Hindu Samskriti - How to Become a Hindu -2
Posted in Labels: Hindu Samskriti - How to Become a Hindu -2
How to Become a Hindu
The
Father had asked me again and again to invoke
Christ and meditate upon him. But he had not
told me how to do
it. I had no previous practice in meditation.
I did not know how to
invoke Christ, or any other godhead for that
matter.
During a lecture about creation, the Father
said that God in His
wisdom and kindness had made all fishes and
animals and birds
man’s consumption. I immediately rose in
revolt. I told him very
emphatically that I was a Vaishnava and a
vegetarian and that I
had absolutely no use for a God that bestowed
upon man the right
to kill and eat His other creatures simply
because man happened
to be stronger and more skilled. I added that
in my opinion it was
the duty of the strong and the more skilled
to protect the weak and
the less wily.
The Father also suddenly lost his
self-possession. He almost shouted:
“I can never understand you Hindus who go
about seeking a
soul in every lice and bug and cockroach that
crawls around you.
The Bible says in so many words that man is
God’s highest creation.
What is wrong with the higher ruling over the
lower?”
On our way back to the big city where his
mission was housed, he
became his old normal self again. There was
not a trace of bitterness
on his face or in his voice as we talked and
joked and discussed
several serious and not so serious matters.
Now I took my courage in
both my hands and asked him my final
question: “Father, am I not
already a Christian? I do not normally tell a
lie. I do not steal. I do
not bear false witness. I do not covet my
neighbor’s wife or property.
What more can a man do to demand God’s grace
and kinship with
Christ? Why should you insist on a formal
conversion which in no
way helps me to become better than what I
am?” His reply was very
positive and it estranged me from the
Christian creed for good. He
said: “It is an illusion that you can become
a Christian if you practice
Christian virtues. One cannot claim to be
virtuous unless one
is baptized in the Church of Christ.
He is the only savior. No one
outside His fold can claim salvation. The
only thing the heathens
can look forward to is eternal hell-fire.”
My new job in Delhi gave me a lot of leisure. But what
mattered
most was that I could now spend all my
evenings with Ram Swarup.
He was now spending long hours sitting in
meditation. His talks
now centered round the Vedas, the Upanishads,
the Gita, the Mahabharata
and the Buddha. In the long evenings I spent
with Ram
Swarup I compared with him my notes on the Mahabharata. But
Ram Swarup’s way of looking at the Mahabharata was quite different.
He related it directly to the Vedas. He expounded how the
mighty characters of this great epic embodied
and made living the
spiritual vision of the Vedic seers. What
fascinated me still more
was Ram Swarup’s exposition of dharma as
enunciated in the Mahabharata.
To me, dharma had always been a matter of
normative
morals, external rules and regulations, do’s
and dont’s, enforced on
life by an act of will. Now I was made to see
dharma as a multidimensional
movement of man’s inner law of being, his
psychic evolution,
his spiritual growth and his spontaneous
building of an outer
life for himself and the community in which
he lived.
The next thing I did was to read and reread
the major works of
Aurobindo and discuss his message with Ram
Swarup day after day.
Aurobindo would have remained an abstract
philosopher for me had
not Ram Swarup explained to me how this seer
was the greatest
exponent of the Vedic vision in our times.
Aurobindo’s message, he
told me, was in essence the same old Vedic
message, namely, that
we are Gods in our innermost being and should
live the life of Gods
on this Earth. He made me see what Aurobindo
meant by the physical,
the vital, the mental and the psychic. He
related these terms to
the theory of the five kosas in the Upanishads.
I now requested Ram Swarup to initiate me
into meditation. He
told me that I could sit and meditate with
him whenever I liked,
wait and watch, go within myself as far as I
could manage, at any
time, dwell on whatever good thoughts got
revealed in the process,
and the rest would follow. I acted upon his
simple instructions with
some measure of skepticism in my mind. But in
the next few days I
could see some results, which encouraged me.
One day I meditated on ahimsa, which had
remained an abstract
concept for me so far. After a while I found
myself begging forgiveness
from all those whom I had hurt by word or
deed, or towards
whom I had harbored any ill will. It was not
an exercise in generalities.
Person after person rose into my memory,
going back into the
distant past and I bowed in repentance before
each one of them.
Finally I begged forgiveness from Stalin,
against whom I had written
so much and upon whom I had hurled so many
brickbats. The
bitterness
which had poisoned my life over the long
years was swept
off my mind in a sudden relaxation of nerves.
I felt as if a thousand
thorns which had tormented my flesh had been
taken out by a master
physician without causing the slightest pain.
I was in need of no
greater assurance that this was the way on
which I should walk.
One day I told Ram Swarup how I had never
been able to accept
the Devi, either as Sarasvati or as Lakshmi
or as Durga or as Kali.
He smiled and asked me to meditate on the
Devi that day. I tried
my best in my own way. Nothing happened for
some time. Nothing
came my way. My mind was a big blank. But in
the next moment the
void was filled with a sense of some great
presence. I did not see any
concrete image. No words were whispered in my
ears. Yet the rigidity
of a lifetime broke down and disappeared. The
Great Mother was
beckoning her lost child to go and sit in her
lap and feel safe from
all fears. We had a record of Dr. Govind
Gopal Mukhopadhyaya’s
sonorous stuti to the Devi. As I played it, I prayed to Her.
My progress was not fast; nor did I go far.
But I now felt sure that
Hinthis
was the method by which I could rediscover
for myself the great
truths of which the ancients had spoken in
Hindu scriptures. It was
not the end of my seeking, which had only
started in right earnest.
But it was surely the end of my wandering in
search of a shore
where I could safely anchor my soul and take
stock of my situation.
The soul’s hunger for absolute Truth,
absolute Good, absolute
Beauty and absolute Power, I was told, was
like the body’s hunger
for wholesome food and drink. And that which
satisfied this hunger
of the human soul, fully and finally, was
Sanatana Dharma, true for all times and
climes. A votary of Sanatana Dharma did
not need an arbitrary exercise of will to
put blind faith in a supernatural revelation
laid down in a single scripture. He
did not need the intermediacy
of a historical
prophet nor the help of an organized
church to attain salvation. Sanatana
Dharma called upon its votary to explore
his own self in the first instance and see
for himself the truths expounded in sacred
scriptures. Prophets and churches
and scriptures could be aids, but never
the substitutes for self-exploration,
selfpurification
and self-transcendence.
I had come back at last, come back
to my spiritual home from which I had
wandered away in self-forgetfulness. But
this coming back was no atavistic act. On
the contrary, it was a reawakening to my
ancestral heritage, which was waiting
for me all along to lay my claim on its
largesses. It was also the heritage of all
mankind, as proved by the seers, sages
and mystics of many a time and clime. It
spoke in different languages to different
people. To me it spoke in the language of
Hindu spirituality and Hindu culture at
their highest. I could not resist its call. I
became a Hindu.
My
Whole Family Became Hindus
Isani Alahan, 52, (photo at right) lived in
Chennai, India, for several years, where
she worked in the home, cooking South
Indian ayurvedic meals for her family of
five, and did home-schooling
with her youngest daughter. She also studied
Carnatic music,
Sanskrit, hatha yoga and the Kerala health
system known as Kalaripayattu.
She returned with her family to live in Kauai in June,
2000.
I was introduced to Hinduism in 1970 through a local hatha yoga
class in Carson City, Nevada.
As time went on, I read more about
yoga and the wonderful benefits for the body
and mind. At this time
I decided to become a vegetarian.
I was sixteen years old. In 1972
my interest in meditation manifested. I
attended weekly satsanga in
Virginia
City, Nevada. During the first satsanga, I had a memorable
vision of Lord Siva Nataraja on the banks of
the sacred Ganga. My
life had changed.
In 1975 I married my husband of 25 years. My husband was
accepting
of my beliefs, but wasn’t interested in
studying. I continued
on my own, and in 1980 I legally changed my name to Isani Alahan
from Ardith Jean Barton, but kept my
husband’s last name, Pontius.
In December of 1982 I completed my conversion to Hinduism. I
prepared a statement of apostasy and took it
to the local priest. He
looked at it and agreed to sign my formal
release from the Catholic
Church. As I took a deep sigh of relief, he
hesitated and asked me
to leave the room. When I returned, he had
changed his mind. He
told me he had called the Bishop in Reno and was told he
could not
sign the paper. Later I learned this was not
true, and the Bishop
had been out of town. I tried another priest
in the town where I
was born. He was understanding, but also
declined. Within a few
weeks, I called the Bishop to make an
appointment to meet with
him. He told me to go back to the original
priest, who would sign
my declaration of apostasy. I returned to the
local rectory and met a
priest of Chinese descent. He was very warm
and accommodating.
He explained how he understood the Hindu
concept of ethical conversion.
He signed my declaration and
wished me the best.
I had my namakarana samskara at
Kauai’s Hindu Temple
on December
25, 1982, with my two-year-old daughter,
Neesha. Then we were off for six
weeks of pilgrimage, visiting temples
and ashrams throughout Malaysia,
Sri
Lanka and Tamil Nadu, India.
It was
a fantastic spiritual experience that
continues to reverberate in my mind.
At the time, my husband was not a
Hindu, but our three daughters were
given Hindu first names at birth, while
keeping his family name. We raised the
children according to Hindu Dharma
and our guru’s guidance. In 1984 we
moved to the Seattle area. During the
ten years we lived in Seattle, my children
and I gathered with the other local
Hindus for weekly satsanga. We also
met with the local Hindu community for
festivals. We studied Bharata Natyam
and Carnatic vocal music. My children
attended Hindu summer camps in Hawaii.
All through these years, with his
permission, I prayed that my husband
would become a Hindu. Then, in 1993
my husband formally adopted Hinduism,
legally changed his name from Victor
Dean Pontius to Durvasa Alahan. He
became a vegetarian, stopped smoking
and gave up catch-and-release fishing,
which was his favorite hobby. He had his
namakarana samskara in 1994.
In November, 1996, my husband and eldest daughter went on pilgrimage
to India for a month. My daughter was
interested in studying
Bharata Natyam, and my husband left my
daughter in India
so that she could attend Kalakshetra College
of Fine Arts and get
a diploma in Bharata Natyam. She started
college in June of 1997,
and the rest of the family, my husband,
myself and two younger
daughters, moved to Chennai, Tamil Nadu, in
November of 1997.
The past three years have had their moments
of difficulty, but overall
they have been a peak experience of my life,
a fulfillment of my
heart’s desires.
My
Husband and I and Our Lifelong Quest
Amala Seyon, 58, entered Hinduism in May,
1975. A homemaker
on Kauai,
she and her husband live within walking distance of the
Kadavul Hindu Temple.
My first introduction to Hinduism was when I
met
my husband. He had been going through a very
soul-searching time, asking God why the Vietnam
war, why the rioting in the streets of America, and
what does materialism have to offer the soul?
While going through this trying time and
praying,
a born Hindu man came to his world religion
class
and talked about the Hindu religion. All the
con-
cepts of Hinduism were the truths my husband
was looking for. This
Hindu man had a meditation center and invited
anyone in the class
to come. My husband started going on a
regular basis.
During this time, my husband asked me to marry
him. He explained
to me about the Hindu religion and took me to
the meditation
center. I was so happy to hear some of the
concepts, like God
is within you, the law of karma, the
evolution of the soul. I felt like I
had been in a cage, like a bird, and someone
opened the door, and I
was able to fly into something much bigger
and deeper.
My husband told me that if we got married
this was the path he
wanted us to take. I accepted that and
supported it fully. This started
the process of a confrontation of Western and
Eastern philosophies.
Our first encounter was in finding someone to
marry us. My
husband went to the Hindu meditation center
and asked this saintly
man if he could marry us. His visa did not
allow him to perform the
ceremony. So we went to my family’s Christian
minister and asked
him to marry us. He asked my husband a series
of questions. Do
you believe Jesus Christ is the only Son of
God? Do you believe that
the Holy Bible is the only word of God? The questioning went on for
some time, and at the end of the interview he
told my husband that
not only could he not marry us but he was
going to call my parents
and tell them that he was against having me
marry someone who
was not a Christian.
We then had to confront my mother, who was
very much a Christian.
This was all emotionally hard for her because
of the belief
that you could only be saved through the
belief in Jesus Christ. She
was very disappointed, and the issue caused a
major disruption in
our family. Finally, they accepted our
marriage, and my husband
located his past minister, who agreed to
marry us.
After our marriage, we started reading all we
could on Hinduism.
My husband mistakenly followed the statements
in Hindu scripture
that we now realize were intended for monks.
We sold and gave
away all our wedding gifts and went to live
in very remote areas of
British
Columbia. He read from morning until night and sat by a
river for hours on end, but we finally
realized we were not making
real spiritual progress, and I was lonely
living in remote areas and
even on a deserted island.
We started searching and praying, and one day
someone invited
us to meet our Gurudeva, Sivaya
Subramuniyaswami.
We recognized what a great soul he was
immediately, and we started our
studies with him. When our two daughters were
five and three
years old, we all had our name-giving
together, formally entering
the Hindu religion.
My children were raised in the Hindu
religion, and we spent a
lot of years living near the Flushing, New York, Ganesha
Temple,
learning the culture and mixing with born
Hindus. We learned so
much and felt so naturally a part of the
Hindu heritage. We followed
a curriculum for teaching our children in the
home until they were
twelve years old. Our daughters are now both
married and are wonderful
mothers who stay home and care for their
children. Our oldest
daughter is married to a wonderful Hindu man
from Mauritius
in an extended family that showers her with
love. We now live on
the little island of Kauai
and serve the community and the broader
Hindu family through our many activities. We
are so very grateful.
Om Tat Sat
(Continued...)
(My
humble salutations to Sadguru Sri Sivaya
Subramuniyaswami
ji, Hinduism Today dot com for the collection)
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