thing--right in the hub of the wheel--not out at the edges where all the wild whirling takes
place, where you get can frayed and crazy. The hub of calmness--that's your heart. That's
where God lives within you. So stop looking for answers in the world. Just keep coming
back to that center and you'll always find peace."
Nothing has ever made more sense to me, spiritually speaking, than this idea. It works for
me. And if I ever find anything that works better, I assure you--I will use it.
I have many friends in New York who are not religious people. Most, I would say. Either
they fell away from the spiritual teachings of their youth or they never grew up with any
God to begin with. Naturally, some of them are a bit freaked out by my newfound efforts
to reach holiness. Jokes are made, of course. As my friend Bobby quipped once while he
was trying to fix my computer: "No offense to your aura, but you still don't know shit
about downloading software." I roll with the jokes. I think it's all funny, too. Of course it
is.
What I'm seeing in some of my friends, though, as they are aging, is a longing to have
something to believe in. But this longing chafes against any number of obstacles,
including their intellect and common sense. Despite all their intellect, though, these
people still live in a world that careens about in a series of wild and devastating and
completely nonsensical lurches. Great and horrible experiences of either suffering or joy
occur in the lives of all these people, just as with the rest of us, and these
mega-experiences tend to make us long for a spiritual context in which to express either
lament or gratitude, or to seek understanding. The problem is--what to worship, whom topray to?
I have a dear friend whose first child was born right after his beloved mother died. After
this confluence of miracle and loss, my friend felt a desire to have some kind of sacred
place to go, or some ritual to perform, in order to sort through all the emotion. My friend
was a Catholic by upbringing, but couldn't stomach returning to the church as an adult.
("I can't buy it anymore," he said, "knowing what I know.") Of course, he'd be
embarrassed to become a Hindu or a Buddhist or something wacky like that. So what
could he do? As he told me, "You don't want to go cherry-picking a religion."
Which is a sentiment I completely respect except for the fact that I totally disagree. I
think you have every right to cherry-pick when it comes to moving your spirit and
finding peace in God. I think you are free to search for any metaphor whatsoever which
will take you across the worldly divide whenever you need to be transported or comforted.
It's nothing to be embarrassed about. It's the history of mankind's search for holiness. If
humanity never evolved in its exploration of the divine, a lot of us would still be
worshipping golden Egyptian statues of cats. And this evolution of religious thinking
does involve a fair bit of cherry-picking. You take whatever works from wherever you
can find it, and you keep moving toward the light.
The Hopi Indians thought that the world's religions each contained one spiritual thread,
and that these threads are always seeking each other, wanting to join. When all the
threads are finally woven together they will form a rope that will pull us out of this dark
cycle of history and into the next realm. More contemporarily, the Dalai Lama has
repeated the same idea, assuring his Western students repeatedly that they needn't
become Tibetan Buddhists in order to be his pupils. He welcomes them to take whatever
ideas they like out of Tibetan Buddhism and integrate these ideas into their own religious
practices. Even in the most unlikely and conservative of places, you can find sometimes
this glimmering idea that God might be bigger than our limited religious doctrines have
taught us. In 1954, Pope Pius XI, of all people, sent some Vatican delegates on a trip to
Libya with these written instructions: "Do NOT think that you are going among Infidels.
Muslims attain salvation, too. The ways of Providence are infinite."
But doesn't that make sense? That the infinite would be, indeed . . . infinite? That even
the most holy amongst us would only be able to see scattered pieces of the eternal picture
at any given time? And that maybe if we could collect those pieces and compare them, a
story about God would begin to emerge that resembles and includes everyone? And isn't
our individual longing for transcendence all just part of this larger human search for
divinity? Don't we each have the right to not stop seeking until we get as close to the
source of wonder as possible? Even if it means coming to India and kissing trees in the
moonlight for a while?
That's me in the corner, in other words. That's me in the spotlight. Choosing my religion.
71717171My flight leaves India at four in the morning, which is typical of how India works. I
decide not to go to sleep at all that night, but to spend the whole evening in one of the
meditation caves, in prayer. I'm not a late-night person by nature, but something in me
wants to stay awake for these last hours at the Ashram. There are many things in my life
I've stayed up all night to do--to make love, to argue with someone, to drive long
distances, to dance, to cry, to worry (and sometimes all those things, in fact, in the course
of one night)--but I've never sacrificed sleep for a night of exclusive prayer. Why not
now?
I pack my bag and leave it by the temple gate, so I can be ready to grab it and go when
the taxi arrives before dawn. And then I walk up the hill, I go into the meditation cave
and I sit. I'm alone in there, but I sit where I can see the big photograph of Swamiji, my
Guru's master, the founder of this Ashram, the long-gone lion who is somehow still here.
I close my eyes and let the mantra come. I climb down that ladder into my own hub of
stillness. When I get there, I can feel the world halt, the way I always wanted it to halt
when I was nine years old and panicking about the relentlessness of time. In my heart, the
clock stops and the calendar pages quit flying off the wall. I sit in silent wonder at all I
understand. I am not actively praying. I have become a prayer.
I can sit here all night.
In fact, I do.
I don't know what alerts me when it's time to go meet my taxi, but after several hours of
stillness, something gives me a nudge, and when I look at my watch it's exactly time to
go. I have to fly to Indonesia now. How funny and strange. So I stand up and bow before
the photograph of Swamiji--the bossy, the marvelous, the fiery. And then I slide a piece
of paper under the carpet, right below his image. On the paper are the two poems I wrote
during my four months in India. These are the first real poems I've ever written. A
plumber from New Zealand encouraged me to try poetry for once--that's why it happened.
One of these poems I wrote after having been here only a month. The other, I just wrote
this morning.
In the space between the two poems, I have found acres of grace.
72727272
Two Poems from an Ashram in IndiaFirst First First First
All this talk of nectar and bliss is starting to piss me off.
I don't know about you, my friend,
but my path to God ain't no sweet waft of incense.
It's a cat set loose in a pigeon pen,
and I'm the cat--
but also them who yell like hell when they get pinned.
My path to God is a worker's uprising,
won't be peace till they unionize.
Their picket is so fearsome
the National Guard won't go near them.
My path was beaten unconscious before me,
by a small brown man I never got to see,
who chased God through India, shin-deep in mud,
barefoot and famined, malarial blood,
sleeping in doorways, under bridges--a hobo.
(Which is short for "homeward bound," you know)
And he now chases me, saying: "Got it yet, Liz?
What HOMEWARD means? What BOUND really is?"
Second Second Second Second
However.
If they'd let me wear pants made out of the
fresh-mown grass from this place,
I'd do it.
If they'd let me make out
with every single Eucalyptus tree in Ganesh's Grove,
I swear, I'd do it.
I've sweated out dew these days,
worked out the dregs,
rubbed my chin on tree bark,
mistaking it for my master's leg.
I can't get far enough in.
If they'd let me eat the soil of this place
served on a bed of birds' nests,
I'd finish only half my plate,Then sleep all night on the rest.
73737373
I've never had less of a plan in my life than I do upon arrival in Bali. In all my history of
careless travels, this is the most carelessly I've ever landed anyplace. I don't know where
I'm going to live, I don't know what I'm going to do, I don't know what the exchange rate
is, I don't know how to get a taxi at the airport--or even where to ask that taxi to take me.
Nobody is expecting my arrival. I have no friends in Indonesia, or even friends-of-friends.
And here's the problem about traveling with an out-of-date guidebook, and then not
reading it anyway: I didn't realize that I'm actually not allowed to stay in Indonesia for
four months, even if I want to. I find this out only upon entry into the country. Turns out
I'm allowed only a one-month tourist visa. It hadn't occurred to me that the Indonesian
government would be anything less than delighted to host me in their country for just as
long as I pleased to stay.
As the nice immigration official is stamping my passport with permission to stay in Bali
for only and exactly thirty days, I ask him in my most friendly manner if I can please
remain longer.
"No," he says, in his most friendly manner. The Balinese are famously friendly.
"See, I'm supposed to stay here for three or four months," I tell him.
I don't mention that it's a prophecy-- that my staying here for three or four months was
predicted two years ago by an elderly and quite possibly demented Balinese medicine
man, during a ten-minute palm-reading. I'm not sure how to explain this.
But what did that medicine man tell me, now that I think of it? Did he actually say that I
would come back to Bali and spend three or four months living with him? Did he really
say "living with" him? Or did he just want me to drop by again sometime if I was in the
neighborhood and give him another ten bucks for another palm-reading? Did he say I
would come back, or that I should come back? Did he really say, "See you later, alligator"?
Or was it, "In a while, crocodile"?
I haven't had any communication with the medicine man since that one evening. I
wouldn't know how to contact him, anyway. What might his address be? "Medicine Man,
On His Porch, Bali, Indonesia"? I don't know whether he's dead or alive. I remember that
he seemed exceedingly old two years ago when we met; anything could have happened to
him since then. All I have for sure is his name--Ketut Liyer--and the memory that he livesin a village just outside the town of Ubud. But I don't remember the name of the village.
Maybe I should have thought all this through better.
74747474
But Bali is a fairly simple place to navigate. It's not like I've landed in the middle of the
Sudan with no idea of what to do next. This is an island approximately the size of
Delaware and it's a popular tourist destination. The whole place has arranged itself to
help you, the Westerner with the credit cards, get around with ease. English is spoken
here widely and happily.(Which makes me feel guiltily relieved. My brain synapses are
so overloaded by my efforts to learn modern Italian and ancient Sanskrit during these last
few months that I just can't take on the task of trying to learn Indonesian or, even more
difficult, Balinese--a language more complex than Martian.) It's really no trouble being
here. You can change your money at the airport, find a taxi with a nice driver who will
suggest to you a lovely hotel--none of this is hard to arrange. And since the tourism
industry collapsed in the wake of the terrorist bombing here two years ago (which
happened a few weeks after I'd left Bali the first time), it's even easier to get around now;
everyone is desperate to help you, desperate for work.
So I take a taxi to the town of Ubud, which seems like a good place to start my journey. I
check into a small and pretty hotel there on the fabulously named Monkey Forest Road.
The hotel has a sweet swimming pool and a garden crammed with tropical flowers with
blossoms bigger than volleyballs (tended to by a highly organized team of hummingbirds
and butter-flies). The staff is Balinese, which means they automatically start adoring you
and complimenting you on your beauty as soon as you walk in. The room has a view of
the tropical treetops and there's a breakfast included every morning with piles of fresh
tropical fruit. In short, it's one of the nicest places I've ever stayed and it's costing me less
than ten dollars a day. It's good to be back.
Ubud is in the center of Bali, located in the mountains, surrounded by terraced rice
paddies and innumerable Hindu temples, with rivers that cut fast through deep canyons of
jungle and volcanoes visible on the horizon. Ubud has long been considered the cultural
hub of the island, the place where traditional Balinese painting, dance, carving, and
religious ceremonies thrive. It isn't near any beaches, so the tourists who come to Ubud
are a self-selecting and rather classy crowd; they would prefer to see an ancient temple
ceremony than to drink pina coladas in the surf. Regardless of what happens with my
medicine man prophecy, this could be a lovely place to live for a while. The town is sort
of like a small Pacific version of Santa Fe, only with monkeys walking around and
Balinese families in traditional dress all over the place. There are good restaurants and
