Personal reflection and spiritual discovery during an India pilgrimage

1 Reflection on India Pilgrimage Part I Introduction The themes that emerged for me during the travel course were quite personal and unexpected. In truth, I did not anticipate exactly what form this experience would take: I knew that I just wanted to be open to it. I was not fearful or worried about leaving comforts behind. If I anything, I was excited and curious to see this side of the world and, by immersing myself into it, developing a closer connection to the Divine. What is it about India that fascinates so many people and makes them feel like they are closer to God? Clooney states that in India, “the beginning always follows on something that has gone before. One must look within, not to one who stands beyond us, in order to find the meaning in life.”[footnoteRef:2] Perhaps that is the answer: in India, one is surrounding by so many exotic wonders that one is compelled to reflect, meditate, and contemplate on God’s design, beauty and wisdom. This was certainly the case with me—but I was also surprised at the themes that emerged for me personally throughout this travel course: the fact of my age, the question of living, the thought of dying, and the nature of being. I spent a great deal of time reflecting on these themes while deepening my sense of the Divine. [2: Francis X. Clooney, Hindu Wisdom for All God’s Children (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2005), 4.]

Age and Self My age was never an issue for me: that is to say, I never gave it any thought. Surprisingly, it was brought to my attention more during this pilgrimage than ever before in my life. The reason is not surprising: I was among many younger persons who frequently told me that they admired someone my age taking the leap and making this journey. While I could appreciate the sentiment and respect that they were conveying, it got me thinking and somewhat troubled me: I was startled by the apparentness of my age—by the fact that I was older than many of my young peers on this journey; that I had more experience to reflect upon, more of my life behind me than perhaps in front of me. I did not have the same youthful energy and spirit they had (though I was definitely not out of shape or indolent). But I recognized my own physical limitations and was quite exhausted by the end of the travels. The fact of my age made me think more about myself than I anticipated doing. I had half expected to be immersed in the lives of others, in the culture of India, in the unexpected and unfamiliar. What I found was that I was often confronted with the fact of myself. This is perfectly in keeping with what Clooney describes as the Self, that Essence that is in the Beginning: “Once the original self becomes aware of its identity, it is perplexed by its solitude and begins to battle mixed feelings.”[footnoteRef:3] Age was thus a theme for me because it was a physical representation of the self that I had never really considered before. I had always accepted myself as I was. I was an only child and have always been quite comfortable in solitude. Yet in India, I was experiencing a brotherhood and a fellowship—not one that was foreign by way of culture and geography—but one that was made of people from my own homeland. While I did not initially feel different from them, I was different to them. They saw me in a way that I had not ever really thought of myself before. This new sense of Self was tied to my new sense of Age. [3: Francis X. Clooney, Hindu Wisdom for All God’s Children (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2005), 4.]

This theme reoccurred for me again and again, especially as the pilgrimage wore on and the experiences left their mark—such as my experience with Delhi Belly (sickness of stomach)—or when the group partook of dancing one evening. I was content to sit out this fellowship, but I was aware of the circumstances that kept me from engaging in it. This sense of Self is something that is important to gain when considering the Divine because we are always seeking the Divine from our own position of personhood. If we are not knowing our Personhood or who we our—our Self—then we are like a lost person trying to obtain directions to a destination, receiving instructions and directions on how to get there but finding them inapplicable because we do not know where we are in the first place. Knowing the Self is the first step towards being able to know God. Indeed, this doctrine has been passed down to us from centuries ago. Socrates made it the point of his teaching in Athens so many long years ago—and it is refreshing to think that it comes up again here in the context of this Indian pilgrimage. What is also interesting is that as we age, our sense of self may change, too—or our true self may change and we may be unaware of the transformation. Living The theme of living emerged over the course of this pilgrimage as well. The concept of living can be defined as the experiences that we gain during our lifetime. However, there is another way in which the concept can be defined—not by what we do externally in the world but rather by what we do internally within ourselves. In this latter sense, living can refer to the life of the soul, or to one’s spiritual life. Discerning between a life that is enjoyed through the senses and a life that is pursued through the mind and through meditation on the Divine is important because it is this difference that really matters most. As Kottler notes, “you get exactly what you are willing to pay for–in life or in travels. If what you want to pay for is luxury and convenience that is what you will get. If, on the other hand, you are willing to invest some time, energy, hard work, commitment, and planning, you will create an altogether different sort of journey.”[footnoteRef:4] This means that life in either sense depends upon how much you invest into it. It is like investing in anything else. If you invest in stocks, your return will be proportional to what you put in. If you put in a lot, or risk a lot, your return may be great. If you risk nothing, invest nothing, your return will be nothing. This is true in both the everyday life that we lead through the senses and in the spiritual life that we maintain in our hearts and minds and souls. [4: Jeffrey Kottler, Travel that Can Change Your Life (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1997), 124.]

A lot of times people might invest more in their sensory life, the physical life—the experiential life—because they anticipate that the reward will be great, the return immediate and exciting. But in the end, this type of life is ephemeral and fleeting. The life that we should seek is in the eternal and it is approached by way of the mind through prayer and meditation and study and focus. The beauty of Life, however, is that it unites both the experiential and the spiritual. This example was everywhere in India: whether in the suffering that people endure for the sake of a spiritual good or the prayers that were devoutly said as a part of the everyday public spiritual life. In other words, there was unity between the everyday life of the senses and the interior life of the soul. It was not as if two lives were being led by people—one in the day, in the world, and the other on days set aside for religious observance. Religious observance was part of the culture of India, no matter what religion you were seeing—whether it was the Christian, Hindu or Buddhist religion. There were temples and shrines and churches and all manner of prayers being said and life being lived in a way that tied the practice of patience and perseverance to a spiritual aim and the ultimate life-source above. In this way, the concept of living is something that can be thought of both practically and theologically. Since God is the source of all life, we can think of our daily lives as being a reflection of the Divine life so long as we orient ourselves towards the life that God wants us to lead. Knowing what that life is and how it is explained to us by our faith and through our studying is crucial to truly knowing God and experiencing the ultimate Life in eternity. Dying In India, there is also the sense that death is part of life. Death is not something that we are accustomed to thinking about—but this theme emerged for me during the travel course as I began thinking more about myself and my life and my age. I reflected on the youthfulness of those around me and then thought about my own place in my life’s journey and wondered whether I was at a mid-point in the journey or perhaps closer to the end than to the beginning. Having this thought, it is impossible not to begin to reflect on mortality and what it means to die. In India, death seems to be accepted as part of life and the various religions all have their own take on what this meaning of dying is. The Hindus, for example, believe in reincarnation: a person dies but his soul does not die. Instead it comes back in another form based on the actions the person engaged in during his life. If his actions were good, his next life will reflect that and he will come back as something or someone even better. If his life was bad, his next life will be worse. The goal according to the Hindu religion is to reach the perfect state which essentially is union with the Divine. This goal of being united with the Divine is also the Christian goal, but the concept of reincarnation is not accepted in the Christian religion. Rather, Christians believe that we all have one life to live and that we should be uniting our lives to Christ so that we can spend eternity with Him in the next world. We are judged when we die and brought into heaven or cast away into Hell. There are no do-overs, so it is important that we get it right the first time around and follow the path that Christ teaches us to follow. For Buddhists, death is actually part of life and life is like the art of dying. Life is about renunciation of one’s attachments, one’s feelings, one’s sense of self. One aims to reach a state of nirvana—a state in which nothing matters except that one does not harm any other person. This goal is what drives the Buddhist to do good works: doing good for others and being mindful of others helps one in the art of dying and in the practice of renunciation. There are aspects of this thought in Christianity as well, because the doctrines of the Christian religion focus on renouncing the world and giving up attachments that might cause us to lose companionship with God. This ability to reconcile life with death is very important because it helps one to live in simplicity. The children that we met in India helped us to realize the power of this simplicity. For whatever reason, their innocence and their willingness to come up and sit alongside and be near us gives one a kind of joy at being embraced by them. They do not fear the boundaries that we normally associate with personal space. The concept of personal space is almost non-existent in India. This is another fascinating revelation and perhaps it alone is what especially makes one’s sense of death so palpable. It is though you are continually dying to yourself in India and through this process of dying you are finding the Divine life within yourself, just as is recommended in the Christian doctrines: he who loses his life shall find it (Mt 10:39). Being One of my personal reflections on this trip was: “I need to concentrate on being in the moment”—and I had this on Day 19. I was still troubled by the chatter in my mind about my age and my place among my young peers and questions about whether or not I had wasted my life, squandered it. They say that young people always imagine they will be young forever. Yet, in truth, this feeling never really goes away, even as you age. Here I am twice the age of my young peers yet I never think about not being young. In many ways I still feel young. What is this obsession with youth anyway? God does not ask us to be young—what He does ask is that we be like little children. Children grow and become adults, but Christ reminds us that there is a purity and innocence about children that we must possess in adulthood so that we can be near Him, Who is purity and innocence itself. If we do not fill our hearts and minds with this type of purity and innocence, we will not be attracted to the personification of it in Christ. Thus, the sense of “being” that emerged in this travel course as a major theme is related to that idea of being like a child in innocence and purity, in a willingness to experience life and be near others—a curiosity that is driven by a goodness of will. Age really has nothing to do with it. Being in the moment and appreciating every moment as a gift from God, because it truly is, is part of this idea of “being,” and it is something that struck me as significant during this travel course. But what else is meant by “being”? Another of my reflections from this same day—day nineteen of the pilgrimage—focused on defining Being for myself. I wrote: “I am having a GREAT time and learning about Being. I have learned that having and being are 2 modes and determine my purpose in life. My observations show me that the reason the Indians are the ‘happiest people on earth’ is because the majority of them practice ‘Being’—because ‘Having’ is really not an option for them. If I concentrate on being will that increase my capacity for love, reason, and possibly make me more productive in a compassionate way?” This question has given me much food for thought. I love the idea that if we focus on just being then we are not obsessed with the distractions that come from “having”—as in always trying to have a good time, or have this or that comfort, or have our own way. When we just focus on being and being one with everything, we rid ourselves of the distractions that fill us with worry and with doubt and fear and irrational concerns. I believe that this is one reason why I have experienced so much chatter in my mind recently about my age. It is a distraction from the truth that is becoming manifested to me here: I should be focusing my energy on being—on being here in the moment and showing love to others—because that is the ultimate point of all this life. To be or not to be, that is the question, as Shakespeare once said. I understand this idea much more deeply now. To be is the ultimate aim, and being is rooted in the action of love, which itself is ultimately rooted in the Divine. Thus, being is connected to the Divine because the Divine is ultimately the truest expression of the essence of Being. After all, did not God say, “I AM who am” (Ex 3:14)? Part II The four themes described in Part I may now be considered in light of the authors of the texts used in this course. For me, these authors bring both clarity and new questions. Age and Self Clooney states that “fear and loneliness compel the self to comprehend itself from new angles, and then to look outside, to see if there is something more than itself.”[footnoteRef:5] This makes a great deal of sense especially in light of what I was feeling and experiencing during the travel course. I do not know that I necessarily experienced fear so much as anxiety and doubt, but the sense of wanting to comprehend myself from a new angle was definitely involved in the process. I also wanted to look outside as Clooney has suggested and see what it was that I needed to understand to better provide context and stability to my thinking. [5: Francis X. Clooney, Hindu Wisdom for All God’s Children (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2005), 4.]

Dixie and Eisenstadt emphasize the aspect of the Social Gospel in their take on what Howard Thurman learned during his pilgrimage to India.[footnoteRef:6] This reading provides an alternate take on the theme of age and self in that there is not so much a need to see the self anew as there is a need to see the world anew—i.e., through the eyes of the Gospel and the social doctrine that Christ promulgated in His teachings. This is a very concrete and alternative way of thinking about this concept of self in the sense that it takes away the intense focus on self and one’s hang-ups about oneself (such as aging) and redirects that intense focus towards others so that one can see their needs and see ways to help others as Christ did when He walked the Earth. [6: Quinton Dixie and Peter Eisenstadt, Visions of a Better World: Howard Thurman’s Pilgrimage to India and the Origins of African American Nonviolence (Beacon Press, 2011), 121.]

This latter approach to the theme, however, can come into some difficulty, especially in a place like India where Hinduism plays a central role in the culture of the country. Of course, Christianity and Islam also play a role in the country’s culture, so how one goes about promulgating the Social Gospel might be a cause of conflict for those in one’s community who do not share a belief in that Gospel. As Muthuraj Swamy points out, “if biblical texts such as John 14.6 and Acts 4.12 (salvation comes only through Jesus Christ) are taken literally, they imply the superiority of one religion over the other and thus lead to tensions between religious adherents. This is also the same case with the concept of jihad in Islam.”[footnoteRef:7] Attempting to enact a social doctrine that is the opposite of the social doctrine embraced by the community could be a recipe for disaster and could cause more enmity that fellowship. [7: Muthuraj Swamy, The Problem with Interreligious Dialogue: Plurality, Conflict and Elitism in Hindu- Christian-Muslim Relations (Bloomsbury, 2016), 111.]

These three perspectives agree, however, on one main point, which is that there needs to be some consideration before action. We need to stop and think and reflect, and put ourselves in other’s shoes, whether we are looking inward at ourselves from their perspective or at them from their own perspective. My perspective on this theme, ultimately, is that there should be some inward looking and some outward looking, but that in the end we have to try to put ourselves in God’s shoes, because God’s perspective is the one that matters most at the end of the day. How does God want us to see ourselves? How does He want us to see others? How does He want us to act? These are the important questions that not only relate to this theme but to all the other themes as well. As Clooney notes, the higher self—the Brahmin self—is important to keep in mind. The story he tells is of Uddalaka who teaches his son of the underlying self, or the higher self—the Brahmin self—and repeats, “You are that!”—“i.e., you are that highest reality, Brahmin.”[footnoteRef:8] This is like keeping in mind the ideal self, which should ultimately be a reflection of God. If we want to reflect the light of God through ourselves, it is appropriate to remind ourselves that we should be that ideal self and so I must say I did find myself saying, “I am that! I am that!” on day nineteen of the trip. I went for a walk and repeated this phrase over and over to myself to remind myself that I should strive to be the ideal self and not be so worried about the chatter going on in my head, which serves to distract one’s attention from the Brahmin that we should try to be. [8: Francis X. Clooney, Hindu Wisdom for All God’s Children (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2005), 18.]

Living Clooney describes for us how we can learn from India and the Hindus on what it means to live day to day in one’s life. He describes this understanding in the following terms: “The endeavor to learn from India leads us beyond the boundaries of our own tradition, how we have already known and named and encountered God. We gain more from this wisdom than we give in the search; we become more than we could have been before. In the end, we may find ourselves thinking and imagining God in terms we had not known previously, terms neither entirely our own nor entirely borrowed from somewhere else. We have consumed both the old and the new, and they have become part of us.”[footnoteRef:9] Out of this embrace of old and new concepts, comes a new approach to living, according to Clooney. I cannot say I am entirely comfortable with this concept as it does not seem to be rooted to a particular doctrine but rather open to whatever is blowing in the wind. The new, for example, might be something decidedly anti-God—something that is there to distract us from God. I find that it is better and safer to meditate and pray and ask for God to reveal Himself so that we can better know Him and understand His will. [9: Francis X. Clooney, Hindu Wisdom for All God’s Children (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2005), 15.]