It Works For Me Too

This is an excerpt from a book I am presently reading called Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I don’t usually type out a whole wall of text that I take from somewhere else and spread it out here for all and sundry. But I think Liz sort of summarises my thoughts on religion and how we should go about finding that balance.

Take some time to read it. At least it makes the effort I put in typing the bloody thing worthwhile.

The Indians around here tell a cautionary fable about a great saint who was always surrounded in his Ashram by loyal devotees. For hours a day, the saint and his followers would meditate on God. The only problem was the saint had a young cat, an annoying creature, who used to  walk through the temple meowing and purring and bothering everyone during meditation. So the saint in all his practical wisdom, commanded that the cat be tied to a pole outside for a few hours each day, only during meditation, so as to not disturb anyone. This became a habit – tying the cat to a pole and then meditating on God – but as years past the habit hardened into religious ritual. Nobody could meditate unless the cat was tied to the pole first. Then one day, the cat died. The saint’s followers were panic-stricken. It was a major religious crisis –  how could they meditate now, without a cat to tie to a pole? How would they reach God? In their minds, the cat had become the means.

Be very careful, warns this tale, not to get too obsessed with the repetition of religious ritual just for its own sake. Especially in the divided world, where the Taliban and the Christian Coalition continue to fight out their international trademark war over who owns the rights to the word of God and who has the proper rituals to reach that God, it may be useful to remember that it is not the tying of the cat to the pole that has ever brought anyone transcendence, but only the constant desire of an individual seeker to experience the eternal compassion of the divine. Flexibility is just as important for divinity as is discipline.

Your job, then, should you choose to accept it, is to keep searching for the metaphors, rituals and teachers that will help you move ever closer to divinity. The yogic scriptures say that God responds to the sacred prayers and efforts of human beings in any way whatsoever that mortals choose to worship – just so long as those prayers are sincere. As one line from the Upanishads suggest : “People follow different paths, straight or crooked, according to their temperament, depending on which they consider best, or most appropriate – and all reach You, just as rivers enter the ocean.”

The other objective of religion, of course, is to try to make sense of our chaotic world and explain the inexplicabilities  we see playing out here on earth every day : the innocent suffer, the wicked are rewarded – what are we to make of all this? The Western tradition says, “It’ll all get sorted out  after death, in heaven and hell.” Over in the East though, the Upanishads shrug away any attempt to make sense of the world’s chaos. They’re not even so sure that the world is chaotic, but suggest that it may only appear so to us, because of limited vision. These  texts do not promise justice or revenge for anybody, though they do say that there are consequences for every action – so choose your behaviour accordingly. You may not see these consequences soon, though. Yoga takes the long view, always. Futhermore, the Upanishads suggest that so-called chaos may have an actual divine function, even if you personally can’t recognise it now : “The gods are fond of the cryptic and dislike the evident.” The best we can do, then, in response to our incomprehensible and dangerous world, is to practice holding equilibrium internally – no matter what insanity is transpiring out there.

Sean, my Yogic Irish dairy farmer, explained it to me this way. “Imagine that the Universe is a great spinning engine,” he said. “You want to stay near the core of the thing – right in the hub of the wheel – not out at the edges where all the wild whirling takes place, where you can get frayed and crazy. The hub of calmness – that’s your heart. That’s where God lives within you. So stop looking for answers in this world. Just keep coming to the centre 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.

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