Prompted by a recent trip to Varanasi and Bodhgaya - respectively the holiest places in the world for Hindus and Buddhists
Touring this part of India, in my case for the second time, the realization is unavoidable: tourism here is to an uncomfortable degree pervaded with religious voyeurism. If one wants to criticize "orientalist" attitudes, ways in which the West caricatures the East, then the reduction of India to a stereotype of excessive religious devotion is a prime case in point. Staring at sadhus is fun for everyone! - the more ash-smeared and wild-eyed the more photogenic... And it's not as if one could easily choose a more secular itinerary: the fact is, touring India is traditionally - even for Indians - a matter of ticking off temples. The problem is in one's gaze - try as one might to concentrate on the aesthetics of architectural detail, one must inevitably feel the force of the human waves lapping round these compact ancient shrines. Here there are rarely places, as in the dark, accomodating space of a cathedral, where one can undisturbedly lose one's thoughts in visual contemplation. Close in around any Hindu or Buddhist shrine one is surrounded, jostled, sometimes physically pestered, and always occupied with questions of propriety ("rite and wrong"...apologies). What if you forget to remove your shoes? Should you accept a flower garland? What then should you do with it? How much money are you supposed to give and to whom? Should you prostrate yourself, or perform a quietly reverent bow and namaste, or can you just swagger in and snap a photo? And is it really possible to maintain any consistent bearing in such a place when one is not fully of its religion?
With my current travelling companion - an atheist philosopher with the full resources of German intellectual irony at his command - I tend to slip into an attitude of discreet, whispered-behind-the-back-of-the-hand mockery (above all when a monk in Bodhgaya started a mobile phone conversation a few yards from the Bodhi tree, overlooked by an official sign directing "complete silence"!). But both of us cannot help being humbled by the seriousness of the faith here, the extent of people's devotion, and often the impressiveness of religious choreography. For in these places it is easy - easier than in all but the most ancient Catholic or Orthodox sites, certainly - for the Westerner to understand why ritual is important to religion.
Whenever a "reformation" occurs then ritual tends to be cut back: as occurred in Europe in the sixteenth century, and with Hinduism in the Bengali reform movements of the nineteenth (principally the Brahmo Samaj, in which the Tagore family was very active). The arguments are always that rituals are external, formal, unnecessary encrustations on the living religious spirit. Expressions of that spirit tend to be cut back to the direct and verbal, sometimes clothed in relatively plain musical form. Much as in a Protestant church, the Wednesday early morning service at Santiniketan's Kaj Mandir consists of a simple alternation of religious readings with hymns (Indian ones, written by Tagore for the Brahmo Samaj). Congregation, singers and readers all wear white kurta pajama. The ceremony is perfectly unpretentious, but can also be lacklustre, especially with sparse attendance or mediocre performances of the music. And why should the Word be considered the primary vehicle for religious expression anyway? Why should not visual images and ritual movement or dance be considered equally appropriate?
What the reformers from Luther to Rammohan Roy justly criticised in earlier practice was the use of ritual and images as replacements for the genuine core of the religion. If one imagines that "merit" is gained, or sins cancelled by the performance of rituals, or that images are real pictures of God, whose worship puts one in privileged contact with the divine, then one is indeed giving way to delusion; if such beliefs are widespread then the religious culture can be branded as corrupt. But the logical response to this state of affairs need not be the abolition of ritual and image. It can also, and perhaps ought to, be a better understanding of their theological status. Karen Armstrong has such an understanding in her recent (misleadingly titled) book The Case for God, surmising that primitive religion treated ritual and imagery as central to the religious experience, with concepts and verbal formulations following after, if at all. She points to shamanic religions, such as those presumably practised in the caves of Lascaux, and the famous Greek Eleusinian Mysteries. Comparisons with ancient Greece occurred to both me and Reinhard, my travelling companion, as we watched the evening Ganga Arthi ceremony at Dasaswamedh Ghat in Varanasi.
This famous and ancient ceremony is today somewhat affected by its status as a tourist attraction: the lighting and tight choreography strike one as being recent, camera-friendly refinements. But the basic materials and movements of the arthi are traditional. Their purpose is neither purely aesthetic - though the costumes, incense and music clearly do appeal to the senses - nor "ritualistic" in the sense of attempting to manipulate or gain favour from the divine (as Hindu animal sacrifices do). It is rather meditative and devotional, trying to bring the worshipper and onlookers into a state which in Hinduism is called bhakti, devotional participation, a concentrated but also communally shared state of love for God. Arthi is often performed alone by the Hindu householder, sometimes in a puja room specially set aside for the purpose. Shopkeepers reopening their business in the afternoon can be seen making characteristic arthi circling gestures with a few sticks of incense in front of a postcard of a deity.
It is no harder, I think, for Westerners to feel sympathy for these quieter, everyday practices than it is for us to practise yoga as it should be done, in the same spirit (- think of the famous sequence of asanas known as the surya namaskar, performed facing the rising sun). The difficulty is in the extreme manifestations of bhakti - the hours of mantras, the endlessly repeated prostrations of Tibetan Buddhist pilgrims that we witnessed in Bodhgaya, even the over-enthusiasm of Vaishnava devotees (familiar to Western urbanites as the "Hare Krishnas", their historical roots are actually in West Bengal; the modern organization for the movement is ISKCON, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness). One has a sneaking suspicion that much of this is actually "for show", or performed out of the misguided belief in automatic "merit". But if it is, then the healthiest response is surely just to ignore it. There are more genuine types of devotion, and even we sceptics ought to hope for a glimpse into their spirit.
With my current travelling companion - an atheist philosopher with the full resources of German intellectual irony at his command - I tend to slip into an attitude of discreet, whispered-behind-the-back-of-the-hand mockery (above all when a monk in Bodhgaya started a mobile phone conversation a few yards from the Bodhi tree, overlooked by an official sign directing "complete silence"!). But both of us cannot help being humbled by the seriousness of the faith here, the extent of people's devotion, and often the impressiveness of religious choreography. For in these places it is easy - easier than in all but the most ancient Catholic or Orthodox sites, certainly - for the Westerner to understand why ritual is important to religion.
Whenever a "reformation" occurs then ritual tends to be cut back: as occurred in Europe in the sixteenth century, and with Hinduism in the Bengali reform movements of the nineteenth (principally the Brahmo Samaj, in which the Tagore family was very active). The arguments are always that rituals are external, formal, unnecessary encrustations on the living religious spirit. Expressions of that spirit tend to be cut back to the direct and verbal, sometimes clothed in relatively plain musical form. Much as in a Protestant church, the Wednesday early morning service at Santiniketan's Kaj Mandir consists of a simple alternation of religious readings with hymns (Indian ones, written by Tagore for the Brahmo Samaj). Congregation, singers and readers all wear white kurta pajama. The ceremony is perfectly unpretentious, but can also be lacklustre, especially with sparse attendance or mediocre performances of the music. And why should the Word be considered the primary vehicle for religious expression anyway? Why should not visual images and ritual movement or dance be considered equally appropriate?
What the reformers from Luther to Rammohan Roy justly criticised in earlier practice was the use of ritual and images as replacements for the genuine core of the religion. If one imagines that "merit" is gained, or sins cancelled by the performance of rituals, or that images are real pictures of God, whose worship puts one in privileged contact with the divine, then one is indeed giving way to delusion; if such beliefs are widespread then the religious culture can be branded as corrupt. But the logical response to this state of affairs need not be the abolition of ritual and image. It can also, and perhaps ought to, be a better understanding of their theological status. Karen Armstrong has such an understanding in her recent (misleadingly titled) book The Case for God, surmising that primitive religion treated ritual and imagery as central to the religious experience, with concepts and verbal formulations following after, if at all. She points to shamanic religions, such as those presumably practised in the caves of Lascaux, and the famous Greek Eleusinian Mysteries. Comparisons with ancient Greece occurred to both me and Reinhard, my travelling companion, as we watched the evening Ganga Arthi ceremony at Dasaswamedh Ghat in Varanasi.
This famous and ancient ceremony is today somewhat affected by its status as a tourist attraction: the lighting and tight choreography strike one as being recent, camera-friendly refinements. But the basic materials and movements of the arthi are traditional. Their purpose is neither purely aesthetic - though the costumes, incense and music clearly do appeal to the senses - nor "ritualistic" in the sense of attempting to manipulate or gain favour from the divine (as Hindu animal sacrifices do). It is rather meditative and devotional, trying to bring the worshipper and onlookers into a state which in Hinduism is called bhakti, devotional participation, a concentrated but also communally shared state of love for God. Arthi is often performed alone by the Hindu householder, sometimes in a puja room specially set aside for the purpose. Shopkeepers reopening their business in the afternoon can be seen making characteristic arthi circling gestures with a few sticks of incense in front of a postcard of a deity.
It is no harder, I think, for Westerners to feel sympathy for these quieter, everyday practices than it is for us to practise yoga as it should be done, in the same spirit (- think of the famous sequence of asanas known as the surya namaskar, performed facing the rising sun). The difficulty is in the extreme manifestations of bhakti - the hours of mantras, the endlessly repeated prostrations of Tibetan Buddhist pilgrims that we witnessed in Bodhgaya, even the over-enthusiasm of Vaishnava devotees (familiar to Western urbanites as the "Hare Krishnas", their historical roots are actually in West Bengal; the modern organization for the movement is ISKCON, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness). One has a sneaking suspicion that much of this is actually "for show", or performed out of the misguided belief in automatic "merit". But if it is, then the healthiest response is surely just to ignore it. There are more genuine types of devotion, and even we sceptics ought to hope for a glimpse into their spirit.
