Diwali Day and Other Hindu Festivals

Many of us who share many traditions don't often stop to think about what holidays and festivals others celebrate. If we are not exposed to other views and other customs it may come to seem that without our usual calendar, there is nothing else out there in the world. Yet the calendar in many places is filled with holidays virtually unknown in the west.

Let's Know Hinduism: The Oldest Religion of Infinite Adaptability and Diversity by R. C. Dogra, Urmila Dogra is a simple and interesting book about the ways of India, especially the major festivals celebrated by Hindus. He writes that Hindus celebrate hundreds of festivals, many of them with spiritual and cultural importance. They often involve dance, food, ritual, devotions, processions and feeding the poor. He details most of the occasions observed by most Hindus.

In the month of October-November falls the Festival of Lamps, or Diwali/Deepavali. In some places the festival is two days or as many as five. Celebrating Lord Rama return from exile. For some Hindus, the occasion commemorates the victory of Dharma and Ahisma over injustice and violence. In many areas there are events commemorating various aspects of the scripture regarding Lord Rama and the Goddess Lakshmi. Here in the United States more and more, Diwali day is being celebrated in communities small and large. Areas where there are growing numbers of  Indians are likely to have observances. It is also customary to wish friends and neighbors, Happy Diwali Day!

Today I Read, The Dilemma of Diversity

"Parents worry that their kids' beliefs will be influenced by exposure to other faiths. They needn't be." Sacred Ground by Eboo Patel

Today I read something really remarkable, an essay written by Eboo Patel, educated at the University of Illinois and Oxford, England, whose book is Sacred Ground: Pluralism, Prejudice and the Promise of America. In his essay he describes an American scene: A woman goes into an American hospital to deliver a baby. She enters an institution founded by Jewish philanthropy, with a Muslim physician attending her, while a Hindu physician administers anesthesia, and a Catholic Christian woman is assigned her nurse. Think about that a moment.

What joins all these persons together is their commitment to care, to care for persons who have  medical, physical needs, and possibly to attend to other emotional or spiritual needs as well. In America this scene is real and many of us have already experienced such compassionate care by those persons of faith who minister as doctors and other medical professionals. Because America is a Pluralistic nation as founded and announced by our Constitution and Bill of Rights. We may really be more defined by Pluralism than by Democracy.

In his book, Sacred Ground: Pluralism, Prejudice and the Promise of America, Patel poses a simple question, "am I just preaching to the choir?" While he initially interpreted this as some sort of rebuke, further reflection has led him to a different thought. Embodying the Social Change Theory, he writes that the issue is: less defining the problem and more identifying those who hold solutions, and assisting them in promoting those methods and ideas for social change.

He continues his thoughts by relating his impressions of a visit to Chicago by the 14th Dalai Lama. He was definitely "preaching to the choir. The Dalai Lama can obviously assemble a pretty large choir, but still he was strategic about how he went about it." He assembled a group of interfaith leaders in Chicago for a panel discussion; in other words "he had created a religiously diverse choir." The Dalai Lama, as some may know, has become active in the teaching of interfaith literacy. His recent book is titled, Towards a True Kinship of Faith: How the World's Religions Can Come Together. He emphasizes the ability of building relationships across differences. He inspires others to do the same.

Patel also tells a bit of the history of Cordoba, Spain during the Early-Medieval period of the Moorish Invasion, a time when Muslim people of North Africa came onto the Iberian Continent and successfully colonized it. In the ultimately peacefully co-existence of people of different faiths, Spain carved out regions where Moors predominated and intermarried with the native population, thus a peace established itself. Today the Moors are recognized for their genius and inspiration that energized Spanish society at large.
It was this attitude, Patel writes, which transplanted easily to the American shores, brought first by the Conquistadors and their colonies along the Gulf of Mexico, from Florida to California. He writes how he realized that because of active cooperation these communities did thrive, rather than a modern attitude of oh, so politically correct 'co-existence of lukewarm tolerance.' Finally he concludes that Cordoba predicted America.

So it is indeed Pluralism, the active cooperation and participation in the affairs of American society which defines this nation, concludes Patel. Reading his book in its entirety sets one to thinking about  just how.

Satprem, the Age of Adventures

While Sri Aurobindo may have been a highly educated and trained Greek scholar, Satprem was a Frenchman, a Catholic, born Bernard  Enginger, who participated with the French Maquis movement during World War II; as a young man he also was in the company of the infamous French Surrealists (and the overlapping movement, Existentialism) such as Gide and Malreaux. Mirra Alfassa, later known as the Mother to him, was more than a little acquainted with these ideas and these Frenchmen. She herself, from a small child had trusted her intuition in all matters and was highly perceptive as an adult. The Surrealist movement centered in Paris, her hometown, was something with which she also held acquaintance, an extension of her other natural inclinations. The poets and writers who made the core of this salon are extensive in 20th century French Literature.

Many believed that Alfassa could "read minds," that she was Clairvoyant. She, herself, was without doubt of the importance of her perceptive abilities. Her interests lay in auto-writing, the Dada and  those persons who were influenced by the new social study of psychology and the mind, especially the unconscious mind. Indeed when she first arrived in Pondicherry and found her way into the presence of Aurobindo, she impressed upon him with the activity of her mind and its sheer agility. Upon making the acquaintance of Enginger, later whom she dubbed, Satprem, meaning "true love," she shared parts of her life with him, especially after the passing of Aurobindo in December 1950. Satprem was about age 27 at this time.

Satprem, formerly a French colonial, posted to the French concession of Pondicherry, first came into contact with Auroville while there. He was enchanted; his previous Maquis idealism was re-ignited upon his discovery of the small Auroville community in 1953. Leaving the French Foreign Service, he engaged himself fully with the community, especially with the Mother, for whom he declared himself devoted and completely at her service. A skilled writer, Satprem came to write many of the Mother's suggestions, teaching and ideas into articles and books, published first in French.

However all was not well in Auroville; in 1973, a short time before the Mother's passing, another group of Aurovillians abruptly barred Satprem from seeing the Mother. Later they confiscated many of his manuscripts and assailed his intentions. It seems there was much political intrigue within the Auroville community.

As for his contributions to the general knowledge and fame of Sri Aurobindo, Satprem's participation is without doubt. Dedicating his book, The Adventure of Consciousness to the Mother, Satprem commences  by saying that its publication is intended to acquaint the western reader with the most practical side of the master, Sri Aurobindo... to lead the reader to find the perfect harmony, inner freedom and outer mastery... He writes that  "the age of adventure is over... children in front of death, living beings who do not know very well how they live or where they are going... as always... our best opportunities... leading us to greater light.... before the last adventure that remains for us to explore, ourselves." paraphrased
His book covers topics such as "An Accomplished Westerner," "The Silent Mind," "Consciousness," The Psychic Center," "Sleep and Death," "Oneness," "The Secret," and "The Transformation," all of which are elements of Sri Aurbindo teachings and the work of the Mother, who first relayed them to Satprem.

Feminists, Unsettled Lives

"Then all of them together, crying loudly, moved to the malevolent shore that awaits anyone who has no fear of God." -- Inferno, Canto III by Dante

In his belief, born of experience first as a cloistered monk and then as a Jungian therapist, Thomas Moore comes now to realize that "what was really at the root of those unsettled lives was religion... I didn't always realize the extent to which spiritual issues were playing a central role... The obvious spiritual problems had to do with disturbing experiences surrounding religion in childhood." In his book, The Soul's Religion, Moore writes "in these ordinary, troubled lives, spirit and psyche were closely connected. In other cases, spiritual issues were more subtle and required a broadening of the idea of spirituality."

Today, society to the extent that it acknowledges religion at all, sees itself "in relation to an image of a "gentleman God," the grandfather and patriarch." This pushes the feminine into the shadows, hidden beneath the surface of everyday life. Neglected feminine nature in the world is often felt in oppressive and mysterious forces that may make living an everyday life almost impossible. For the feminine energy, as her balance, masculine energy needs recognition for composure in daily living. Many today neglect, even deny the feminine nature; they are hostile to its alleged weak frailty. Yet many seek its compensations in a professional life that includes care-taking in fields like nursing, elementary school teaching, social work; merely doing this everyday, external work doesn't solve an interior, spiritual lack or need for the feminine energy. There are, Moore notes, countless females who mother and nurture all those they contact almost to death. We often seek to escape them. Allowing the feminine, the Marian, into daily life as a spiritual role or guide "is an effective way to heal" the lack of a divine mother in a man or woman's life. She takes her proper place as an 'avatar' rather than a lived out female image. Here, she is spirit; she is soul.

"In matters of soul and spirit, things are not always what they might seem." Moore observes, "I have come to understand sexism and violence against women as a spiritual issue, as a failure to appreciate the feminine mysteries" which no amount of nudity, ogling, looking or voyeuristic regard will alleviate. The deepest interior, which cannot be seen, can only be sensed when the soul-heart is at issue. "Today many spiritual passions are disguised in politics, war, money, sex or athletics." Even so, most secular, enlightenment outlets for spiritual passion are inadequate because they address merely a surface issue, meaning that recognition is admitted only indirectly, often unconsciously, so we don't often even grant that they are religious. These modern, secular, indirect forms "siphon off spiritual steam, leaving unsatisfied religious needs."

This loss of recognition of the spiritual, the religious, as an attitude, a way of life, a lifestyle, leads to great degrees of loss, of illness, of alienation in modern life. Some have written of the "sick soul." Many relationships, families and marriages fail "because we now treat them as sociological constructions or psychological arrangements, partnerships, rather than as holy mysteries. As a result we continue to crave religion of the deepest kind, often in disguised form; yet so much of what we try is inadequate, "only increasing the craving and emptiness" of our deepest selves, writes Moore.

In maturity, spiritual growth, like growth in any other area of our life, renders to us a "quest and search." What we discover is a deepening and a broadening of our self; we are not obliged to a single path, our perceptions deepen, wisdom accrues. We often discover paradoxes at work. How to combine apparent opposites into one coherent, whole is our challenge and our grace. In doing so, we find the gifts of our life.