The Siren Song of the Open, Spiritual Road

Ruminant With A View

by Elizabeth Boleman-Herring

MYKONOS, Greece—(Weekly Hubris)—9/27/10—A couple of nights ago, at about three in the morning, the mosquitoes of Ornos Beach, here on Mykonos, finally got my goat, as it were. I leapt up from our bed and, flexible bedroom slipper in hand, went after them, where they had lit—black, blood-filled specks on our white-washed walls—with a vengeance. Like the great goddess, Tara, on the warpath for demons, I slapped into oblivion four little fliers fat with my own crimson DNA.

Then, remorseful, I remembered the Jain nuns of Sravanabelagola, in India, who carry with them always a peacock feather, with which gently to sweep away any tiny living beings from the steps before them. They take ahimsa, the principle of non-violence, very, very seriously, the Jains.

Since 1982, I have been studying Yoga. At first, fitfully, and then, for the past decade, with utter devotion. Yoga as codified and interpreted by B.K.S. Iyengar and, if I have a “guru,” a guide and teacher, it is this old man of Pune, India, who qualifies, though we will, most probably, never meet.

Recovering from back surgery here on a Greek island I’ve been visiting since the age of nine, I am also jump-starting my Yoga practice again, and reading (and re-reading) William Dalrymple’s new book, Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India, and pondering the twin urges in the human soul which pull us first towards asceticism, renunciation of the world, a sort of pan-Puritanism (if you will), and its polar opposite, the full, erotic, and hedonistic embrace of life in all its bounty and lush beauty.

Each of our great world religions balances on the beam between these two tropes; each devotee of Spirit must find her or his balance, as well.

To eat meat, or not? To endure the bite of the mosquito, a living being like myself (only thirstier), or to smite her? To join in the ecstatic dance, poetry, and song of the Sufis, or to sit in quiet communion amongst the Quakers, the Presbyterians, the dour northern Europeans of my childhood?

Every autumn, when Dean and I depart for Greece, I pack, well ahead of time, and prepare for every exigency. Really. Every single one. We bring only two suitcases, and not especially big ones, so the packing is a painstaking, careful affair. From our three-storey home in New Jersey, I whittle down the objects, unguents, and accoutrements we will need to the bare necessities. Even those “bare necessities” comprise a goodly number. And, the older we get, the more medicines, flashlights, sun-gear, and lotions there are to carry.

A Jain nun possesses a coconut shell, a white sari, and the aforementioned peacock feather. No shoes, no suitcase, no Advil.

When I’ve left that three-storey house, arrived here and unpacked, I find myself wanting to go even further. Greece seems, somehow, half the way to India, half the way to the life of the mendicant, walking the open road, with no possessions, no plans, no expectations, no “baggage” that cannot be left by the side of the road.

For a Yogini, the siren call of that possessionless life becomes very plaintive in late, late, late middle age. The burdens of the 21^st century, the life (in B.K.S.’s words) of the householder, with all it entails, becomes less and less attractive. Websites, Facebook, the World Series, the midterm elections. Even mirrors and tweezers and shoes and changes of clothes and jewelry and, and, and, and . . . . Wouldn’t it be nice simply to let go, and wander? How much do we really need?

Even for Yoga, I need no mat, no belt, no props, no “Yoga pants”; no teacher, any longer. A patch of level ground will suffice.

My favorite chapter in Dalrymple’s new book has to do with an old woman he calls “The Red Fairy.” Among the Sufi dervishes of Sehwan, in Pakistan, this “huge, dark-skinned, red-clad woman of between 50 and 60,” Lal Peri, dances ecstatically, holding an enormous club aloft in her left hand, the “uncrowned queen” of a shrine holy to a Sufi saint called Lal Shahbaz Qalander. Qalander means “holy fool,” or “unruly friend of god,” and this is the role Lal Shahbaz embraced, dancing his way to Spirit. (St. Francis of Assisi springs to mind: another iconoclast seeking breathing space in a conservative, restrictive, Puritanical rite.)

I find The Red Fairy almost irresistible, and so wish I could go and, with my fused spine and Western mind, dance with her among the Sufis. Just once.

Dalrymple writes: “All religions were one, maintained the Sufi saints, merely different manifestations of the same divine reality. What was important was not the empty ritual of the mosque or temple, but to understand that divinity can best be reached through the gateway of the human heart—that we all have paradise within us, if we know where to look.

“The Sufis believed that this search for God within and the quest for fana—total immersion in the absolute—liberated the seeker from the restrictions of narrow orthodoxy, allowing the devotee to look beyond the letter of the law to its mystical essence. This allowed the Sufis for the first time to bring together Hindu and Muslim in an accessible and popular movement which spanned the apparently unbridgeable gulf separating the two religions.”

It is so simple, really, every autumn, to reduce what two people need to two smallish suitcases. Why should it not be as simple to reduce those suitcases still further, and head even farther East, where the lines between Christian, Jew, Muslim and Hindu blur and, finally, in Sindh, disappear? Eating meat. Or not. Chanting prayers. Or not. In one language. Or another.

I can just about see us now: Dean, with his trumpet, in a loincloth, baseball cap, and Tevas; me, in a red sari, with a peacock feather . . . and one great big bottle of Advil.