I realized that the basic issues I have with both Hinduism and Judaism are the same: that stories, rituals, and blind faith can distract from what, to me, is truly important: creating more happiness in this world by being a good person.

I know that performing ritual with intention (kavana in Hebrew) rather than through habit (keva), can make rituals extremely meaningful. In my experience they provide hope and joy, but not necessarily deep peace, happiness, or clarity. When I was in high school I considered myself a Conservative Jew. I kept the Sabbath laws, not driving, writing, watching TV, using the computer, etc. every Friday to Saturday night. I lived a rather religious life.

But by the end of high school I was not keeping as many commandments, and in college I have been keeping less and less. This was due to a lot of factors. My communities growing up were close to 100% Jewish, and in college I was exposed to a myriad of lifestyles, which gave me perspective on my own. It was also hard to keep the Sabbath because I was largely surrounded by non-religious people, even though they came from many faiths.

In college, I found new meaningful avenues for my Jewish practice, including organizing women’s programming at Berkeley Hillel with Rabbi Dorothy Richmon. I found new types of Judaism that I identified with including a wonderful Reconstructionist synagogue in Berkeley called Chochmat Ha'Lev http://www.chochmat.org/. But I continued to feel unfulfilled spiritually and I have been yearning to make religion/spirituality a bigger part of my life again.

So with the coming of the Jewish High Holidays in India, such a religious country, I was thinking about how to approach this season of introspection and repentance in a new way. On Yom Kippur, The Day of Atonement, we are supposed to stand purified before God, but how are we to purify ourselves? What does purification mean?

Judaism answers this question in a variety of ways including repenting for our sins, introspection about one’s past year, apologizing to others, oneself, and God, seasonally specific daily prayers, blowing the shofar (ram’s horn), and tashlich (throwing crumbs into a moving body of water, symbolizing getting rid of our sins). On Yom Kippur we fast and wear simple white clothing to symbolize standing before God in the robe we will be buried in.

But still, these methods seemed to be missing something for me. How can we access the deep source of our thoughts, words, and actions? Why have we sinned? Why are we unhappy? Why are we impure?

I decided to go on a 10 day Vipassana meditation retreat. Vipassana (dhamma.org) is an ancient form of meditation based on the teachings of Gotama the Buddha, found in texts from around 500 BCE. It is not a part of the organized Buddhist religion. This form of meditation is designed to purify one’s mind and attain a state of equanimity, where one is mindful and without craving or hostility. One is completely calm. In the course of one’s practice, clarity increases and treating others ethically becomes entirely natural. One learns experientially, through attentive observation of their bodily sensations, that everything is impermanent. One learns to enjoy pleasure and endure pain without identifying with them or getting attached to them, knowing that everything that arises is bound to pass away. Vipassana is a practice designed purify and create happiness.

At the retreat, all participants take a vow of silence for 10 days, though one is allowed to ask their teachers questions and talk to the management if necessary. Morality is central to the practice, and in order to succeed in meditation one must not kill, lie, steal, take intoxicants, or engage in inappropritate sexual behavior. The retreat is entirely free, paid for by past participant’s donations. Participants have the opportunity to donate at the end. There are Vipassana retreat centers around the world, including a couple in California.

The retreat itself was difficult for me because it took me longer than most to understand the technique. I was exposed to so much wisdom at my young age of 21! For the first few days we learned Annapurna meditation. When we started learning Vipassana I had an extremely strong childish reaction of fear. I couldn’t escape truth anymore. I had to face myself entirely. This fear has not completely left me yet. I committed to continue practicing after the retreat. It has been difficult to sustain, but initial difficulties will pass. The meditation keeps me aware in my everyday life and able to be open to the world around me. I am learning to live life in a constant state of meditation and intention.

Coming out of the retreat, I realized that the truth is that as long as people base their happiness in external, material things, the suffering of the world will never end. When I see families with little children living under freeway bridges, slums out the window of an air-conditioned train where I am served more food than my body needs, the servant in my house who has three weeks of holiday the entire year combined and has to wait until October to meet his baby daughter who was born in August because she lives a train ride away in one of the poorest states in India, the material problems of the world overwhelm me.

But once the family under the bridge gets a home, they will need food, electricity, water, clothes, jobs, education for their children, basic health support, and eventually the mind turns to refrigerators, cell phones, more bedrooms, better jobs, more money, the right husband for a daughter, joining the rat race…And once these are satisfied, still happiness is not guaranteed. New material cravings form. How many people do you know who have all their basic needs fulfilled and more, and who are miserable? So my question is, how can poverty and suffering be alleviated? They are not one and the same. Of course, that is easy for me to say, as a person who by choice spent a summer financially independent, who isn’t paying for her own college education, who is extremely privileged compared to the rest of the world, and who has the opportunity to study in India when most Indians could never dream of visiting America.

I don’t have a conclusion or an ending that will close-up the wound. But here is a story. An Indian student in my Early Buddhist Ethics course told me that it is her birthday on Monday. I asked if she is going to celebrate and she said that there is nothing to celebrate. Her family is struggling, and her sister can’t afford to go to school. Five years ago, her and her sister turned to Buddhism as a way to change their lives. Internally they have both changed: they don’t fight anymore and her sister doesn’t get angry as often. But externally, the changes are slow to come. Her sister is still working a job she doesn’t like rather than studying. But they keep working on their spiritual path with such astounding strength because they have seen what good internal change has already brought them.

Mom, now do you see why I couldn’t answer your question in just a few words? The Jewish High Holidays have been about rethinking the ways I have been going about creating happiness in my life and bringing happiness to the lives of others. I have been learning how to generate more joy in the world by relieving my own suffering. I have been learning how little material things matter. I am recommitted to my spriritual growth and I have new tools with which to pursue it.

May all beings be happy in this new year.

A New Year in India: Synagogue, Judaism, and Hinduism

Hello my dear family and friends!

Last weekend was Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and yesterday was Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. My mom's inquiry about my holiday prompted me to reflect about my recent growth. I couldn't just answer in a few words. As this is a long post, I have bolded key phrases so that you can skip to what interests you. And I’ll be posting it in more manageable chunks.

On Erev Rosh Hashanah, the evening the holiday began, I asked the servant at my house (a whole other topic of discussion) to cook dinner, and I performed and explained the table rituals to 3 of my friends. I thought about you all, but I was happy to experience the holiday in a new way, with my present family around me. I went to synagogue with one of my friends.

The Judah Hyam Synagogue (www.jewishdelhi.org) has been here for about 50 years. Currently it is being led by Ezekiel, a man who volunteers to do so and also works for the Human Rights something or other organization in Delhi. He is an Indian Jew who studied in Israel, and has been really sweet to me. Each time go to the synagogue is different because in addition to the five or so Jews of Indian origin who come, there are Jews who, like me, are living in Delhi for a time or just passing through. Ezekiel orients the service to the attendants of each particular service.

Once a big French family on vacation invited my roommate and I to eat dinner with them at their hotel across the street, the Taj Mahal. It reminded me of my family celebrating holidays together in hotel rooms, happily crammed together lighting Channukah candles. What great times we have had after dinner in smoosh piles! (That part missing). On Rosh Hashanah the service was led by Orthodox Israeli men. It was fine, but not very meaningful to me. Yom Kippur, however, was far more meaningful, partly because I had already written a large chunk of this blog post in through it understood my experiences more fully. I spent the whole day at synagogue, praying and meditating. It turns out that Ezekiel is a meditator himself.

The outside of the synagogue:














The inside of the synagogue, it's Sephardi in style, was slightly renovated by a community member before the high holidays (after this pic was taken)














The adjacent Jewish cemetery. In the background is the dwelling of the (non-Jewish) ground-keeper's family, with little kids running around:





























Practicing Judaism in India, an extremely religious country, full of traditions that are new to me, highlights different parts of Judaism. Not only am I more aware of my own religious beliefs, I am also exposed to new ideas to consider.

For the first part of my trip here, I really couldn't relate to Hinduism, the majority religion. The extent to which Hinduism, as I had experienced it, is based on routine rituals and seemingly blind faith in anthropomorphized gods seemed to foreign to my own Jewish mindset. In Judaism, we are constantly warned against "idolatry," creating visual representations of God. How could I relate to a religion in which people pray to physical statues of deities? But at the synagogue I realized how these two phenomena, routine ritual and blind faith, appear in Judaism in different forms. When a Hindu gives an offering (whether it be bangles, food, money, or flowers) or prays to a deity, how is this different from a Jew who puts a note into the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem or who is consumed by the need to perform a ritual commandment perfectly or pray in a specific way? How is the ritual of bringing out the Torah, parading it around the room so that people can kiss it, blessing it, reading ancient words from it, any different than the fire ceremony where a flame is circled around a deity? And in terms of blind faith, what greater proof does the Jewish tradition provide that a God exists than does Hinduism?

I realized that the qualms I have with Judaism are the same as those I have with Hinduism, just in a different form. Oh, so human of me to critique others before critiquing myself. Then some other comparisons started to emerge. Of course, there is depth behind rituals and faith in both religions, though it may be accessed in different ways and to different extents.Both religions are extremely diverse (Hinduism even more so than Judaism), and these short illustrations do not do them justice. Both religions encourage a personal relationship with divinity. Hinduism is practiced on a very individual basis wherein people are free to choose whichever deity they want to pray to, and construct shrines at home. In Judaism, individual prayers are encouraged in the context of a strong communal space.

One major difference is that mainstream Hinduism is extremely fluid, and does not contain a widely accepted specific code of behavior. While I am accustomed to emulating the qualities of God (also anthropomorphizing to say that God has qualities I could approximate) and following God’s laws, Hindu gods are presented as openly being both good and bad. The Upanishads, Hindu writings, contain concepts of morality, but there seems to be a big divide between devotion to god/s and moral practice.

The story of each religion is told extremely differently: Jewish texts are supposed to be the word of God and history of the Jewish people, while Hindu lore is largely oral, visual, and mythological. In both Hinduism and Judaism there are priests, though Cohanim (Jewish priests) were far more relevant in ancient times than today, while Brahmins (caste of Hindu priests) are relevant contemporaneously.

The entrance to a Hindu temple in Delhi dedicated to the god Hanuman, the monkey god:










































A Hindu temple at Yamanotri, the source of the sacred Yamuna river (I sent some picture of this area last time). The temple is rebuilt every few years because every winter it is completely submerged in snow:



















To be continued with more about what this actually means for me religiously and a general update......

Tammy Speaks!

Hi All!

For the last month I've been doing an intensive Hindi program at the Landour Language School (one of the most renowned in India) in the foothills of the Himalayas, or as they call them here, the Himalyas. My Hindi is coming along and I can sort of communicate now. A good start. Its beautiful up here outside of Mussoorie. I got to live in the middle of a forest for a month, and I lucked out and got my own room. I've been meditating, doing yoga, and enjoying not having a lot of commitments. I feel really accepted by the group and loved, and I've also been able to spend time away from the group. I've realized that six months is SUCH a short time to get to know India.

Tomorrow morning I am headed back to Delhi where I will be looking for a place to live, choosing my classes, solidifying my internship (probably in theater), and finding a yoga guru. I'm excited to start the second big part of the trip.

I've been really happy. I know that I am in the right place right now. And things keep lining up for me. Roman, another student at the language school (not from the group) offered to teach me yoga for free while I've been up here. I have a great contact for an internship in Delhi, named Subhash who has already shown me around a bit, the director of the EAP program is a professor from Irvine who wrote a book called Perspectives on the Female Body (!!), and everything I ask for seems to be granted. I feel incredibly blessed. I can feel myself growing a lot and learning to trust myself and take care of myself and lots of other good stuff.

I haven't really seen much of India yet though. Which is what the next few months are for, I suppose!

PICTURES
1. My friend Hayley from Berkeley who I hadn't seen for a year happened to be really close to where I was staying. She was at a farm started by Vandana Shiva, an incredible Indian environmental/agricultural/fair trade activist who I did a presentation about in class last fall. On the farm there is a seed bank (left) where Navdanya, the NGO, preserves local plant species that are threatened by corporate genetically engineered seeds. And there I am with Halyley and a cow (rather common around here). One of the volunteers from the farm ended up coming back to Mussoorie with us for the night.

















2. This is a Hindu temple on the top of a mountain around here. There was a beautiful gate between the temple and a path down the mountain. And some parents asked us if we would take a picture with their kids. The girl in the white shirt is a really close friend of mine who is coming to Delhi with me, and that's Thia on the right who is going to the south for the rest of the trip. There are temples and shrines everywhere! It's really interesting to be in such a religious country.















3.Our program took us all on a trip to visit a Hindi temple in the mountains up here. One of the most beautiful places I have ever been, see below. The picture at the beginning is also from Yammanotri.
















4. Some pictures from around Mussoorie.

I have arrived in the land of curry!

Hello my friends and family!

Welcome to my blog, which I will be updating over the course of my six month study abroad trip in India.

I am in Delhi. What a concept! More specifically, it is a dream come true. I am actually quite surprised by how comfortable I feel here, maybe because I have done a lot of traveling before and I had learned a lot about India. Or maybe the culture shock is lurking just around the corner. Either way, I am enjoying exploring and I am even more excited to settle in.

One of the most incredible experiences I have had here was visiting a Bahai temple immediately followed by a visit to a Hindu temple in South Delhi. The Bahai temple was the epidome of organized: the visitors lined up, checked their shoes and got numbers, and entered the temple at fifteen minute intervals in a single file line. I had a wonderful time meditating, and realized that even though I am so far away from the people I love (you all), I still have my best friend here, me.

After the Bahai temple (and my first Indian toilet/Delhi belly experience) my friends and I walked through narrow alley ways with shops that seemed to be catering to Hindu pilgrims on our way to a Hindu temple. There were GORGEOUS bangals, one of which I broke when I tried it on. When we got to the temple, we put our shoes down with the others (always a bit anxiety provoking because they could be so easily taken) and pushed our way into the temple along with the Hindu worshippers. Everybody was packed in against each other as we walked around the circular path outside of the shrine room. Periodically, a gaurd would open a gate to the shrine room and the crowd would rush in.

Inside was a circular space with a shrine in the middle and a man standing on it accepting sacrifices. The room was brightly lit. The shrine was made of silver and there were flowers and various objects on it. People in the crowd were holding up their gifts and yelling to get the man's attention. I saw one person who brought a miniature diaramma type scene to give. Everyone was sweating, it was essentially a moshpit. It was quite an adrenaline rush! A man tied a red string on my arm for "shanti," peace. After leaving the temple we walked along the outside of it where there were smaller shrines with candles and incense lit. This is what I came here for, I thought to myself.

That's all for now. Thanks for reading my blog!

Hugs and hugs and more hugs,
Tammy