Dear Kathy, Families and Friends:
Summer in sourthern India seems to be over, for the moment. After two month of continuous sunshine, first in Egypt, and then, for the past three weeks, here at the Ecumenical Christian Centre in Whitefield, Bangeluru, the rain has come. There seems to be a huge whirlpool of cloud roiling around in the Indian Ocean, eyeing the Bay of Bengal, and we are on its frayed edges. But the campus of the ECC remains as idyllic as ever, a wondrously tranquil place after the stress, crush and noise of Cairo and a four-day stay in Mumbai. It is some thirty acres of a meticulously manicured tropical garden. Each day, early in the morning, every inch is swept by sari-ed women with whisk brooms. Each day, as we walk from our rooms across campus to the dining-room, we pass them sweeping up the heavy, flame-orange blossoms of tulip trees from off the grass and paths. The tulip trees are in fill bloom, as are the Indian Cork trees, whose tiny white scented flowers that float down to earth, and the Pink Poui. On that same walk to the dining-room, we pass one of many huge mango trees. In this one there lives a family Owlets (their official name), five in all, sometimes all perched on a single bough. If they are facing in the other direction, they swivel their heads 180 degrees and stare back at one in utter astonishment. Barbara spends much of her time tracking and sighting the 80+ species to be seen, and heard, on the campus. When the rain started, very early one morning, it fell on the parched dried leaves, and the dessicated pods and foliage scattered in the undergrowth. It sounded like liquid on a giant bowl of cereal--snap, crackle and pop. With it came many more mosquitos. Fortunately, we sleep under mosquito nets. This is like sleeping in a baby's crib. Early on, in an infantile flashback, I found myself searching in the middle of the night for a rattle.
Our classes, excursions and overall life here have been vivid, almost overwhelming. We have had lectures on most strains of Indian religion--Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Primal, Tribal--and Yoga, Festivals, Media, and so on and so forth. They have ranged from the lucid to the incomprehensible, from the structured to the free-floating, but always in a way that is distinctly Indian, full of subjective fervor. The cool and detached objectivity that we associate with academic discourse in the west is, for the most part, unknown over here, at least in the study of religion. We listen less to learned scholars than to true believers. Lectures usually start calmly, with the promise of anlaytic poise and balance. But gradually the pace gets faster, the tone higher, the message assertive. Thus, we have been led to believe that Jainism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Yoga and Dalit religion are, beyond question, all equally capable of saving the planet.
We have to work very hard for our excursions. If the ECC is a kind of bucolic paradise, the roads around Bengaluru (the new politically correct name for Bangalore) are a vehicular purgatory. This is because, as we already knew before coming here, the city is in the midst of an IT/building/development boom that has overwelmed its infrastructure, its roads in particular. Whitefield, whose name suggests a cosy colonial enclave, which at one time it probably was, has been engulfed in mammoth Tech Parks and new middle-class gated communities and high-rises. By the side of the ECC is a large lake. Or there used to be. At one time those living at the ECC could swim in it, fish in it, and even drink its water. But no longer. It is has been polluted beyond recovery by waste from a new hospital nearby, and throttled by weeds. To leave the ECC and journey any distance by bus is to face choked traffic, chaotic intersections, close encounter driving, and journies double or triple their former time.
But it is worth it. We have been to extraordinary cities and sites, temples and ashrams. For example, the great Hindu temple at Tiruvannamalia. The town is overlooked by Mount Arunachala, a place where supposedly the god Shiva manifested himself as a column of fire, the original lingam, and to which every year, as a result, during the November/December full moon, tens of thousands of pilgrims come to walk barefoot around the mountain. The Arunachala Temple was built mainly in the 11th century. We were taken into the inner sanctum to be blessed by one of the priests, a high-caste brahmin. His family had served in the temple for generations, and when neither of his elder brothers wanted to take over from their father, he did so. He had been trained as an accountant, but to become a priest was, he said, his fate. We filed barefoot through a series of darker and darker, narrower and narrower corridors, portals and rooms, deeper and deeper into the huge temple complex, until we reached the innermost shrine. It was cramped, airless, fiercely hot, smeared and scented with human oils, sweat, burning ghee and day-glow puja powders. The cool, motionless image of Shiva, in a recessed alcove, was festooned in ropes of flowers. All twenty-seven of us variously knelt, sat, stood and crouched where we could, dripping with perspiration. The priest, wearing the white thread of his office, his face striped with white and red paint, blessed each of us by name in rapid succession. The space was a spiritual blast furnace, a place of physical and psychic melt-down. We emerged into the open air again to be cooled and refreshed by the 90 degree temperature outside.
And then there was the Jain temple at Sravanabelagola. There we climbed the 614 steps carved out of a rock face (in the 10th century) up to the 57 foot high statue of the Jain hero Gomateshvana, sculpted out of a single block of rock, the largest male nude in the country. Beneath the heights of this mountain-top temple lay the plains of southern India, level, green and serene. The Jain reverence for life is limitless. Many wear a face masks to ensure they do not inhale, and kill, even the tiniest insect.
We visited Mahalibalipuram, south of Chennai (formerly Madras) where a thousand years ago Hindu artists carved a mass of exuberant friezes into bare rocks. Animals, gods, humans, and plants all crowd and jostle together in confusion and perpetual silence. On one sloping rock face there is precariously balanced a huge round boulder. It is named Krishna's butter-ball. But like so often in India the holy is undercut, or perhaps complemented, by the mundane (the name "butter-ball" to start with). Taking shelter from the hot sun in the shade of this colossal, dangerously unsteady boulder, was a group of contented goats, quite oblivious as to whether the rock would move (or melt).
I had always had a slight suspicion of ashrams. Never quite sure what they were up to. Always been too English and down to earth. My opinion has now changed, if only because ashrams come in all kinds and persuasions. In fact, many upper midwesterners spend many months of the year in in ashrams, but without knowing it. They call them lake-side cabins. We've now visited all kinds, from the intimate and modest to the large and populous, from rural retreats to centers of mass movements. Yesterday provided examples of both. In the morning we visited the Art of Living complex, which we can call an ashram. This is the 200 acre campus of the movements founded by the spiritual guru and humantarian leader Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. He is a type of figure common in Indian history/culture/religion, a person of considerable intelligence, much learning, intense charisma, a kind heart, soothing sprituality, and the look of a sage (i.e. long hair and beard). He first became famous for perfecting a type of meditative breathing, the Sudarshan Kriya; and then even more so for his worldwide humanitarian work, via his International Association for Human Values. He has millions of followers. We saw some of them. As luck would have it (he spends most of his time travelling) he was at the centre yesterday, and we joined a session in which he was talking to a group of several hundred young Indians. I was impressed by the clarity of his thinking and the unassuming gentleness of his temperament. His audience revered him. Little wonder that they do what humans have done throughout history to those they revere: they confer divinity upon them. To us he was indeed generous. He presented us with a fine drawing by a local artist to take back to St Olaf.
By contrast, our afternoon visit was to an explicitly commercial ashram, but one which conformed to the essential definition of an ashram as a place that fosters and protects spiritual well-being. It calls itself Soukya (from Sanskrit "Soukhyam" -the harmonious state of mind, body and spirit). In brief, it's an Holistic Health Centre, offering everything from Ayurveda to Unani, from Acupessure to Zero Balancing. If there is an Indian version of Homes and Gardens then Soukya must have been in it. In its luxury and grooming it is like the interior of a jewel box, without the lid. It extensive and attentive staff glide rather than walk, whisper rather than talk. In fact, speaking is discouraged. If you come as a "guest" (rooms start at about $500 a day) and do not wish to be disturbed, you can wear a label around your neck with a single word on it: Silence. It attracts the rich and famous, from polticians to royalty to celebrities. Why did we visit Soukya? Because like India as a whole it takes very seriously the unseen in human health and experience, the spiritual if you will. Which does not mean their fees are spiritual, far from it, but they also do extensive outreach into the nearby poorer communities, offering both subsidised and free treatment.
Out time at the ECC comes to an end this Saturday, when we leave for a few days in Delhi, a week's break in Thailand, and then onto to Hong Kong and mainland China. The ECC is a community of generous and affectionate people. Above all, I shall remember our main "handler," the Rev Paul Singh, Associate Director of the ECC, the person who has made all our arrangements, answered all our questions, accompanied us on all our excursions, and who in effect has given up a month of his life, and his family's, entirely for our benefit. Paul is from Kerala (site of Arundhati Roy' s the novel The God of Small Things, which we have read on this trip). He is, then, a south Indian, of fine, aquiline features, a midnight black complexion, a soft, rolling baritone voice, a flashing smile, and a temperament of sweet and patient equanimity. It is rare to meet such a good person.
If you've read this far you deserve a break. Do what we and our students do every day at 10:30 and 4:30: have a tea and biscuit break.
All the best-Jonathan
Summer in sourthern India seems to be over, for the moment. After two month of continuous sunshine, first in Egypt, and then, for the past three weeks, here at the Ecumenical Christian Centre in Whitefield, Bangeluru, the rain has come. There seems to be a huge whirlpool of cloud roiling around in the Indian Ocean, eyeing the Bay of Bengal, and we are on its frayed edges. But the campus of the ECC remains as idyllic as ever, a wondrously tranquil place after the stress, crush and noise of Cairo and a four-day stay in Mumbai. It is some thirty acres of a meticulously manicured tropical garden. Each day, early in the morning, every inch is swept by sari-ed women with whisk brooms. Each day, as we walk from our rooms across campus to the dining-room, we pass them sweeping up the heavy, flame-orange blossoms of tulip trees from off the grass and paths. The tulip trees are in fill bloom, as are the Indian Cork trees, whose tiny white scented flowers that float down to earth, and the Pink Poui. On that same walk to the dining-room, we pass one of many huge mango trees. In this one there lives a family Owlets (their official name), five in all, sometimes all perched on a single bough. If they are facing in the other direction, they swivel their heads 180 degrees and stare back at one in utter astonishment. Barbara spends much of her time tracking and sighting the 80+ species to be seen, and heard, on the campus. When the rain started, very early one morning, it fell on the parched dried leaves, and the dessicated pods and foliage scattered in the undergrowth. It sounded like liquid on a giant bowl of cereal--snap, crackle and pop. With it came many more mosquitos. Fortunately, we sleep under mosquito nets. This is like sleeping in a baby's crib. Early on, in an infantile flashback, I found myself searching in the middle of the night for a rattle.
Our classes, excursions and overall life here have been vivid, almost overwhelming. We have had lectures on most strains of Indian religion--Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Primal, Tribal--and Yoga, Festivals, Media, and so on and so forth. They have ranged from the lucid to the incomprehensible, from the structured to the free-floating, but always in a way that is distinctly Indian, full of subjective fervor. The cool and detached objectivity that we associate with academic discourse in the west is, for the most part, unknown over here, at least in the study of religion. We listen less to learned scholars than to true believers. Lectures usually start calmly, with the promise of anlaytic poise and balance. But gradually the pace gets faster, the tone higher, the message assertive. Thus, we have been led to believe that Jainism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Yoga and Dalit religion are, beyond question, all equally capable of saving the planet.
We have to work very hard for our excursions. If the ECC is a kind of bucolic paradise, the roads around Bengaluru (the new politically correct name for Bangalore) are a vehicular purgatory. This is because, as we already knew before coming here, the city is in the midst of an IT/building/development boom that has overwelmed its infrastructure, its roads in particular. Whitefield, whose name suggests a cosy colonial enclave, which at one time it probably was, has been engulfed in mammoth Tech Parks and new middle-class gated communities and high-rises. By the side of the ECC is a large lake. Or there used to be. At one time those living at the ECC could swim in it, fish in it, and even drink its water. But no longer. It is has been polluted beyond recovery by waste from a new hospital nearby, and throttled by weeds. To leave the ECC and journey any distance by bus is to face choked traffic, chaotic intersections, close encounter driving, and journies double or triple their former time.
But it is worth it. We have been to extraordinary cities and sites, temples and ashrams. For example, the great Hindu temple at Tiruvannamalia. The town is overlooked by Mount Arunachala, a place where supposedly the god Shiva manifested himself as a column of fire, the original lingam, and to which every year, as a result, during the November/December full moon, tens of thousands of pilgrims come to walk barefoot around the mountain. The Arunachala Temple was built mainly in the 11th century. We were taken into the inner sanctum to be blessed by one of the priests, a high-caste brahmin. His family had served in the temple for generations, and when neither of his elder brothers wanted to take over from their father, he did so. He had been trained as an accountant, but to become a priest was, he said, his fate. We filed barefoot through a series of darker and darker, narrower and narrower corridors, portals and rooms, deeper and deeper into the huge temple complex, until we reached the innermost shrine. It was cramped, airless, fiercely hot, smeared and scented with human oils, sweat, burning ghee and day-glow puja powders. The cool, motionless image of Shiva, in a recessed alcove, was festooned in ropes of flowers. All twenty-seven of us variously knelt, sat, stood and crouched where we could, dripping with perspiration. The priest, wearing the white thread of his office, his face striped with white and red paint, blessed each of us by name in rapid succession. The space was a spiritual blast furnace, a place of physical and psychic melt-down. We emerged into the open air again to be cooled and refreshed by the 90 degree temperature outside.
And then there was the Jain temple at Sravanabelagola. There we climbed the 614 steps carved out of a rock face (in the 10th century) up to the 57 foot high statue of the Jain hero Gomateshvana, sculpted out of a single block of rock, the largest male nude in the country. Beneath the heights of this mountain-top temple lay the plains of southern India, level, green and serene. The Jain reverence for life is limitless. Many wear a face masks to ensure they do not inhale, and kill, even the tiniest insect.
We visited Mahalibalipuram, south of Chennai (formerly Madras) where a thousand years ago Hindu artists carved a mass of exuberant friezes into bare rocks. Animals, gods, humans, and plants all crowd and jostle together in confusion and perpetual silence. On one sloping rock face there is precariously balanced a huge round boulder. It is named Krishna's butter-ball. But like so often in India the holy is undercut, or perhaps complemented, by the mundane (the name "butter-ball" to start with). Taking shelter from the hot sun in the shade of this colossal, dangerously unsteady boulder, was a group of contented goats, quite oblivious as to whether the rock would move (or melt).
I had always had a slight suspicion of ashrams. Never quite sure what they were up to. Always been too English and down to earth. My opinion has now changed, if only because ashrams come in all kinds and persuasions. In fact, many upper midwesterners spend many months of the year in in ashrams, but without knowing it. They call them lake-side cabins. We've now visited all kinds, from the intimate and modest to the large and populous, from rural retreats to centers of mass movements. Yesterday provided examples of both. In the morning we visited the Art of Living complex, which we can call an ashram. This is the 200 acre campus of the movements founded by the spiritual guru and humantarian leader Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. He is a type of figure common in Indian history/culture/religion, a person of considerable intelligence, much learning, intense charisma, a kind heart, soothing sprituality, and the look of a sage (i.e. long hair and beard). He first became famous for perfecting a type of meditative breathing, the Sudarshan Kriya; and then even more so for his worldwide humanitarian work, via his International Association for Human Values. He has millions of followers. We saw some of them. As luck would have it (he spends most of his time travelling) he was at the centre yesterday, and we joined a session in which he was talking to a group of several hundred young Indians. I was impressed by the clarity of his thinking and the unassuming gentleness of his temperament. His audience revered him. Little wonder that they do what humans have done throughout history to those they revere: they confer divinity upon them. To us he was indeed generous. He presented us with a fine drawing by a local artist to take back to St Olaf.
By contrast, our afternoon visit was to an explicitly commercial ashram, but one which conformed to the essential definition of an ashram as a place that fosters and protects spiritual well-being. It calls itself Soukya (from Sanskrit "Soukhyam" -the harmonious state of mind, body and spirit). In brief, it's an Holistic Health Centre, offering everything from Ayurveda to Unani, from Acupessure to Zero Balancing. If there is an Indian version of Homes and Gardens then Soukya must have been in it. In its luxury and grooming it is like the interior of a jewel box, without the lid. It extensive and attentive staff glide rather than walk, whisper rather than talk. In fact, speaking is discouraged. If you come as a "guest" (rooms start at about $500 a day) and do not wish to be disturbed, you can wear a label around your neck with a single word on it: Silence. It attracts the rich and famous, from polticians to royalty to celebrities. Why did we visit Soukya? Because like India as a whole it takes very seriously the unseen in human health and experience, the spiritual if you will. Which does not mean their fees are spiritual, far from it, but they also do extensive outreach into the nearby poorer communities, offering both subsidised and free treatment.
Out time at the ECC comes to an end this Saturday, when we leave for a few days in Delhi, a week's break in Thailand, and then onto to Hong Kong and mainland China. The ECC is a community of generous and affectionate people. Above all, I shall remember our main "handler," the Rev Paul Singh, Associate Director of the ECC, the person who has made all our arrangements, answered all our questions, accompanied us on all our excursions, and who in effect has given up a month of his life, and his family's, entirely for our benefit. Paul is from Kerala (site of Arundhati Roy' s the novel The God of Small Things, which we have read on this trip). He is, then, a south Indian, of fine, aquiline features, a midnight black complexion, a soft, rolling baritone voice, a flashing smile, and a temperament of sweet and patient equanimity. It is rare to meet such a good person.
If you've read this far you deserve a break. Do what we and our students do every day at 10:30 and 4:30: have a tea and biscuit break.
All the best-Jonathan