitating
with earnestness and self-devotion towards the same great
cause of universal religion and universal brotherhood,"
he wrote.
In a series of moving lectures given in the first decade
of this century, Rev. Walsh feels "the religion of the
future will not be sectarian, but universal." A noble
hope, that often seems a forlorn one, except that there is
hope contained in the statement he then makes, which resonates
well with the hopes and needs of today, that "for the
religion of Jesus we must now substitute the religion of humanity."
What the world wants, states Rev. Walsh, is "the union
of all who love in the service of all who suffer." How
wonderful it would have been had the altruistic Reverend undertaken
a journey to the Potala with Younghusband's expedition. My
mother would then have brought me up a Buddhist.
I have never undertaken an extensive reading of my great-grandfather's
works but knew enough about him by the time I was in my mid-teens
to benefit from his example of a man of God who in his inner
process never forgot the service of humanity. It means a lot
to me today when, at the age of 42, I sit and write in the
grounds of the former Senior Tutor to His Holiness the XIV
Dalai Lama above the Indian hill station of Dharamsala and
ponder the value of the Tibetan Buddhist thought transformation
teachings with their emphasis on courageous great compassion.1
This crucible of my youth didn't consist only of a Western
radical Christianity tempered with a universal humanism. I
am half Indian by birth and my Indian father's clan provided
another fascinating complex of ingredients that were to prove
by no means insubstantial in their effect on my mental development.
My father was a staunch socialist with an intellectual's
antipathy towards the machinations of priesthoods. He changed
later, but as I grew up with him, the atheist in him was still
strong. Dad's father was in the Ministry of Defense under
the British and then in Independent India. What I remember
of him is his increasing blindness and incessant recitation
of mantras on his rosary. Like Tiresias, outer loss of vision
was compensated by an inner fortitude that, for me at least,
appeared calm, strong and at peace with the often tempestuous
goings on of the Saxena household. If he were the quiet contemplative,
grandmother was the pujari,
or ritual priestess of the household. In between scoldings,
complaints and many small acts of kindness, she would do her
daily puja at her shrine
in the kitchen. In India, as no doubt elsewhere, the spiritual
and food and beverage departments often coincide. (pahle
payt puja, first the offering to the stomach, as we
say in India.) Only after that follows puja,
or offering, to the deity. After all, didn't Gautama have
to eat delicious rice pudding before he could meditate powerfully
enough to attain Awakening?
I don't suppose for a moment that these are in any way dramatic
influences on my spiritual development. And yet this context
of practice, however unsophisticated and workaday, did, I
believe, leave its leavening imprint. To say that the ritual
actions and altar of my grandmother generated a sense of the
sacred within me may not be an exaggeration. I was not yet
ten years old, very impressionistic, and it was important
for me to ascertain that adults didn't just talk, eat, look
after us and issue reprimands but also had some kind of communication
with an unseen world that wasn't totally explicable through
its symbols. The gaudy posters of gods and goddesses took
on a fascination for me, an almost erotic quality that I recall
with amused interest.
Festivals never were as important for my family as for many
others in India, but were observed nevertheless, with varying
degrees of enthusiasm by all the family. During visits to
the Kali statues in the local market-place at Dussehra, I
found that there were beings with more heads and limbs than
I had and this has proved an invaluable piece of information
since!
I also learned that dissent and non-conformity are as acceptable
as belief. Father's elder brother had books of all types,
and nourished his spirit through poetry. How well I remembered
him berating me: "What, you don't know the poetry of
Tennyson!" Another uncle was outright disdainful of all
matters religious; another was an exemplar of generosity,
bringing sweet jalebis home
more evenings than not.
One aunt was into Aurobindo and both she and another aunt
were into duty and the fulfilling of obligations that were
considered "karmic" and therefore unavoidable, however
distasteful or unfortunate they appeared to me.
From my teens onwards I was always reminded of my namesake,
the great poet and mystic Sant Kabir (1440-1518), whose works
have touched the hearts of millions of Indians, both Hindu
and Muslim. Friends and guests as well as family would recite
couplets that illustrated the sensitive and observant humanity
of Kabir as well as his ecstatic experience of a personal
god within that was not dependent upon temple or mosque for
its realization. Kabir's tolerance, as well as his critique
of the spiritual sloth and hypocrisy, left their marks and
echoed to some extent the sentiments of Rev. Walsh. I love
the story of Kabir's death. It's said that Hindus and Muslims
were arguing over how the body should be given its last rites.
When they removed the shroud they found the body transformed
into flowers which they evenly divided up and disposed of
each according to their religious tenets.
Throughout my early adulthood I experienced again and again
how poetic and musical experience in the Indian tradition
was infused with a deep sense of the sacred, a process that
could stop the chattering mind and awaken the heart; induce
a special feeling and sense of participation in life that
is hard to describe in words. The Buddhist chanting I so relish
now has its antecedents for me in the hymn-singing at school
in England, where the magnificent organ produced sounds that
stirred and reached parts of oneself that daily routine left
untouched. When, through a surfeit of adolescent rebelliousness
and self-importance, I stopped joining in the congregation's
vocal invocation of God's mystery and glory, I was left the
poorer, at a time when the healing power of sound would have
helped restore my wounded and damaged teenage self, as it
heals me now.
The transformational quality of sacred sound was for me brought
home in a very powerful way on an OXFAM-organized drought
relief project in central India in 1980. A local village mukhiya,
or chief, was known as a bit of a scoundrel and I disliked
him intensely. I was inspired to sponsor a recitation of the
holy Ramayana during the festival days commemorating Rama's
holy deeds and was happily surprised to witness the effect
the chanting had on the participants and myself. The mukhiya
sang with great gusto and devotion. He himself appeared to
change, as did my perception of him, in a kind of blessed
moment when the objections of the mind were drowned in the
elevated feelings of the yearning heart.
All this said, however, I am certain that the most powerful
formative influence on my later mental development and adoption
of Buddhism was the Bhagavad Gita,
(c. 500 B.C.), of the Hindu tradition, a crowning ornament
of Sanskrit literature and inspirer of countless generations
of Hindus and Westerners alike. Henry David Thoreau in his
Walden had this to say of
it: "In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous
and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavad
Gita... in comparison with which our modern world and
its literature seem puny and trivial." Most of its main
themes inspired me in my teens and have proved to be of utmost
import to me as a so-called Buddhist at the end of the twentieth
century. These themes are as follows: yoga as harmony, a balance
between extremes; the weight given to tolerance, as in the
idea that all paths lead ultimately to God, salvation; joy
as an attribute of the true spiritual path; the supremacy
of the path of detached action without concern for a reward;
the central importance of a serene wisdom beyond the violence
of the senses; and last, salvation through the wisdom of reason.
I find most of these themes reflected in the other classic
that informed my formative years--the Dhammapada--as
well as in much of the Dalai Lama's writings. Take reason,
a factor that attracted many, including myself, to the teachings
of the Buddha. The Gita says,2
"Greater than the mind is buddhi,
reason." For those who think Buddhism is largely ritual
and devotion, His Holiness sets the record straight: "At
the heart of Buddhism and in particular at the heart of the
Great Vehicle, great importance is placed on analytical reasoning."3
The serene wisdom, joy and control over the senses extolled
in the Gita were clearly
manifested in my first serious Buddhist teachers. Furthermore,
the sublime thought of bodhicitta--the
awakened heart striving for complete enlightenment for the
benefit of all suffering beings--was a marvelous progression
from and expansion of a beautiful line in the Gita:
"(The yogi) sees himself in the heart of all beings and
sees all beings in his heart."4
Such a being, according to the Upanishads,
"loses all fear."5
These kinds of spiritual insights, though only "paper
insights," still had the power to feed my thirsting teenage
mind as they do today, except that now I read mostly Buddhist
literature and hear teachings from Buddhist masters alone.
Is this narrow-minded? Not, I think, according to the broad-minded
vision of the Gita: "For
many are the paths of man but they all in the end come to
me."6
Buddhists are often annoyed at what they see as Hindu inclusivism
in the Hindu notion, for example, that Buddha was the ninth
avatar or incarnation of Vishnu and therefore was a Hindu.
So what if Hindus say this? Doesn't it actually lead to greater
harmony and acceptance of Buddhism by Hindus? Perhaps if they
didn't feel this way there'd be no room in India for Buddhism
and I would be writing this in the mountains of New Mexico
rather than in the Himalayan foothills. So I actually am growing
fonder of this approach of the Gita.
It is a little like Buddhists showing respect and appreciation
for Jesus Christ by regarding him as a great bodhisattva,
a being inexorably headed towards complete Buddhahood for
the sake of all beings.
Some writers7
have powerfully attacked aspects of Hindu belief as representing
a "defect of vision," a "negative self-absorption,"
Hindus as being fascinated by "the stupor of meditation,"
and the religion itself as the "spiritual solace of a
conquered people."8
There is much in what such writers say, but I myself have
not been influenced by these narcissistic, rigid streams within
the modern practice of Hinduism and have been well-guarded
against the stupor of meditation by the excellent advice of
my highly-qualified spiritual friends and teachers.
However, many people question the validity and ability of
religion to respond creatively to the challenges of a world
that our grandfathers and grandmothers would hardly recognize.
A good friend of mine recently wrote to me, concerned that
Buddhism still represented for him an "escape from involvement."
He wrote this, despite many year of receiving my letters that
detailed our extensive work in the larger community and in
our inner community, which was peopled by a multitude of troublesome
and helpful characters. Obviously the prejudice runs deep.
Why? There's a lack of skillful and meaningful spiritual instruction
worldwide--and almost no scope for mind-transforming practice--the
kind of inner work that produces the likes of Milarepa, the
Kadampa masters,9
and some great teachers in this very century. Even where valid
spiritual literature exists, it tends to fossilize on bookshelves
in the absence of authentic guides who can show us how to
actualize it in our lives. This is where I feel very fortunate
in having met the Buddhist tradition and its exponents--here
were living embodiments of what the Buddhist scriptures spoke
of. By contrast, I never met a living embodiment of the Gita
from the Hindu tradition until much later when I encountered
Baba Amte and his selfless work for the leprosy--affected,10
and Baba wouldn't call himself a religious person, just a
humble servant of others who finds it painful that people
can find so much interest "in the ruins of old buildings,
but not in the ruins of men." It is of great importance
to me that His Holiness the Dalai Lama met Baba Amte at the
latter's project in the early 1990s. I see it as a vindication
of the union of the good heart and consecrated action that
has always been the balm for this suffering world. Both the
Dalai Lama and Baba Amte have emerged spiritually victorious
in unbelievably adverse circumstances. They are my icons,
the courageous examples I aspire to emulate in my life, beings
who fully manifest the meaning of these inspiring words of
St. John of the Cross with which I wish to conclude: "Never
fail, whatever may befall you, be it good or evil, to keep
your heart quiet and calm in the tenderness of love."
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