My Amritapuri Experience: Part 13

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Continued from Part 12...

 

After a hiatus of a few weeks, the pesky/friendly neighborhood insect (a

glowworm, yours truly!) flits across your screen once again. The delay was a

function of business (work and family chores) at some times and plain laziness

at other times. I must also admit to being thrown off-track by Sister

Premarupa's request for clarification after my pot shot at the practice of

Western devotees taking Indian spiritual names in Part 12. Left to my own

devices, I would probably have done a hit-and-run but now I that I have been

called to account I have to come up with something superior: Obfuscation ?

Explanation? Damage Control? I could not narrow down between these choices so I

decided to do a bit of everything. What follows is my pot pourri, 'aviyal' for

the Malayalees.

 

First a few words on the generalization that I made and those that I will make

now in defence or elucidation of that first one. The reality is that people,

myself included, tend to make generalizations - "Westerners are like this,

Indians are like that" and other statements of that ilk. This is not necessarily

something that brings Global Understanding & World Peace any closer but it is a

human tendency. Stereotypes, where accurate, are usually constructed with a

kernel of truth surrounded by layers of extrapolation. A stereotype may provide

a reasonably accurate description of a class of people in a limited context but

individuals are almost never described 100% by a stereotype. In other words,

stereotypes are good descriptors of the average and poor descriptors of

individual data points. Confused? Well that means I have attained at least one

of my objectives!

 

What I have just talked about - accuracy, is just part of the story. One third

of the story, to be really precise. There is more to expressing a view than mere

veracity. Let me explain. I remember a message from one of those feel-good,

spiritual emails that someone forwarded to my mailbox a while ago. You know the

kind? Powerpoint slideshows with nifty spiritual messages featuring soft-focus

angels and pretty floral arrangements in the background. Well I remember one

such slide that stuck in my head: Before you voice an opinion ask yourself

whether it is (a) true (b) necessary, and, © kind. A critical self-appraisal

suggests to me that while I may have scored on (a), I probably erred with (b)

and © when I made my sweeping statement. And therefore, I think an apology is

in order. To Sister Premarupa and all other Western brothers and sisters who

were injured by my broad, unnecessary and unkind barb, I offer heartfelt apology

for any hurt I may have caused. On reading Sister Premarupa's account of how she

came to acquire her Indian spiritual name I realized that the act was imbued

with deep personal significance for her and also bound up with intense feelings

and that I had basically played the role of a bull in a china shop.

 

Whew! It is a relief to get that off my chest. I confess that I was a little

oppressed by the thought that my little poke in the (Western) ribs may have been

insensitive. I guess that more than anything else, is what really kept me away

all these days from the list/group. I do not think that I am blessed with enough

self-control to promise reliably that such sins will not recur; the best that

can be hoped for is that the circle of my stupidities contracts and that the

group's forgiveness expands over time. I seek your continued indulgence, dear

brothers and sisters!

 

Now on to some of the social and spiritual implications of the process of

acculturation I referred to in the previous episode. The social first. Name

changing is but a subset of a larger project - the effort to adapt to or blend

or identify with a different culture. The larger project of adaptation, which is

something that many of us (especially those whose lives have a greater interface

with foreign cultures) are engaged in, to varying degrees, is really rooted in

the question of IDENTITY. People may undertake these transformations for

material or spiritual reasons. Brother Keval provided a hilarious example of the

former - "I am Devendra but you can call me Dave"! Since I aim to restrict my

discussion to the spiritual I do not intend to inquire too deeply into that

particular category ie. the Westernization of Indians for social and material

reasons. Rather I expect to take a look at the Indianization or Hinduization of

Western devotees since that has more salience from a spiritual standpoint.

However, even for devotees, such shifts, irrespective of whether they are driven

by material or spiritual reasons, have undeniable consequences in the social

sphere that are worth examining. The practice of taking spiritual names is not

very common among non-monastic Indian devotees, as far as I know, so I plan to

leave that out of the discussion as well.

 

Some among you have already touched upon some of the obvious limitations of

these attempts to slip under the skin of an alternate culture. For instance, you

cannot use your spiritual name as freely as you might like outside the spiritual

community to which you belong. At work, or even among family the resort to alien

nomenclature and custom might give rise to reactions ranging from benign wonder

("What planet is he/she from?") to active hostility ("Destroy the heathen!").

While I have not undertaken anything as radical as a name-change, I could cite

one example in illustration. My use in these fora of "Dear Brothers/Sisters" as

the preferred form of address represents something of an acquired culture. Prior

to my 'spiritualization', I was not in the habit of using this kind of address.

My use of this address is however limited to this setting; I would not dream of

using it with my colleagues in the office for instance. If I did, they would

surely think I am totally nuts, even the Indians among them.

 

Even on this list/group, my first applications of this cultural change felt

stilted and contrived. As I persisted in the habit, however, I found over time

that I became more comfortable with the usage. Oddly enough, there was more to

it than just becoming comfortable with the usage; what began as an artificial

device ended up having a real effect in terms of influencing my feelings towards

this community. I began to feel more brotherly love. That actually brings me to

a point that I should be making when the discussion moves from the social

implications to the spiritual ramifications of attempts to redefine

self-identity to meet the spiritual purpose: sometimes the tail can wag the dog.

In my case, what started as an empty ritual ended up changing my real-world

perspective in a small way.

 

Coming back to the social implications, it must be stressed that identity

formation or redefinition is an activity that requires the expenditure of

energy. Even Indians, snugly ensconced in their own culture, need to expend a

certain quantum of energy to maintain their identity but those from Western or

other cultures who seek to effect a crossover must necessarily expend a greater

amount of energy to break with old habits and acquire new ones. Whether it is

worth the deal is a question that can only be answered by the individual seeker,

in the light of his/her own situation.

 

As an objective matter, since discontent provides the impetus to change, it is

often the case that Westerners who cross over to Indian culture are alienated

from their source traditions for reasons, good or bad. I guess the same could be

said for Hindus who convert to Christianity or Islam. However the reigning

orthodoxy of the Semitic religions does impose a certain pressure for conformity

upon the new arrivals that is largely absent from outsiders making the

transition towards Sanatana Dharma since the architecture of the latter is based

on a version of the 'open systems' concept. In other words, the gradient is very

gentle in the case of the Western-to-Eastern transition; it is possible for a

Westerner to imbibe the Hindu ethos in bite-sized nibbles at a pace that is

convenient.

 

The point to take away in this context is that the identity project is charged

with a certain amount of tension. In order to adopt the customs of an alternate

culture one is required to repudiate, however mildly, the customs of the native

culture. The process therefore may be described as exothermic (to borrow a term

from chemistry) ie. heat-generating. When actuated by the lofty goal of

spiritual transcendence, the project is well worth taking on as the seeker's ego

sublimes in the heat of transformation. But when the project is guided purely or

primarily by the social imperative then there is a risk that one may be seared

by the heat. In its extreme versions, the process can result not in

transcendence but in the substitution of the individual ego by the group or

collective ego with a net increase in egoism.

 

To be continued in Part 14…

 

 

 

Om Amriteshwaryai Namah

 

fg

 

 

 

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