At Home in The World

Rationality, Belief

King criticizes the impulse to “reduce” religion to political, sociological or other dimensions, or to “reduce” such forces to religion (13-14). Discuss his argument. Are you convinced that this is a problem? What might be an alternative approach?


King writes that “one consequence of the modern distinction between the spheres of religion and politics has been to foster a suspicion among Westerners that any linkage of the two realms is an example of a ‘merely rhetorical’ use of religious discourse to mask some underlying political, ideological or ‘worldly’ intention” (13). King advances the example of the Hindu doctrine of karma as promulgated by elite brahmans in order to bolster his claim. The brahmans are understood to act under social and political pressures (in hopes of maintaining their privileged social and political status) rather than by actual religious convictions, which, according to King, are made alien to the ‘public’ realm of political and social authority, relegated to the realm of the ‘private’. King argues that religious convictions and pressures are valid in their own right, and do in fact exist and exert influence in the public sphere, and therefore need not be construed as masquerading for political (and not religious) agendas. For King, the religious and the political are not separate realms in our public reality (14), and he adamantly rejects the “Enlightenment-born” bifurcation of religion and politics. However, assuming that we do in fact suffer from this tendency to reduce bona fide religious impulse to political plotting, and assuming that we become aware of this, and treat the previously-political motivation as in fact a religious one, are we better off? What is gained here?

I am trying to tackle King’s article, but admittedly I am not sure that I possess a firm enough grasp on the material to competently respond. I write now more for teasing out my own thoughts. Bear with me while I inflict the thrust of my mental disentangling upon you the reader. This article, for me, is centered upon King’s primary aim to shed light on the extent to which the mystical is in fact political. He wishes to do away with what he sees as a synthetic veil flimsily partitioning the ‘private’ and the ‘public’ domains insofar as mystical experiencing is concerned. So, for King, before we can even tackle the question of what is mysticism, we must broach the topic of “what is the agenda of power underlying a particular characterization of mysticism?” (9). I certainly concede that the acceptance of various brands of mystical experiences as valid necessarily relates to the extent to which those experiences were compatible with the authorities deeming them valid. So, through this lens, certainly “defining mysticism is a way of defining power”. The mystical, then, as King argues, cannot be treated as uninvolved with the political.

However, perhaps it is my own naïveté on such matters, but is there no mystical independent of the political? To draw upon what I see as a parallel in Christianity, there are gospels which were admitted into the Christian bible, and others which remain apocryphal, so, their revelatory or testimonial status is intimately ties, and dependent upon, the political authorities at work. However, is there not a dimension to these texts (whether admitted into the cannon, or rejected) which renders them valid or invalid, authentic or inauthentic in and of their own right regardless of the political dimension at play? To return to mystical experiencing, does it not possess a certain self-definition independent of the political sphere with which it is entangled? King appears to be arguing that mysticism has indeed been defined, articulated and condoned by political authorities, but surely such ‘definitions’ are political ones, and need not trespass upon the experience itself, indeed need not intrinsically ‘define’ these experiences. One is the outer core definition; the other is the inner experience. However, this appears to be the very dichotomy against which King advocates. Or is it? The inner experience may in fact hold sway in the political arena, but my point is that it need not be defined by that arena, or rather, any definition provided in that arena could not measure or ‘define’ the experience itself. On this basis, the impulse in King’s work, i.e., to expose the extent to which the religious and the political are forever mated, does not hold much appeal for me. In all fairness, however, I have never been interested in politics in the least.

I am nevertheless intrigued by the Enlightenment-born dichotomy King discusses (13). There is a peculiar divide between the realm of science and that of religion that, as King advances, rests upon the extent to which science (and philosophy) may be articulated ‘objectively’, oriented towards the empirical, quantifiable, and demonstrable, poised to be shared with others in society. Then there is the inexplicable, “irrational” internal private impulse towards religion. This distinction reminds me Tagore’s novel “The Home and The World” set in 19th century colonial Bengal. There is much food for thought in this work, but I draw upon it because the aforementioned parallel is one of its running themes: the husband acts in the ‘world’ while the wife exerts authority in the ‘home’. The world is the colonized India, where science and social progress reign supreme, a public realm of secular western ideals. The home, on the other hand, is the hearth of the country, the private realm remaining impervious to colonization, where language, culture, and religion privately endure. Mother India finds solace from her British parasites in the sanctum of each Indian home. The man wears a suit, the woman wears a sari. This fits all too well with the Public-Private Enlightenment dichotomies advanced by King on p 13.

King seems to be saying that the distinction between Home and World is artificial, and in fact, the man who goes out into the public spheres often draws from the impulses and sympathies born of his alter-ego, the feminine, intuitive, religious, sacred convictions within him. For him to draw upon his religiosity, and thus liberate it from what King paints as a marginalized status in post-enlightenment secular society, he exemplifies the extent to which religion is at work in the political domain. But, again, I fail to see how this helps us understand religion in the absence of political exertion. We see the ‘home’ aspect at work in the ‘world’, but what is it like in its own state, at home? Surely we ought not to ‘reduce’ the religious to the sociopolitical, but may be not examine it independent of the sociopolitical?

Experience

I have always been drawn by the account of humanity’s fall from Eden narrated in Genesis. It strikes as some metaphorically-cloaked, profound truth about human existence. I don’t think I will ever entirely understand its appeal, or its message, but I am especially intrigued by a peculiar dichotomy there. Gen. 2:15-17 reads:

The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, 'You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die'.

We all know what happens from here. Humankind goes from a state of oblivion to one of knowledge, and in so doing, falls from eternity into a state of mortality. This dichotomy speaks to me, though I know not quite what it says. This story appears to uphold the notion that “ignorance is bliss”, particularly since suffering inevitably accompanies the newly-gained “knowledge” of our primordial parents. However, ignorance here isn’t used in a pejorative sense. For me, this isn’t an ‘ignorance’ comparable to an absence of knowledge, but rather possibly refers to a state transcendent to knowledge, a state beyond the duality of empirical knowing (i.e., ‘knowledge of good and evil’). Perhaps, then, for the sake of discussion, the quest of the mystic can be construed as a re-ascent from a fallen state of ‘knowledge’, back into the ineffable oblivion that is eternity. Human ‘salvation’ would involve, then, a transcendence of a ‘fallen’ state and a return to the blissful state before the intervention of knowledge and suffering. What could this possibly mean though? What could an existence without knowledge of the world, or the self (as represented by Adam and Eve’s self-consciousness about their own nakedness) possibly entail? Who knows? Clearly no one could know, since it is apparently beyond the realm of knowing!

Steven Kats discloses an assumption at the very outset of his paper, “Diversity and The Study of Mysticism”, an assumption from which all of his work proceeds, specifically, that there are no unmediated experiences. To draw upon the aforementioned metaphor, for Katz there is no such Edenic state which humankind may experience the world directly, unfiltered by mental apparatus. Humanity must at all times possess knowledge (however peripherally) of its own nakedness. No experience is blissfully pure, or so Katz assumes. My apprehension about this assumption originates from the fact that it opposes the claims of to whom we subject this assumption. Must we, in the study of mysticism, trespass against the claims of the mystics themselves? If mystics claim that there exists such a thing as unmediated experiencing, then what right do we have, as scholars in the course of investigating such experiences, to proceed on the assumption that they are fundamentally incorrect? Further, I do not understand his basis for believing that different mystics do not in fact refer to the same experience. However, I can potentially see these two points of departure as related. If one cannot have an unmediated experience, then one’s experience must necessarily be tied to one’s individuality, and can thus not be shared by another individual. If one were to allow for unmediated experience, then one allows, too, for the possibility of universality within the realm of mystical experiencing.

Let us examine the notion of common experience among different mystics. In order to truly assess Katz beliefs, I suppose I ought to tackle some of the evidence he gives. My own thinking on the matter is yet quite fuzzy, but I do have some knee-jerk reactions. I was particularly intrigued by his application of logic on the notion of paradox and ineffability (Section V, p 201). He asserts (p 204) that the fact that “(1) Mystic A claims that Experience X is paradoxical and ineffable, while (2) mystic B claims experience Y is paradoxical and ineffable” in no way constitutes evidence equating the experience of A and B. As a matter of fact, he claims that NOTHING can be said about the content of their experience. We can only compare the description of their experiences. But if it is true that we cannot comment on the nature of their experience, and that we therefore have no basis of knowing that their experiences are the same, how, then, can we know that their experiences AREN’T the same?

For Katz, the ineffable seems to refer to one of many possible indescribable states, but I’m not convinced this could be the case. The ineffable for me does not merely refer to something that one cannot describe (because of one’s own limitations), but rather, it refers to that which cannot be described (because of its very nature), that which lies beyond the terrain of empirical knowing. If there are multiple such ‘points’ within the ineffable, would they not be unified in their status as all equally outside the realm of regular knowledge? The ineffable, for me, connotes something singular, or at least something whose plurality (if we chose to conceive of it as such) would exist beyond the threshold of the perception of plurality. Therefore, I am inclined to reject Katz rebuttal of Stace, etc: I don’t see what prevents different mystics from engaging in like experiences.

Furthermore, it strikes me as odd to subject mystical experiencing to the mode of logic as these experiences appear to operate outside of the scope of rationality. Katz himself discusses mystical breakthroughs beyond conventional consciousness with the use of koans, etc. If the path to the experience necessitates a deviation a transcendence of rational knowing (“fundamental to the traversal of the mystical path from consciousness A to consciousness B”, 206), then how could we subject the goal, i.e. trans-rational experience itself, to the mode of logic? Not only do I not follow Katz logic on why mystical experiencing need be variegated and unmediated, I fail to see the logic in relying on logic at all. Clearly rational scrutiny is the necessary instrument of the study of mystical experiencing, we cannot help but cling to it in your academic work. But certainly it cannot be the rod whereby the mystical experience itself is measured.

The Goddess: from Mother to Other

[Feel free to ignore this opening paragraph, it’s mostly scenic, but may help to frame my aversion for Kinsley’s treatment of the genders.] I went the Hamilton escarpment on Saturday to enjoy what few lingering summer moments we had left in the nurturing energy of Mother Nature. There were five of us total, three males, one female, and myself. Kevala (the only biological female) expressed her deep appreciation for the fact that I was able to get the day off work and join them, thereby affording her periodic refuge from “being alone with the boys”. I am not sure if it’s because of my orientation (for those of you know don’t know, or haven’t guessed, I’m gay), or because of my individual sensibilities, but she sees me as different from the other guys, and I have to say that for the most part I agree with her. There were times when “the guys” would carry on about one subject or another and Kevala and I would, with a single glance, convey to each other an amusement and confusion that we alone shared. The exchange carried with it the certainty that a) we’ll never understand the intrigue of Suject X and b) they’ll never understand our lack of interest. Suffice it to say that I often find myself able to identify with females (though not exclusively). As a result, my closest circle of friends consists of males and female alike. However, there were many times throughout the trip when we we divided differently. For example, the rest of us could not relate to Kevala and Davis’ unique views on being in nature (about which I can elaborate at another opportunity for this interested), thus relegating Kevala to the realm of the “other”. Clearly, the boundaries between interpersonal interactions need not crudely adhere to gender distinctions, but this is merely one variety. Being made to awkwardly maneuver between the innumerable gender-based protocols and distinctions pervading our society, I shudder at the thought of having to do so, too, in the study of the history of religion. Perhaps there is no way around it, but I don’t like the approach taken by David Kinsley in “Women’s Studies in the History of Religions”. There is much about this article which I find problematic, but I must find the strength to curtail my ranting to a somewhat-coherent, profanity-free critique. I shall therefore confine my discussion to the examples Kingsley incorporates from the Hindu religious tradition. This is a tradition with whose scholarship I am most familiar. Further, I have benefited from the insights of several Hindu practitioners, of various ages, cultural backgrounds, and walks of life – male and female alike.

According to Kinsley, Women’s studies devastatingly reveals the extent to which the study of the history of religions falls short of its own non-parochial, unbiased, all-inclusive mandate (2). He brings to our attention our limited focus, centered around the religious expressions of man-kind, not human-kind. If the history of every culture is “patriarchal, sexist, androcentric, and often misogynistic” (4), to what extent can the “female perspective” aid in our understanding of that history? If, for example, women were barred from a specific ritual, then what can women tell of the ritual in question? How can one study a sexist phenomenon in a non-sexist manner? Perhaps it is my androcentric Western bias speaking, but I wonder, to what extent can scholars emphasize study women’s religion if religion itself was primarily a male-dominated sphere throughout history? If religious writings are androcentric, and the institutions are androcentric, and expounders, virtuosos, and leaders are all men, then how would studying the ‘feminine perspective’ assist in understanding the history of a tradition? If imams, rabbis, priests, pandits, etc. were primarily (or exclusively) male, then how does one possibly avoid a non-androcentric understanding of history? Would Kinsley have us believe that women have always been on equal footing in the history of religion, and that it is only modernity which relegates them to the status of the other by denying them their equal contribution to the teachings and shaping of religious history?

Kinsley makes grand claims and sweeping generalizations about the history of the study of religion, e.g., that scholarly attention paid to initiatory rites was limited to male initiation rites, or that the study of goddesses was marginalized and treated as a separate section that the study of the ‘gods’ (3). To which scholars, to which studies, and to which traditions does Kinsley refer in order to bolster his sweeping charges of the study of religious history? Let us examine some of his examples and assess the extent to which they pertain to the broad themes he paints at the outset of his paper. As mentioned before, due to the limits of space, and of my own area of study, I will direct this cross-examination based upon the ‘evidence’ Kinsley draws from Hindu thought and practice. Kinsley cites the example of the two sixteen-century Indian poet-saints Surdas and Mirabai to illustrate two divergent gender perspectives within the tradition. Mirabai was a highly atypical individual by all accounts. She was a mystical poet-saint who was known for sacrificing all social connections and responsibilities in order to glorify the name of her beloved deity, Krishna. How many woman did the same? How many reports do we have of similar women? It seems questionable to use her as an example of the types of religious activities that Hindu women typically partake in. She surely may not be regarded as a spokesperson for a specific subculture common to Hindu women at the time. Mirabai is celebrated throughout the tradition for her independent conviction againt social pressures, all in the name of sacred devotion. She is, in essence, an anomaly with respect to ‘women’s religion’. She is, however, an aspect of the rise of devotionalism as a means of salvation on the Indic subcontinent at the time. Also, the fact that her remarkably life and story survive attests to the fact that historical women are in fact studied. I personally learned about her in both my History of South Asia class in addition to my Intro to Hinduism class.

Surdas, too represents the overarching devotionalism movement of his era. However, he, too, was a mystical poet-saint, and not typical by any stretch of the imagination. [Interestingly, I did not learn about him in our “androcentric” academic institution, so perhaps there is hope yet. I digress.] Many sung to Krishna, many dances, many offered fruits, flowers, etc., but how many partook in mystical union with the deity? How can either he or Mirabai – both purportedly in direct contact with the deity Krishna, experiencing ecstatic union with him – possibly be indicative of a respective “religious community”? Perhaps they serve to exemplify a dichotomy among male and female mystic-poets, but by what basis may we apply this dichotomy to the realm of more mundane practice? With respect to the specific difference between the them (that to which Kinsley draws our attention), specifically, that Mirabai spiritually marries Krishna while Surdas does not, women were expected to marry, while men could either marry or renounce society. Therefore it is understandable that Mirabai would regard Krishna as her husband. There was no alternative. Surdas did not need to do so. His female status (as a lover of Krishna) was implemented only whilst engaged in divine devotion to his Lord. Presumably he would regard himself as male at other times. Marriage, however, pervades all aspects of life. One remains married whether performing ritual, doing housework, etc. For him to declare a marriage between himself and Krishna, he would be thought of as married whilst engaging in mundane activities, while he was a man, not a woman. Labeling himself as a ‘wife’ of Krishna would present a logical and social tension when he returned to his inherent, mundane male persona. He could not be Krishna’s wife while he was a man. He could only temporarily be Krishna’s lover while engaging in devotional union, which is characterized by a transcendence of all qualities, including gender. Mirabai, however, was a woman at all times, and would be considered a husband-less woman if not for her cleverly self-articulated marriage to Krishna. This not only prevents her from being a social outcaste, but it bars the pursuit of other men. There is a level of practicality in the distinction of ‘lover vs wife’ which need not be representative of a larger gender-based attitude. [I wonder at the parallel in the expression “bride of Christ”: who are monks married to??] These two poet-saints are celebrated within the tradition because of the extent to which their attitudes, talents, and practices were distinct from the majority; how, then, may we elect them as paradigmatic for the male and female Hindu experience?


Let us now turn to Kinsley’s chanting example. The Devi Mahatmya is a Sanskrit text. Arguably Sanskrit Brahmanical circles are exclusively male, however, instruction in Sanskrit occurs at various secular institutions in India, and throughout the Hindu world. Furthemore, it is not a requirement that aspirants understand the text, but merely recite it. Do all Muslims understand Arabic? The vast majority of Hindu practitioners don’t understand Sanskrit. From what I understand, Sanskrit chanting is considered to have dimensions beyond the mere meaning-containment characteristic of ordinary speech. Comprehension is irrelevant to sensibilities towards vibrations, invocation, etc. My formal research of Devi worship last semester verifies this. In addition, I personally know several women (Indian, Canadians, West Indians, etc), who chant the Devi Mahatmya in Sanskrit, and don’t understand Sanskrit. Therefore, I view Kinsley’s reference to the chanting of this text at one temple (Vindhyavasini) to be highly misleading. The sect of Durga worshippers has an enormous following, male and female alike. The recitation of the Devi Mahatmya is standard practice for all devotees (male and female), regardless of their comprehension of the Sanskrit language. The chanting itself (or even the listening thereof) is considered highly beneficial. The notion that it would be “lowly, crude, and relatively ineffective” (5) because it was chanted by women seems to me a gross misrepresentation. If this was in fact the attitude at one point in time, it certainly would be the exception and not the norm among current worshippers of the Goddess. On what basis does Kinsley regard the sentiments of these anonymous “professional male reciters of the text” as paradigmatic throughout the tradition? Surely such “professionals” constitute a minute fraction of the non-professional millions who regularly recite the Devi Mahatmya.

Kinsley also cites two interpretations of the nine Durgas to perpetuate his sweeping claims. In essence, he purports a male-dominated philosophical view, and a female-dominated life-cycle view. However, I am very interested to know the demographic of the interviewees. However, how many of each gender were interviewed? Who were these “certain females”? How were they chosen? Clearly, if the study was performed on men who are educated in such philosophical principles, and taught to view all deity iconography to directly or indirectly uphold those principles, how could they help but interpret the Devi iconography thus. Further, surely women denied access to such indoctrination could not possibly hold the same view as the men who were. My study of Goddess worship last semester was centered precisely around this tension: the goddesses interpreted by practitioners as the Many versus those interpreting the goddesses as philosophical representations of the One. This dichotomy was not articulated along gender lines in my research, but rather as a function of interaction with various schools of thought. Resurrecting arguments articulated in that research would prove only tangential to this current reflection, but suffice it to say that discourse on the topic is far more nuanced than the “he thinks, she thinks” representation graciously provided by Kinsley via Hillary Rodrigues. This makes me wonder why Hinduism, for Kinsley, is so laden with “female perspectives”. Biases certainly abound, stemming from many factors, gender being no exception. However, to generalize on the basis of gender is equally irksome, whether in the name of patriarchy, or in the name of women’s liberation.