Hend
My life in
I wrote the
following journal entry in early March, right before I went on a 12-day
trip to
The next entry is coming soon, on the topic of my trip. And oh, what a
trip it was. Please check
my photos page, http://photos.yahoo.com/eamon19,
if you want to see some new pictures.
Best wishes to everyone out there. I’ll see a lot of you this August.
Eamon
For the first time, someone
came to visit me in
This story is not about Anoop, though, despite the fact that I was pretty much
thrilled to see him after about six months (I caught up with him during my
first day in
I met Anoop
and his dad at their hotel in
We got into the Ambassador
Classic that they had rented, a rickety but regal looking Indian-made sedan.
Heading out to Jukkur Airfield where the Art of
Living program was being held, Anoop and I caught up
on the past few months. “You’re not dead!” he kept exclaiming, laughing but
still semi-serious. He updated me on the event we were about to attend, mostly
by restating things he had told me ever since he was introduced to Art of
Living about two years ago. Since then I’ve learned quite a bit, mostly from Anoop, about the foundation and about Mr.
There’s a lot of rational, level-headed wisdom that’s gone into building this organization. Mr. Ravi Shankar himself was born into a respected family of Brahmin priests, but as a young man he eschewed what he saw as overly-ritualistic religious practices. He preaches that spirituality should be without dogma and indoctrination, and that “spirituality is the banana, and religion is the banana peel”. The moral and spiritual teachings of Art of Living, so I’ve heard, come mostly from the Vedas, the collection of ancient Hindu verses that focuses to a large extent on personal behavior and refinement. He teaches a sort of meditation based on breathing techniques to relax the mind and cleanse the body of toxins, which is or is related to something called Sudarsan Kria.
About an hour before the program started, we arrived at the airfield, a massive area outside of the city, packed with people. Outside the main seating area, Kwality Wall ice cream vendors moved freely, selling popsicles and bottled water. There were many entrances, but only one for the “internationals”, the thousands of foreigners who had purchased tickets to the week’s events (Indians attended free). People pushed and struggled to get in, and a police officer yelled and waved his wooden stick to get people to form an organized line. Amid the chaos, Anoop and his dad squeezed me through the middle of the mass of people, while Art of Living volunteers announced futilely, “Show your passes, please!”
Thanks to their special international badges, we sat in the very front of the gigantic stage, in a special section for foreigners. The Indians sat in another huge, closed off section behind us. Within the international section there were subsections for every nation you could imagine. We found the English speakers but there was no room, so we sat in a section filled with Germans. Throughout the course of the evening, I saw pretty much every type of person from every ethnic background. This was somewhat comforting for someone raised around Baha’is, perhaps the only religious group on earth more diverse than the Art of Living crowd.
Art of Living, of course, does not call itself a religion, although from what I’ve gathered, it has all the common elements. It has doctrines and teachings, however vague, embodied in what Ravi Shankar calls human values. It has rituals and a form of spiritual expression in its patented style of meditation. It has an avenue of service, in the group’s countless philanthropic projects around the world. And it has a spiritual focus in Ravi Shankar himself.
Mr. Ravi Shankar
has very cleverly avoided explicitly announcing himself to be anything more
than an enlightened human being, a claim which is pretty easily
tolerated in
Implicitly, though, Ravi Shankar is the replacement for God in a collection of
beliefs, rituals, and practices that embraces people of all faiths, as well as
atheists and agnostics. He plays, in a much more benevolent way, the
role that Stalin played in a communist religion that denied god. His picture
itself is the key symbol, copied and pasted on every
Gradually, I realized that a
lot of things that I see as troubling about religion as it’s commonly practiced
are not at all bothersome to other people. The notion of the guru,
a word meaning one who delivers from
darkness but in the context of present day
In
One more thing that has infected religious belief and practice around the globe is the mixing of money and faith. This is not a new phenomenon; in 7th grade my history teacher taught us that the Protestant Reformation was largely a backlash against the idea that you could buy salvation with a donation to the Church. But in the 21st century, the corporatization of religion is rampant, and we are growing more accepting of something that should make us all a little queasy.
The Art of Living foundation is great example, an organization with generally pure and spiritual teachings that seems to function like a profit-driven enterprise. The foundation is hugely wealthy, thanks mostly to the enormous revenue earned from its meditation classes, but also from the sale of Mr. Ravi Shankar’s books. In both cases, spiritual teachings and wisdom have become commoditized as packaged products, protected by patents and copyrights. The tacit message is that one must pay to receive religious wisdom. I’ll never forget, when I visited the Iskcon temple several months ago, the sight of certain VIPs who had purchased special temple tickets using a different entrance into the building, or the numerous shops and food stands immediately outside the main area for prayer which one must pass through on the way to the exit. Gradually, I’ve realized how commonly accepted this is. At the Art of Living event, thousands of individuals from around the world who had paid handsomely for tickets sat in the section nearest to the stage, while an even larger group of mostly Kannada- and Tamil-speaking Indians who had paid nothing sat or stood behind us. At the very front of our section – and I swear I am not making this up – were a couple of special benches that looked a bit like thrones, with nice felt cushions and gold-colored armrests and legs, kind of like what the Queen of England sat in when she went to that baseball game in The Naked Gun, if you have ever seen that movie. Of course, in the movie, it was meant to be a joke.
Beyond this, I was a bit shocked to see the degree of corporate sponsorship that the Art of Living foundation is involved in. I’ve already mentioned the Kwality Wall ice cream vendors operating outside the main seating area, which made me feel like I was at an athletic event. (In all fairness, I don’t think they had any official connection to Art of Living.) When we sat down, I noticed big billboard-like advertisements pasted on the walls inside, and two large square balloons bearing the words Tata Tea, which were flying high enough in the air to be visible from anywhere in the area, and quite possibly from space. To cap it off – and no, I’m not making this one up, either – after the evening’s program came to a close, a one-minute video was played on all the big screens throughout the crowd, in which the CEO of Centurion Bank introduced the new Art of Living credit card.
To be fair, the Art of Living spends its money financing dozens of impressive service projects around the world, which makes everything even harder to sort out. Once again, it’s just one example of the puzzling mix of good and bad that characterizes a lot of new religious movements here in India, and probably elsewhere. Say what you want about the foundation’s materialistic approach, its hierarchy, or its follow-the-leader approach to wisdom and spirituality, but the Art of Living is tearing down hardened, meaningless religious structures, like the obsessive ritualization of Hinduism, and getting back to the forgotten wisdom of holy texts, like the Vedas. It’s a bumpy ride, and it may in fact make things worse for a while, but it symbolizes a necessary first step toward changing religious thinking and practice, not just for Hindus but for everyone around the globe. I certainly don’t expect Ravi Shankar to change the world, but he’s definitely helping to clear the way. Who else do you expect to do the job? Khoshboo, maybe?