Ahimsa

I think I discovered my “inner Hindu” this morning! I attended Ahimsa meditation led by Mother Maya, aka Sri Swami Mayatitananda Saraswati, a revered Hindu swami with a considerable worldwide following. Her spirituality is centered in the goddess Devi, the Divine Mother. She took us through a meditation for inner peace and harmony. We began with the mantra “Om manashivaya” which is a basic mantra in Hindu spirituality. “Om” is the sound that Hindus believe God made when creating the universe and the mantra, when repeated over and over, is believed to connect us to the archetypal, primordial creative energy pulsing in the universe. It certainly feels that way when a room full of people are chanting it together. We first chanted it aloud and then she had us chant it silently with occasional gentle instructions from her. I found this form of meditation much more effective for my considerably too active mind, than Buddhist meditation, because the mantra served as a useful focal point to minimize the wanderings of the mind. After the long period of chanting, we then took the vow of ahimsa, a vow to strive at all times for inner peace and harmony, and then everyone contributed to an earth mandala, made from all types of grains. I’ve included a picture of Mother Maya with this post. I have always found Hinduism fascinating and really found Mother Maya’s meditation and guidance meaningful and helpful. Her meditation could become habit forming!

The rest of the day was a real exercise in intellectual calisthenics! I attended the first of two sessions looking at the question “what is the religious imperative to treat the ‘other’ faithfully?” There was a large panel of theologians/religious leaders from the Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, and Christian traditions. Tariq Ramadan, the famous Islamic scholar from Oxford (who has been unable to enter the United States to attend conferences and teach because the Office of Homeland Security won’t allow INS to give him a Visa), was the Muslim speaker. I was very glad to have a chance to hear him in person. He is very well known around the world and it remains a travesty that our country does not permit him entry. The speakers were carefully managed by the facilitator, a rabbi who has done a lot of work in the area of the theologies of the religions and who was superb at keeping them to time limits and directing them to stay focused. They were each asked to speak to the question whether there is anything in their religious tradition that requires its adherents to treat those of other religions fairly. The Sikh, Buddhist and Hindu speakers were able to say yes, but the Muslim, Jewish and Christian folks had to admit to problems. This was a good session, so much so that it ran over by 30 minutes, although the convener was publicly criticized for not having included a single woman on the panel, something that had been bothering me from the minute I walked into the room. (There seems to be a lot of gender imbalance at this Parliament and tomorrow a group of women are convening to come up with a strategy to approach the board of the Parliament and make a formal complaint and a request for more balance when the next Parliament is put together. There is still a tendency to put women on panels dealing with “women’s” issues and populate the “serious” panels with men!)

My afternoon was a double dose of the Luce foundation symposium on Educating Religious Leaders for a Multi Religious Society. The first session was another enormous panel of religious leaders from all over the world who spoke to the question of how they train leaders in their tradition and to what extent they address issues of pluralism and other religions when they are training people for religious leadership. The Muslim speaker was a woman from Indonesia who runs a school for women in which they are trained as Qur’anic scholars and in memorizing and reciting the Qur’an. In the course of the presentation I was delighted to hear her recite sections of the Qur’an. I have attended Muslim prayers many times and have never had the experience of hearing a woman reciting the prayers. It was really beautiful and she is truly skilled at reciting. The second session was a continuation of the series I’ve been attending every day where we have the opportunity for small group work. Today we had a case study on an interreligious issue. What I love about doing this small group work here is the diversity of the people in the group. We have a real mix of religious traditions and it is wonderful to have all the different points of view analyzing the issues.

I’ve included another photo of the Tibetan monks’ sand mandala which is really coming along.

Fortunately, I had the evening free so took some time to walk along the Yarra River and enjoy the balmy evening. Lots of people were out and about enjoying the mild, early summer weather.

Tomorrow morning, its off to Sikh worship before launching into the work of the day.