Siddhartha by Herman Hesse

C and I recently traveled to Nepal, her for a conference and me to get my visa stamped as having left India (we're not supposed to stay for more than 180 consecutive days). Walking along the corridor of the Katmandu airport after having just arrived, and before hitting the barrage of travel bureaucrats to review and stamp my papers, I took in the signage (apparently posted by some Russian vodka interest). I learned various things about Nepal ("gorgeous mountains", etc.), but one thing hit me that I hadn't realized. Nepal is the birthplace of the Buddha, Siddhartha Gotama of the Shakya clan. After I finished The Snow Leopard, I knew what I should read. 

I've actually read Siddhartha once before, and unlike many  readers, not in high school or college. I was an adult. I recall it to have been interesting and worthwhile but nothing that grabbed me by the lapels. Nevertheless, I'd see it at Rajat Books and thought that I should take another crack at it, since (I thought) India was the homeland of the Buddha, and the character Siddartha is a sort of alter-ego and acquaintance of the Enlightened One. Also, since Hedecki, C's fellow graduate student and our house guest 30 years ago, kept a small Buddhist shrine on our spare room and thereby spurred me to learn about Buddhism, I've kept reading and attempting to understand and (at least to some small extent) practice this way of living. 
 
I'm happy to report that the trip back into Siddartha proved worthwhile. Just for the sentences of  "I can think. I can wait. I can fast." makes the re-reading worthwhile. What a thought-provoking and challenging attitude! For those of you unacquainted with the premise of the book, it's set at the time of the Buddha, and the main character is the son of a Brahmin family who, like Buddha, finds his situation uneasy, and he goes to live the life of an ascetic. Moving  through life, he encounters the historical Buddha, but unlike his companion Govinda, he chooses to go his own path. Siddhartha's path takes him across the river by courtesy of the ferry man, and into the city and good graces of Kamela, the courtesan. Siddhartha continues to grow and learn as his life unfolds. Indeed, literary critics have dubbed this book a bildungsroman, a coming of age story, but Siddhartha learns and reflects not just through youth but into his advancing years. 

I must say that I benefited greatly, after completing the book, and reading the introduction for the 90th anniversary edition that Pico Iyer wrote. Iyer notes the book's effect on him as a youth, and he points to the spirit of rebelliousness and heroics that appeals to youth. But he points out something that resonates now with him and with me: the ending. The elder Siddartha as he gives an account of his life and learning at the end of the book, a perspective and accounting different from that of the Buddha, yet, I think, complementary. If you think about it, as an aging man of many worldly experiences, Siddhartha hints at a path that most of us must consider: that of finding some insight and repose in this world through the difficult issues of love, vocation, family, desire, foolishness, loss, and everything else. Some try to by-pass these issues by living as solitary, ascetic hermits, but I think that they deceive themselves if they think that they can run away from all of this world's challenges. As one can see clearly from the writings of the Christian Desert Fathers, even alone in the desert learn that our mind is populated by the world, by the thoughts, images, and desires that being-in-the-world compels upon us. I think that we must hope that by the end of our lives that we, too, can smile like the Siddarthas--both of them.

How to Win a Cosmic War: Confronting Radical Religion by Reza Aslan

In February we took a trip to the neighboring city of Ajmer, less than two hours by car from Jaipur. We went there to see the tomb (shrine) of Moinuddin Chishtī, the medieval Sufi saint.

We entered Ajmer, and it didn't look much different than any of the other cities and towns in Rajasthan. We pulled into a parking lot and called our contact, who was to guide us the site. In about ten minutes a man dressed in white with a white cap appeared. He bid us to follow him and we did. After walking about a block, cars were barred and even the ubiquitous motorcycles thinned. The street narrowed and become busy, almost crowded, and marked by men in white with caps, like our guide. I had not encountered such a concentration of Muslims since coming to India (although I had visited C's madrasa teacher training program in Delhi). Walking the narrow street crowded with Muslims, young and old, I felt as if I was in a movie, Bourne movie or Syriana. Not that I felt threatened (I didn't), but it reminded me of the significance of the Muslim presence in India and the world, a very considerable presence.  

As we approached the gates, our guide verred right, and we headed up a narrower lane, entering into a labyrinth of by-ways. We reached a small storefront where we left our shoes and cameras (with not small ttrepidation). We entered into the enclosure of the tomb area following our guide and eventually we came into the room of the tomb. Strewn with flowers and crowded with supplicants, our guide held a cloth over us and offered a blessing. We emerged and then we were shown the great pots where feasts were prepared for the needy. 

After leaving the shrine and the hospitality of our guide, who became our host by inviting us to his home and sharing tea and fried chicken with us, we went on a Pushkar and its Hindu temples (a story for another time). 

We in the U.S. know of religion, but we rarely see it displayed and practiced in the manner that one sees it in India. In India, Moslems are a minority, but a very large minority, and one that, at least within the country,  remains relatively peaceful. But then, that's true of Muslims everywhere. And Christians and Jews. Almost all are peaceful, but a few, a frightening few, become caught up on what Reza Aslan calls a "cosmic war". 

I read Aslan's book How to Win a Cosmic War: Confronting Radical Religion (2009, 176p.) as a follow-up to Atran's book that I reviewed in my previous post at Taking Readings. If you were to read them both yourself, I would recommend reversing the order. Aslan's book--as one would expect from a veteran of the Iowa Writer's Workshop--reads easily and gives a quicker, more succinct overview of what has been happening in the current Muslim world, and well as in the world of the Old Testament and Bush's America. Aslan details a fact of life that we can too easily ignore: some people are drawn to cosmic wars, battles of good versus evil, us versus them. The early Jewish scriptures display a wrathful warrior God. Christians of a fundementalist persuasion, ignoring great themes of the New Testament, take up these ancient cries of righteouness and blood lust to make contemporary appeals to vanquish the heathens. Contemporary Judaism, especially within Israel and the West Bank, contains some of the same types of holy warriors. In all, these small but incredibly vocal band of holy warriors in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam make a scary lot. Only a few, of course, opt for terrorism as a means of realizing their holy orders, but even without such overt acts, they create a climate where tolerance and alternative faiths find it hard to get a footing. Alsan points, however, that out that many of the Muslim groups that we hear about, Hamas, Hezbollah, and others, have very limited, particular concerns (like the rights of Palestinians), and we Americans lump them all together at our peril.Not all are cosmic warriors.

One can't help leaving a book such as Aslan's without some sense of fear and despair, but we know that these are a minority of a minority who threaten violence. Most of us are more humble about divine intentions through either reasoned caution or courtesy of the demands of daily life. In any event, writers like Aslan help us to understand this wider world, and we should thank him for it. 

N.B. Besides his Iowa City/UI connection and his notoriety as a guest on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Aslan was a speaker at JLF, and I thought one of the pithier commentators on American politics. I hope that he keeps writing, as his voice adds a great deal to our understanding and the conversation that we must have. 

Cross-posted at Taking Readings

A Good Story

This piece in the NYT will bring a smile to India veterans, I wager. "Adventures in a tuk-tuk" they might have titled it. The author's description of a tuk-tuk is the best I've read. I also immediately determined that this guy & his traveling companions were crazy, but I'll leave the rest for  you to read. Enjoy

Earthquake!

Okay, it should have been just "earthquake" with no exclamation point. 

This morning, lying in bed around dawn, only half-awake, I heard a rumbling sound, like a heavy truck passing by. We can have many strange sounds in the night, like loud horns, drummers, and wild animals, but we don't have early Sunday morning trucks outside our door. So early in the ten-second experience, I thought it was an earthquake, and sure enough, the rumble was followed by some shaking and then silence. (I think that it even quieted the birds for a brief period.) C later reported that she heard the heavy wooden chair scrape against our tile floor. As it was, I didn't know C was awake, and while I was prepared to deal with an earthquake, I was not prepared to awaken her before Nature undertook the task for me. 

This is the second tremor that we've experienced. Both occasions were easily detected. Interesting but not alarming. Seeing all of the construction going on around us--and it's quite a lot--I know that the poured concrete buildings have enough rebar to hold up almost anything. (Steel girder construction here is very rare.) In addition, since almost all scaffolding consists of bamboo poles, I doubt that even temporary scaffolding would ever be seriously threatened. So far (knock on wood), the tremors are just a novelty. To have experienced a couple of tremors within less than one-half a year as opposed to the once-in-a-generation quakes that one experiences in Iowa adds some spice to our experience.

BTW, the weather right now compares to that in Iowa in May. We're sleeping with the windows open (wood and noxious smokes notwithstanding), and the daytime high will hit about 80 F. Sweet!