RELC2500
Asian Religions

Discussion: Hinduism
The Fires Within, Without, and Between: The Limbic Spaces of Vedic Ritual

“Hinduism is, then, both a civilization and a conglomeration of religions, with neither a beginning, a founder, not a central authority, hierarchy, or organization.” (Davis, 1999)

The orally composed Vedic texts, eventually written down in the earliest forms of Sanskrit, describe the worlds and experiences of the Indo-Aryan peoples and their nomadic existence. They describe a world of herders, horse-riders and the beginnings of what would become Hinduism. These texts, organized into the four branches of the Samhitas, Brahmanas, Aranyakas and Upanishads, provide both practical guidance and sense-making insight for a nomadic people concentrating their worship through the direct elemental experiences closest to them, and an ultimately divine connection to the very release from the cycle of rebirth. Central to our understanding of these rituals are the three distinct binaries of the relationships of individualized control and mastery between heat and cold, the internal and external, and the microcosm and macrocosm. We will take each in turn and then connect their role to moksha, the Sanskrit term for the liberation from suffering.

First, mastery of heat assumes a central role in Vedic practice. Fire becomes a bridge which spans the limbic space between the cold of the earth and the heat of the divine. Rituals such as the Agnihotra involve the manipulation of fire and the recitation of mantas by a Brahmin, where oblations are given in worship to Agni, representative of fire in its multiple forms. Not just the Sun, but the warmth of the hearth, of sacrifice, the digestive fire in one’s belly, and the fire of creative inspiration (Davis, 1999). As the priest of the gods, Agni serves as the primary intermediary between gods and humans, with the elemental power of fire an important tether between both worlds.

Secondly, the nature of how heat was manipulated both internally and external, and the tensions between the two connect the notion of mastery over one’s internal fires, through ascetic practice, sacrifice or fire ritual. Such practices of heat didn’t just connect the worlds of humans and gods, they also connected the notion of heat as an elemental force which could be mastered and controlled internally and are detailed in the ritual instructions of the Brahmanas. And through sensory manipulation of both chakras, one’s internal glowing wheels of energy, and nadis, rivers of energy flowing through one’s body, heat could serve as a tether cast out towards the heavens for connecting one’s atman, one’s soul, to something far larger than oneself, the ultimate or oversoul, the Brahma.

Tapas, the notion of internalized ascetic heat, and practiced on earth by rishis, motivated a belief that if one could control and manipulate the immediate elemental and physical aspects of the world, such as one’s own temperature, then one could subsequently also control things beyond one’s body, such as the rising of the sun and the nature of the weather. For a nomadic people, their primary experience would have been that of surviving the elements, and their physical and emotional mastery over them a key ingredient of their continued existence. As Davis describes, ‘in the vivid metaphor of one Upanishad, the senses are wild horses hitched to the chariot of the body; the mind is the charioteer who must somehow bring them under control. Yoga is what one uses to do so.’ (Davis, 1999).

If one, through the ritual of internalized fire, could manipulate, and augment one’s tapas through ascetic practice such as yoga, fasting, meditation or physical hardship, it would serve as a thread of connection, a bandhu, between one’s own internal atman, and the Brahma, the ultimate, or oversoul. It’s not just that heat enables and empowers such divine connection, it’s also that through conscious, deliberate, and systemic Brahminic ritual focused on the internal stoking of one’s individualized fires, one can bring about an even deeper, closer relationship to the divine.

Lastly, there is the structuralist binary of the manipulation of the microcosm in order to connect to the external macrocosm. That which is beyond ourselves, elemental, and for a nomadic people, often a means of one’s very continued survival. The casting out of a bandhu, a connection between soul and the gods, served as a spiritual string between the small and the large, the internal and external, and of course, the cold and the hot. And that through this connection between atman and Brahma, one could master the power to control the weather, cure sickness, and thrive as a people.

In conclusion, the manipulation and mastery of heat, both internal and external, and its connection to the microcosm of the individual and the macrocosm of the heavens, enabled and empowered early Vedic people to sustain a sense of belief which led to their nomadic survival. But the Upanishads go further than just being a guide for sustenance and existential equilibrium. They reflect upon the very nature of life itself, and how through such ritual connection to the Brahma, one might seek to liberate oneself from the very wandering cycle of birth and death. That the existential suffering of life, the swirling miasma of the universe, the samsara, could itself be broken. As Davis summarizes, ‘this continuing succession of life, death and rebirth is termed samsara (circling, wandering) in the Upanishads. Samsara comes to denote not just the individual wandering of a person from life to life, but also the entire world process seen as perpetual flux.’ (Davis, 1999).

Moksha, the liberation from the trials of life, through ascetic practice, singing the praise hymns of the Samhitas, performing the rituals of the Brahmanas, and being guided by the forest teachings of the Aranyakas, when compounded over a lifetime, would free oneself from the very cycle of reincarnation. As Davis continues, ‘That is exactly what the renouncer (sannyasin) does. He (or occasionally she) would leave home and family to live in relatively isolated and austere circumstances, sleeping on the ground, restricting the diet, practicing control of the breath, and bringing the senses under control - in short - withdrawing from all that might bind one to the world, with the ultimate goals of escaping from rebirth itself.’ (Davis, 1999)

What began as the elemental, ritual manipulation of heat and fire, when practiced across centuries of nomadic existence, and operating independently of the constraints of a single founder, single doctrinal point of reference, or single ecclesiastical hierarchy, led to the forming of the religious practices of Hinduism, and provided a material path not just for sustenance and survival, but for what we all seek in life, the liberation from suffering.

Discussion: Hinduism

At over 100,000 verses, and close to two million words, the Mahabharata is ten times the size of both Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey combined, and six times the length of the Christian Bible. In the canon of epic poetry, it is perhaps the most epic of epics. Vast in scope, the Mahabharata admits that ‘whatever is here may be found elsewhere, but what is not here is nowhere else’(1.56.34 in Davis, 1999), and depicts the struggle and conflict between two great rival cousin clans, the Kauravas and the Pandavas. Originating, as with much of the Vedic tradition, as oral literature, and told and retold primarily as allegorical, instructional parable for ksatriya warriors, the story was embellished and enhanced over several centuries, and reached its final form around the fourth century CE.

As Davis explains, the Mahabharata “uses the rivalry between two ksatriya clans to characterize the entire warrior class as quarreling, contentious, and increasingly deviating from dharma. With the ruling classes in such disarray, disorder and violence threaten society itself’ (Davis, 1999). But through the guidance of earthly avatars, in particular Krishna and Visnu, such demonic swirling forces of discord are overcome, moksha can be achieved, and the path of a righteous ethical, eudaimonic life laid out to follow.

The Mahabharata contains many of the narrative devices we’re still familiar with today. Betrayal, marriage, exile, war, inter-generational and inter-familial conflict, and the guiding hand of the supernatural and spiritual as moral compass for our earthly heroes. In particular, the ‘Song of the Lord Krishna’, the Bhagavad Gita, which appears at the dramatic climax of the epic’s narrative, provides the central ideological and theological vision of the Mahabharata, where Krishna reflects upon Pandavan prince Arjun’s doubts about the impending battle by ‘offering a sustained discourse on the moral and religious propriety of war, the nature of human action, and the most effective means of attaining liberation, or moksha’ (Davis, 1999).

Ultimately Krishna advocates for one’s personal dharma to guide one’s appropriately good conduct in the world, and does so by increasingly revealing his true form. From the charioteer, uncle figure, we’ve been familiar with throughout the epic, into the highest, supreme divinity. And here he instructs Arjun that the most effective way to achieve liberation from samsara is to dedicate one’s life to the ways of the absolute, to Krishna himself. A set of Hindu ethics emerges from the story which outlines the difference between good and bad, propriety and impropriety, and how we learn from the mistakes of the protagonists to avoid such evils ourselves. The Mahabharata becomes a guiding map, a set of principles told through epic poetry, for a relationship with dharma.

As with any great mythological epic, the Mahabharata, despite its length, has specific set scenes and interactions which surface as more memorable than others, similar to how we might think of the brief, but highly memorable encounter with Polyphemous in The Odyssey, or the entrance into Troy of the wooden horse in The Iliad. The Mahabharata has them in abundance, from the marriage of Draupadi, to the (loaded) dice game, the exile and return of the Pandava brothers to the colossal Battle of Kurukshetra. Over the years there have been many depictions of these events, and attempts to capture the epic nature of the Mahabharata. I decided to spend time with three of them. The 1965 movie depiction, the first ten episodes of the 2013 television series, and the 2013 animated children’s movie.

All of them follow to a greater extent the same order of events, from the burning of the Pandava brothers’ house to the wonderful archery sequence where Drapaudi’s suitors attempt to fire an arrow through the eye of a fish suspended on the ceiling of the palace’s great hall. And as you’d expect from the two Bollywood movies, the dance sequences are exquisite and a sheer joy. The climax of the Battle of Kurukshetra, and Krishna’s revelation are treated with spectacular effect, the 1965 version being particularly impressive for its time, and I’ve included some stills from this sequence above. As with most modern television serializations, the 2013 series is beautiful, but slow, with soap-opera-esque cliff hangers in abundance. The set and costume design are exquisite, and it’s not hard to see why the Mahabharata continues to be one of the most watched stories in the world, greater even than The Olympics or The Super Bowl. The 2013 animated children’s version, which holds the record for India’s most expensive animated film at $6.3 million, is primitive in execution, even for 2013, but naturally has the creative latitude to be able to depict the more supernatural elements of the story free from the constraints of having to film them for real as in the 1965 version.

But with all three versions, and of course there are many more, the sheer epic scale, the twists and turns of the story, the universality of the struggle between generations and family, and the importance of the guiding hand of the divine have proven not only enduring, but also inspiring. We see these themes continue to be echoed in our modern western epics from Marvel, Game of Thrones, Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings. Stories everywhere, but especially in Hinduism, are how we make sense of the world. They’re where we get our ethics of right and wrong, of good and bad, and perhaps most importantly, of what the path forward should be. What we gain in religious lesson from the Mahabharata has been durable over thousands of years, and while depictions of the story will come and go, especially as the technological means of telling them evolves at ever-increasing pace, what endures is the story, what we learn from it, and what it tells us to pass on to the next generation.

Discussion: Hindu Temple Field Trip

Our connection to the divine, often transcending faith, is frequently associated with the warmth and comfort which comes with a welcome meal. Whether through ritual offering, consumption of sacrifice, or the meaning we choose to attach to specific types of sustenance. But the Sri Maha Vallabha Ganapati Devasthanam temple in Queens, New York isn’t just a feast for the stomach through its community canteen, but also a sensorial feast for the eyes in its stunning architecture, elaborate depictions of Hindu deities, and its selfless service to the community. In its food, statuary, and architecture, it fosters the kinds of preferred conditions for warmth in bringing us closer to the Hindu tradition of Brahma, the oversoul.

Traditional Vedic practice seeks to stoke the fires within through ascetic ritual, drawing the bandhu threads of connection between one’s own internal atman and the ultimate, oversoul of the Brahma. In contrast, food also figures largely as a less austere motivator of warmth and consumption in serving the gods to benefit our own earthly efforts towards moksha. Food provides an alternate conduit through which we might draw ourselves closer to the divine, both through ingestion, but also through ritual offering. In this sense it differs from the heat generated through ascetic practice and becomes the warmth, comfort and satisfaction predicted on the pleasure of eating a good meal. The methods differ, but the drawing closer to the divine aspires to the same outcome of stoking one’s internal fire.

As we see in many other religions, and especially in western mythology, the gods need to eat. In Hinduism this is most vividly represented in the figure of Ganesha, who greets those arriving at the temple’s entrance, symbolizes new beginnings, serves as a threshold intermediary between inside and outside, and whose permission we seek for safe passage inside the temple. For Hindu worshippers, the statue of Ganesha is treated like a living figure, with associated ritual designed to treat him as such, from morning ceremonies to wake him up, ritual cleansing, and feeding of freshly prepared food from the temple’s canteen.

Ganesha bridges the limbic space between inside and outside of the temple, but also the threshold between inside and outside of our own bodies. The gods crave the sensory experiences of taste and the tactile nature of a good meal just as much as we do, and here the daily ritual of offering food not only keeps Ganesha alive, but also keeps our faith in him alive. Feeding not only the faith of the divine, but also providing sustenance and fuel for our own faith. In treating the god Ganesha as a living figure, we pull him and his blessing closer to us. In doing so, the gods eat the same food as us, they bathe like us, and in drawing them closer to us, we draw our own atman closer to the Brahma, and we feel the heat and comforting warmth of the freshly prepared food as we digest it. This emotional, ritual, subservient warmth stokes the fires of our own chakras, and manipulating one’s own internal heat, not through an internalized acetic heat as we’d find in meditation, yoga or harsh physical ritual, but through the pleasure and comfort of a good meal.

In the context of the temple’s work, this isn’t restricted to an internalized, individualized phenomenon. There are broader communal service aspects to the canteen, where often the excess food from the temple is distributed to local soup kitchens, and provides sustenance for the homeless in need, irrespective of faith. If the ritual of feeding the deities extends to our own internalized, individualized ritual of providing the warmth to stoke the fires of our own faith internally, there is also a communal, broader, external stoking which seeks to extend this service far beyond the walls of the temple and brings the benefits of such worship to those in need, and those even beyond the Hindu faith itself. The temple is a place of spiritual and emotional warmth, which broadens and builds outwards into the community. The temple becomes a centralized locus, with ripples of warmth beginning with the intimate worship of an individual deity and traveling beyond the walls of the temple to the community more broadly, with food being the key means for how this ritual extends and does its work. The role of food provides a counterbalance to the hardships of fasting, but both seek the same result of generating internal heat and satisfaction as a means of connecting to Brahma and drawing deity closer to us. The absence of food, but also the abundance of food both act as a positive conduit for those seeking to serve more divine purpose.

As a footnote, I live about 40 minutes from the temple, and was able to order some of their food on GrubHub this week. I tried the mysore dosa, tomato uttapam, and the idli (a steamedrice cake with coconut chutney) and can confirm that it is indeed some of the best Indian food in New York!

Discussion: Jainism

While Jainism may be one of the oldest and smallest religions in the world, it embodies highly contemporaneous ecological, ethical, and societal ideas which continue to have increasing strength today. Deviating from Hinduism with its reframing of the Upanishads and elevation of the role of reducing karma, it reflects a highly interconnected, systems-driven existence for all of us, but motivates a mode of behavior which stresses minimal impact upon the world and each other. This is in stark contrast to much of contemporary, and especially western consumer culture, where the notion of ‘putting a dent in the world’ is a measurement of success, and one’s own individual impact celebrated and held up as aspirational model. This can be challenging for us to reconcile. The impact of individuals and industrialists such as Henry Ford, Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg are celebrated for ‘making the world a better place’, but their impact upon the planet, but ecologically and perhaps even morally, contrasts strongly with Jain perspective.

In reducing the accumulation of wealth, lessening consumption of food, traveling less, engaging in fewer conflicts, and doing less ecological harm to the planet and other living things, the teachings of the Mahavira in Jainism seek to reduce the inventory of karma produced. And when one produces less impact, less karma, the less damage one does, the more peaceful and meditative one’s life becomes, the nearer to liberation from samsara, or moksha, one approaches. When one achieves a minimally sufficient degree of karma, often reduced through harsh ascetic practice and physical austerities in monkhood, one achieves the awakening which facilitates release from the cacophony and swirling chaos of life itself.

This is again in sharp contrast with the western notion of life achievement. In Jainism the reduction of karma, the lessening of impact, is that which frees you from the suffering of existence. Whereas the impact one has on the world, perhaps even the wealth one accumulates, and what one builds to change the lives of others, is often what we associate with the pursuit of happiness and how we in the west measure a successful life. Westernized measures of success are strongly coupled and defined by interactions of pollution, good and bad, whereas Jain thought seeks to find the calm, quiet spaces which exist outside of this, including existing deity and forms of worship.

As such, Jains practice a life of strict non-violence. They don’t take on professions which could harm others, don’t travel in cars or airplanes, often wear masks so as not to breathe in living microbes, and actively seek to not produce pollution. Diet forbids the consumption of any food grown underground, or animal products. Jainism’s notion of the greatest karma one can produce is that of children advocates against sexual relations and procreation. Again, this is challenging for us to reconcile as much of how we might think about what’s best in life comes from the notions of procreation, enjoying a good meal, and traveling the world.

However much the pandemic may have sought to slow and simplify our lives, our post-pandemic lives can easily be characterized by extreme forms of samsara. The world can often feel as if it’s accelerating as political disagreement, regional conflict, ecological collapse, and widespread extremism only increases. Every day it can feel as if the cacophony of life, especially a digital life, only grows stronger, and we often long for the simpler time as we grow older. In this, Jainism offers a highly relevant and contemporary alternative to much of what we see around us. It advocates for reducing pollution and ecological impact, the need for which is only accelerating in a culture of climate change. It advocates for a simpler, plant-based diet, which strongly aligns with what we know to lead to healthier lifestyles. And it champions the quieter, more thoughtful, more contemplative life, the liberation from samsara and the din of the real world, something many of us are even willing to pay a premium for.

Discussion: Interview with Jain Students

In observational interviews such as these it’s easy to hold the subjects at a distance as we examine and probe them for insight. But here we have three highly relatable, insightful, thoughtful Jain practitioners unafraid to share their experiences of lay practice inside of a culture often in stark challenging contrast with their faith. There are two main ideas to draw out of the discussion. The challenges one faces as a Jain in a western culture often at odds with such practice, and the central Jain idea that doing good things does not negate the bad things one does, and how that differs from traditional Christian belief.

Firstly, and as we often find in ritualized faith, there is a difference between formalized scripture, and one’s lived and practiced experience. That the aspirational teaching of original texts can frequently stand in contrast to one’s experience of the modern world and those around us. How we choose to reconcile these differences and lead a life in adherence to these (and our own) beliefs, is in many ways the cacophonous samsara from which we seek liberation. How does one reconcile the promotion of a strict asceticism and secular life, the non-violence towards all living things, or the many ways one seeks to reduce one’s impact upon the world, inside of a culture which actively promotes contrary methods as benchmarks of the good life?

Those interviewed reflected a healthy, but practical approach of awareness and discipline, rather than strict ascetic adherence. That their practice gave their lives structure and provided sense-making framework for leading a life centered around reduced karma. But in doing so, there’s a limbic space which forms between scripture and lived experience. What is taught is not always what is lived. And importantly it is a life not lived through restriction as we might initially assume, but a life lived through compassion, joy, and the positives of what’s best in life.

Secondly, the central idea in Jainism that doing good things does not negate the bad things we do is a stark difference from Christian values of forgiveness, confession, and charity. That if, as one of the students mentioned, they are mean to someone, they still must pay for the consequences of that action. That being mean to someone cannot be overcome by being nice to ten other people later that day. That such belief is specific, consequential, and isolated to individual acts, not utilitarian in seeking to do the most good for the most people as we find elsewhere. That one truly reaps what one sows, and that karma has memory. But importantly, that there’s inherent value in learning how to do nothing as an end in itself. Learning how to observe, meditate, and reflect upon the experiences around you, free from individual participation and active engagement or impact. We might broadly characterize this as similar to the Hippocratic method of doing no harm, but the difference here is that one sin cannot be cancelled out by a separate act or acts of good. Or as we find in Catholicism, that asking for forgiveness through confession is a viable conduit for the reconciling a past transgression. As one of the students aptly put it ‘you can’t make up for things in random ways’. The very same sin itself must be reconciled.

The discussion reflected many of the challenges innate to modern faith. That there’s often profound difficulty in the aspirational recommendations of one’s scripture and reconciling them with one’s actual existence in the world. And while Jain practitioners may superficially appear more austere than others, the discussion illuminated that their faith and belief does not hold them back or restrict them in any way. They are thriving, flourishing individuals deeply connected to their faith, with professional careers, concrete paths in the world, and grounded, mature views about what’s best and important. We might think of Jainism as a restrictive practice in comparison to some of the latitudes provided by Christianity, but this discussion demonstrates otherwise, and in many ways reflects a lifestyle of non-pollution, dietary wellness and ethical behavior which we all might learn from.

Discussion: Zoroastrianism

When we think of traditional Christian practices of worship, we very often center those thoughts around opposing binaries. Good and evil, Heaven and Hell, light and dark, them (or Him) and us, the worshipped and the worshippers. And while modern day Christianity draws much influence from Judaism, premodern Jewish belief didn’t include notions of Satan, or personified evil in the world. And similar concepts of baptism, messiah, and the influence and lineage of symbols such as guardian angels or eternal flames can be drawn more concretely further back to Zoroastrianism.

Zoroastrianism’s central premise, the message given to its founding prophet Zoroaster by the god Ahura Mazda is that human beings have been separated from the light of the divine. That through Zoroastrian practice and ritual, and a life well lived according to teachings of texts in the Zend Avesta, humans would return to the light by joining the fight against the world’s evils. And while this has influence upon Christianity, the specific agency of humans, the necessity of humans in this fight, is a key difference.

The binary of good and evil, between the Druj embodied by the Satan figure of Angra Mainyu and the Asha, or good embodied by Ahura Mazda, places humans in the limbic space between, torn and pulled through life between the two extremes. This is not the case in Abrahamic faiths, where God is all powerful, and in many ways, we know how the story ends before it’s even begun. In Christian faith, God is all powerful, but Ahura Mazda, while powerful, needs humans to create the favorable outcome where Asha triumphs over Druj. So what results is an uncertain outcome, placed upon the agency of the individual, not the dispensability of the worshipper. We must act favorably in Zoroastrian practice, not simply be subservient to the higher divine power.

Zoroastrians fight the battle in three main ways. Through good thought (humata), good word (hukta), and good deeds (havarshta), which in principle is very close to the Christian communal practice of ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ which we find in both Luke 6.31 and Matthew 7.12 in The Bible. By practicing good thought, speaking truth, and helping others, we weaponize our behavior in the service of Ahura Mazda’s fight. These concepts aren’t unique to Zoroastrianism of course, but their outcomes are. We may do these same things in the Catholic faith for example, but we do them for reasons of redemption, cleansing, and to assure us a place in Heaven when we die. Arguably Catholics don’t do these things as weaponized behavior against Satan because they already know that God will and has defeated him. The Zoroastrian fight is ongoing, and humans still have agency in determining what happens in the finish. It's an empowering sense of service, but places great responsibility upon those who practice. It gives them a reason to fight.

But when an individual’s fight is over upon death, and their soul is reunited in Heaven with Ahura Mazda, what remains must still be treated with purity and good intent towards the earth. Minimizing impact and pollution, practiced by one of the oldest religions in the world, is a highly contemporary and strongly present ecological idea. It’s an idea which serves to protect not just worshippers, but the very planet itself. The notion of sky burial, and the rituals of the Towers of Silence, where one’s corpse is carried off by the birds, exists in strong opposition to the Christian ritual of burial. Zoroastrians are carried off in pieces up into the sky by the birds, Christians are eaten by the worms in the ground. And while sky burial may seem barbarous by western practice and perception, there is a genuine poetic beauty to it which is in sharp contrast to both the ecological impact of spiritual practices of Christian cultures.

So while Zoroastrianism may be small in size, it is enormous in influence, and empowers the agency of its followers with paramount importance in the fight between good and evil, and in doing so gives them the ultimate responsibility of faith in determining the outcome of such an eternal battle.

Discussion: Sikhism

While one of the more recent religious traditions, Sikhism’s impact throughout the world motivates two fascinating themes, one of religious lineage in its leadership and ultimately altruistic ending, and one of extremism where religious fanaticism spills over into real-world violence. I’ll take each one in turn.

Beginning with Guru Nanak in the late 15th century, Sikhism arose out of the teachings and movements of Kabir, of Sufi traditions, and the Bhakti devotional practice in Islam and Hinduism, but centers on the premise that any human being can have a direct relationship with God. This direct relationship manifested itself for a young Guru Nanak during his travels west from modern day India towards modern-day Iran, where he disappeared from the caravan for three days and is said to have experienced a union with the divine. This experience of seeing, or darshan, isn’t just seeing God, but also being seen by God, and through these experiences, Nanak concludes, in contrast to Hinduism, that there is only one God. That He’s the center of the world, and omniscient. This transcends traditional Hinduism and Islam, but also distills and simplifies faith into one of uncomplicated personal relationship. One which rejects asceticism as a means of bridging the limbic gap between atman and brahma, reduces the prominence of ritual, and advocates for equanimity and duty towards society. A purity of thought and simplicity of action characterized by reflecting upon the established order of the universe through calming of the mind.

But if Guru Nanak was earth-bound in his teachings, the very notion and definition of guru was also malleable, where Sikh practitioners could further their personal, individual relationships with God not just through Nanak’s teachings, but also through scripture and community. That God was the ultimate guru, and that He manifests in many different ways. He is the Satguru, the true teacher, or as the Adi Granth text describes, ‘The Lord pervades every heart. He dwells concealed in the waters, the land, all that is in between the heavens and earth, but through the word of the Guru Nanak he's revealed his grace is the guru, with a true guru, him to me in this world’.

But unlike God, Nanak’s time on earth was finite. The establishment of a lineage of teachers followed him, spanning the 15th to the 18th centuries across ten different teachers, who furthered the transition from oral tradition to written text, expanded the communal influence and impact of Sikhism, created military connections and established the ritual traditions of kesh, kangha, kara, kachha and kirpan. This lineage echoes what we might recognize in Christian culture through the lineage of Popes or Archbishops, but the key difference in Sikhism is that the lineage deliberately, consciously ends.

Guru Gobind Singh, in drawing the three hundred year tradition to a close, did not name a successor, but simply left the text of the Adi Granth and its teachings to guide the community, and that the community itself, not gurus, would pick their own leaders. This again has echoes of Christianity in its adherence to the gospels of The Bible, but it’s hard to imagine existing papal lineage performing such an act of altruism.

Secondly, while we may think of many of these teachings as ones predicated upon simplicity and peace, of communing with the divine, and of experiencing revelation and union with God through Darshan, they also exist in a world where others believe differently. Differences between pluralist and inclusivist methods of faith, both within and outside of the Sikh faith rub up against those with whom they share the world, especially their immediate Hindu and Muslim neighbors.

These challenges, while obviously not exclusive to East Asian tradition, co-exist inside of the ever-changing samsara of geopolitical, economic, military, and cultural change. Sikhism, in contrast to Hindu tradition, has long had a close relationship with the British military since the beginning of colonization in the mid nineteenth century, something we see as highly controversial in modern contexts as the engine of reparations for past transgressions accelerates across the world.

But even outside of this relationship, Sikhs have had a long tradition of militarism, especially through the lineage of the ten gurus, and the declaration of separation from Mughal rule by Guru Hargobind in the 16th century. Localized agitation in recent modern India history between Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims has resulted in extremist violence, most notably in the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984 by Sikh militants, and the later assassination of son, also serving as Prime Minister in 1991 by Sri Lankan Tamil separatists. I spent some time this week with the contemporary news coverage of the 1984 assassination, and a notable juxtaposition on the front page of The New York Times on October 31st 1984 where Indira Ghandi’s death co-exists with a stark image of an unrelated Islamic execution in Tripoli. Two stories strongly motivated by fanaticism sit side-by-side on the front page, and sadly something we’ve only seen accelerate in the subsequent decades. We’ve experienced and continue to experience such violence domestically too of course.

Depth of faith is something we seek, but it also carries enormous risk. Such devotion can commonly spill over into violence as stark differences in belief struggle to reconcile inside of an already unstable world. For as much durable aspiration of communing with the divine as the original texts and teaching may hold, there is also a dangerous rigidity which can emerge which divides more than it unites. The work of peaceful, pluralist co-existence can often feel insurmountable, but in many ways is what all faith, irrespective of origin and practice, aspire to. 

Discussion: Shinto

In Christian culture, it’s common to project meaning onto an object, either through reminiscence and nostalgia, or through the symbolism of what an object represents elsewhere in our own lives and the lives of others. But the idea within animistic religions such as Shinto that things in the world, often naturally occurring, hold memory, hold traces and the spirits of their own inanimate existence, or are inhabited by the divine itself, not only causes them to fix in place, but more importantly, transposes the divine from distant and abstract to intimate and concrete.

Shinto belief that an object accumulates memory over its lifespan, absorbing and housing the divine, infuses the sacred into a reality which is consequentially and naturally all around us. This is in sharp contrast to a secular modern world which is increasingly emptied of the supernatural by ever accelerating scientific, technological, and evolutionary perspectives. Such belief that natural objects in the world don’t just represent the divine, but are the divine, or house the divine, puts the mystery back into an explained and rationalized world without it becoming abstracted. The rock doesn’t just represent the divine, it is the place where the divine is made manifest.

More specifically, such belief locks in place the divine, precluding it from traveling. In the move from abstraction to the material, it becomes fixed in place, and in the case of Shinto, primarily exclusive to Japan. Other faiths motivate the importance of place, but often that place itself is abstract. Heaven and Hell. The afterlife. Mount Olympus. They are up there or down there, but they’re deliberately not manifest on earth itself.  We attach significance to places where divine events occurred, such as Bethlehem, or the pilgrimage sites of the Varanasi or Mecca, but they are pilgrimages to events in the past, not the material reality of the present. Through mythology and scripture, we are passed stories of breaches between there and here, but they are not naturally occurring parts of our world.

But in doing so, animism reduces the idea that the divine is distant, either physically or in time. For Shinto believers in animism, there is no similar requirement to commune with the Brahma by casting out bandhu as in Hinduism, or to kneel before a symbolic representation of the crucifixion as in Christianity. For Christians, who believe that the son of God was made manifest and walked the earth, even if they feel His presence, it is not actually, literally manifest in their lives as it is in Shinto. It’s a belief which is abstracted, and something we feel. It's not tactile. We can’t smell it. We can’t see it. Yet we still believe strongly that it’s there.

This fostering of the divine in the everyday divides one’s divine experience between Christianity and Shinto into a binary between the ultimate and the immediate. Shinto and animistic faith attributes resonance and religious fortitude to the immediacy of objects, whereas Christianity attributes it to the symbolic depictions of the ultimate. And in doing so, if the divine is pulled into the real world, inhabiting the objects around us, it motivates a spiritual life based on observance and vigilance. It’s faith as witness. Shinto followers live lives of religious vigilance, but it’s also a faith of natural surveillance. If the divine inhabits the objects around you, it sees all. Christian faith also carries belief in surveillance from the divine, but it is distant and abstract. God is watching, but He’s not physically manifest in the same room as you.

The extent to which the divine is manifest within inanimate objects, the spirit which inhabits them, is transmogrified into the kami, the spirits of the natural world, who punish transgressions, reward worship, and form an important part of Japanese mythology. Kami protect those who worship, are honored in house shrines, and are closely associated with natural phenomenon such as mountains, trees and rivers. But they’re not monsters in the traditional Japanese tradition of Yokai. Kami are spirits of the divine which reside in natural objects, whereas Yokai are more commonly associated with folklore, superstition and ultimately, fiction.

But where Christianity and Shinto find common ground is in the shared limbic space of belief in the supernatural. Animists contend that it’s the supernatural all around us, and the divine in real-world object which, for example, causes the plants to grow, but also for wounds to heal. Offending the supernatural carries consequence in the real world in the form of real-world injury, whereas for Christians, divine offence against God through sin diminishes one’s already abstract relationship with Him.

In drawing the divine closer to our immediate surroundings, Shinto, and other forms of animistic belief draw distinction between the abstractions of the ultimate and the materiality of the immediate. It closes the time and space between us and the divine, but in doing so, fixes in place these objects, and precludes the broader dissemination of such beliefs. No less powerful and meaningful than other religions, in making it less abstract and more real, it consequentially results in a community which in comparison is specific and small.

Discussion: Shinto Interview

Religion and storytelling have always enjoyed an intimate relationship, and we don’t have to look far to find elements of the miraculous, the supernatural, the divine or the heroic in our modern movies. From Star Wars’ elemental aspects of The Force, a supernatural energy which binds the galaxy together and exists between all living beings (including rocks, which the Jedi are often fond of lifting), to the magical narratives of Harry Potter’s Hogwarts, where the very coexistence between the real world of non-magical, non-believer muggles and the increasingly segregated and marginalized world of wizardry compete for dominance.

Jolyon Thomas’ work motivates a line of research which inverts this search for the religious in our modern stories and focuses on the elements of their accompanying fandom which themselves exhibit and create devotional culture. His work is interested in the ways in which fan culture turns into devotional culture, what those processes look like, and where the common ground of behaviors is.

To do this, we need to look at the elements of fandom which are ritualistic in nature. Modern fan culture, which we could often characterize as fanatic culture in the extreme, is predicated on a wide variety of highly stylized, repeatable, consistent behaviors, which augment one’s experience of being a fan, but also connect one’s individual experience to a broader engaged community of those who feel the same, very similar to an experience of faith. Modern fans attend mass gatherings such as comic cons or the premieres of movies, often waiting in line for hours before being allowed entry. We wear clothes which signal allegiance and alignment with our chosen favorite stories, broadcasting to others our preferred avenue and flavor of faith. We gesture towards each other in specific, ritualized ways as in the Vulcan greeting of Star Trek’s Mr. Spock. We fill our homes with objects and avatars from these stories, which are frequently shrine-like in nature, where we can bask in their collective (and collectible) glow as we re-watch the movies again and again.

Modern fans, as in religious culture, quote lore as in scripture, memorizing lines from movies as Christians might do from The Bible, and vividly recalling moments of climax or simply dropping them in as knowing retorts in conversation. Most materially, we devote large spans of time, and large amounts of money to our fandom, as in our faith. We travel to relevant places depicted in the movies, and we even build theme parks devoted to immersive mass gatherings where we can situate ourselves in simulated replicas of the fictitious worlds, drawing ourselves even closer to the stories we love. Thomas draws upon a specific example of this blurred line in the case of Washinomiya shrine in Japan’s Saitama prefecture, popularized in the early 2000s by the anime television series Lucky Star. The fictional Takanomiya shrine is based on the real-world version in Washinomiya, but as its fandom grew, devotees would begin to visit the real shrine en mass, revitalizing the local economy, participating in local festivals, and blending the fictional world of the show with the real-world traditions of the shrine. These deep, intimate connections between faith and place are not restricted to religious faith, but are consequences of faith itself, even if that faith comes from our secular love of the movies.

As such, fandom, as in religion, is a source of purpose in life, enabling and empowering connection to community, and is life giving in itself. Importantly, and with particular connection to Christianity, fandom is often predicated upon anticipation. We wait for the next movie trailer to drop, or the next episode to be released, and scrutinize it with frame-by-frame granularity. We wait in line for entry into the darkened caves of the theater to watch the next installment. And we wait outside the theme parks, rides, and conventions to experience heightened communal proximity with those who think and feel the same. And of course, such behavior is also frequently inter-generational. The baton is passed between father and son, ‘like my father before me’ as Luke Skywalker would have us believe. And finally, fandom is also strongly a creative outlet and actively encourages individual artistic expression. Fans write their own stories, make their own videos, paint their own pictures, and revel in the drawing of their favorite characters. In the spirit of this, I’ve created my own depictions of the Shinto kami Kitsune, created with MidJourney, an artificial intelligence and machine learning creative tool currently gaining momentum and incredibly popular within modern fan culture. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did making them.

Discussion: Buddhism

When we think of refuge, we often think of it as refuge from something. Refuge from the storm, placing one’s trust in a source of shelter in order to remain protected from the ills of the world. Refugees spill between borders and cultures seeking sanctuary from homelands ravaged and persecuted by war. A refuge is a safe place. A retreat. A place we go when we’re afraid. It’s a place where we meet the divine and draw our faith closer to ourselves for protection. Yet for Buddhists, refuge is not sanctuary from, it is sanctuary in. This refuge, or saranam takes the form of Buddhism’s three jewels, or the Triratna of Buddhism, the Buddha himself, the Dharma, and the Sangha. And in doing this, take refuge in the teachings handed down in the Dharma, the instruction shared by Buddha, and in the intimately and completely connected sense of themselves as a community.

These teachings are a place in which to find refuge, but also act as guides, as sources of debate and discussion, as something to question, and not something one has ultimate faith in. Such refuge motivates the reducing of suffering. But Buddhist refuge is not a place of escape, it is a positively oriented place of strength, curiosity, and insight. It draws attention to misperceptions in its equation and explanation of suffering, as found in the First Noble Truth teaching in the Dharma, which asserts that the misperception of life’s impermanence, non-substance and pain cause us to suffer. In this refuge, and in the Dharma, we don’t receive comprehensive understanding of our suffering, but have our misperceptions rationalized and drawn closer to us as a means of resolution. This sense of wanting moments to last forever, and the sadness and loss we feel when those moments and people depart from our lives causes suffering. Yet having the faith and belief that all things in life change, and that attaching oneself to permanence causes us to suffer is often extremely challenging in the context of moments and people we love. We want the time with our friends to extend out indefinitely. We want the laughing of our children to last forever. And we want the warmth of a summer’s day to never meet the morning chill of fall.

Yet we often consciously seek our durability in our lives. We crave durability in those around us, in our professions and in our homes. We actively support the durability of the institutions of faith and build cathedrals and temples to them, echoing our belief itself, which are designed to last indefinitely. But in doing so, there’s a refuge in such durability as security and stability. We want the reassurance of that which doesn’t change, because the familiar provides an unchanging, known, fixed sense of comfort in the face of accelerating change elsewhere around us. Change in economic, political, environmental, cultural, and global affairs, which are chronically uncertain and unstable, perhaps recently more so than ever.

This binary of the inherent impermanence of the world as represented by Buddhist faith and teachings and articulated in the noble truths as a source of suffering, as opposed to the distinctly human desire for durability, stability, security, and permanence can seem irreconcilable. But they find common ground in the notion of refuge.

We find refuge from the storm in the durable. Refugees flee war-torn regions in search of security and the promise of the more durable life. But we also find refuge in durability. The very notion of dharma, ‘that which is passed down’ is itself durable, even if it teaches the virtue of impermanence. And the durability of inter-generational teaching, either through scripture, monastic practice, ritual worship, or architectural achievement is something which unites faith across and between Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, and Muslims. And provides the necessary guidance, insight and sanctuary millions of believers seek in the world.

Discussion: Buddhist Temple Field Trip

The selflessness of a low impact lifestyle may seem at odds with our modern business and academic philosophies of striving to make a difference for and in the world. The conscious removal of individualized choice, the living of a regulated and highly disciplined, ritualized life, and the honoring of relics in quiet, peaceful retreat from the world stands in sharp contrast with the immediacy and samsara of our modern cultural lives. The deliberate, often aggressive promotion of material goods and selfish behavior builds individualism, separating us from others, and we celebrate and glorify the individual achievements of our athletes, entertainers, and politicians. Selfless behavior, especially motivated by monasticism, draws upon stronger communal ties, a sense of unity with others, and ultimately, a life lived in pursuit of less karma produced.

But both monasticism as we see in the Buddhist Temple materials, and the life of modern workers share much common ground. Both are highly ritualized throughout the days and years of their work. Both have elements of removal of choice, sometimes deliberate and willing, sometimes not. Both advocate for specific language to be spoken, specific dress to be worn, and for specific ritualized gestures to be performed in certain company. But what they share in behavior deviates strongly in purpose and outcome. In many ways the modern worker’s desire is to produce the most karma, to live an impactful life which was worth living so that in the finish, one can look back with pride and know that one’s life made a difference, both to the world or to others. A life where one passes down learning to children and grandchildren through story and tradition, and the mistakes of the past work towards a shared, safer, richer future. The impact one has, especially upon others is paramount.

I think in many ways the same is true of the monastic path. Yet for those following the monastic life, we may think of a life of harsh austerity, of heavily disciplined ritual, and of ascetic practice as motivating less impact upon the world, but such lives are still material and impactful. One bridge between the impact the modern worker seeks, and the value monastic life brings appears in teleological meditation, which is often used in western psychological treatment as a means of reducing the anxiety of modern life. Insight mediation such as vipassana, the return to the breath or the close attention to one’s heartbeat or footsteps as a means of centering oneself in the present moment and letting one’s anxieties pass by is a globally embraced and impactful technique which spans both origins in monastic practice and implementation in the everyday lives of the non-monastic. But in drawing closer to the beating of one’s internal rhythm, or the focusing of attention upon one’s rising and falling breath, one withdraws inwards, away from the world and into oneself in a way which restrains one’s experience. Such withdrawal and focus as conduit for mitigating the stresses of the modern world are one of the greatest gifts monastic practices have brought.

As the class draws to a close, this week I’ve thought a lot about the impact of what we’ve learned over the past two months. Our journey too has been highly ritualized and disciplined, challenging, joyful and insightful, but ultimately the opposite of a low impact experience. My understanding of the world is broader, richer, and my experiences of faith exponentially deeper, more diverse, and inclusive, and where the epic stories of Hinduism were a particular highlight for me personally. We’ve been taught by the genuinely selfless. I look forward to the path of faith going forward, and I wish you all every success in the future.

Critical Analysis Paper: The Unifying Vedic Seeds of Suffering

The Origins, Beliefs and Practices of the Disciples of Vedic Purity

“Centralists identify a single, pan-Indian, more or less hegemonic, orthodox tradition, transmitted primarily in Sanskrit language, chiefly by members of the brahmanic class … The pluralists, by contrast, envision a decentered profusion of ideas and practices all tolerated and incorporated under the big tent of Hinduism.” (Davis, 1999)

Disciples of the One True Vedic Faith pre-date the localized communal schism of the 1700s BCE between what would later become Hinduism and Zoroastrianism. But they also embody a purity of practice which aspires to an original Vedic faith, prior to its evolution into individual, localized interpretation, and deviation, and seeks to offer a unifying path home across and between the separate faiths it became. They adhere to a belief derived from the original term Veda’s root vid, ‘to know’, and interpret its origin as aspiration to knowledge of the highest sort, knowledge of faith (Davis, 1999). They draw direct lineage from the original Indo-Aryan tribes, gather and sustain their beliefs and rituals through the nomadic oral traditions of the early Vedic people and its translation into Vedic Sanskrit, and their epic texts reflect the embryonic inter-tribal conflict between the original Avestan and Vedic speaking peoples.

The One True Vedic Faith, or Vedic Purity, transcends both the subsequent descendant religious dialects of Hinduism and Zoroastrianism, but also opens a space of common ground which reconciles and rejects different individualized and local practice in Hinduism and Zoroastrianism in efforts to return to an original belief of the Vedic people, and the divine seed from which all other Vedic faiths flourish. If Hinduism is a ‘conglomeration of religions’ (Davis, 1999), then Vedic Purity seeks to revert and reframe this diversity. I will outline the origins, beliefs, and practices of the followers of the Vedic Purity, draw comparison with Hindu and Zoroastrian practice, and offer speculation as to the future of the faith itself.

To practitioners of Vedic Purity, its origins are distinct and clearly defined. The early Indo-Aryan people, nomadic in nature, concentrated their worship on that with which they were close. Their experience centered around migration from place to place, the herding of livestock, the weather, the stars, and their immediate surroundings in Central Asia (McDaniel, 2022a). Yet inter-tribal conflict between rival herding tribes, often centered around fraternal and inter-familial disagreements over livestock and territorial ownership, resulted in a distinct and permanent split where the original followers of the One True Vedic Faith divided into those who crossed the Indus River into what would become modern India, and those who migrated towards Persia. While acknowledging this pluralist perspective, the One True Vedic Faith seeks to unite and return all descendants of the original Vedic faith to the seed from which all divinity and energy germinates. It appeals in equal measure to contemporary retroactive conversion, conversion back from Hindus, Zoroastrians, and by more recent standards, Sikhs.

These subsequent geographical differences exacerbated existing fraternal division, resulting in use of different oral and written language, but also the evolution of different creation myths across Hinduism and Zoroastrianism, and their effects are still pronounced and visceral today. Those who chose to remain in place, much smaller in number, continue to practice the original precepts of Vedic Purity today and their practice actively seeks the reunification of the original community prior to its devolution into Hinduism and Zoroastrianism. Interpretations of the struggle between rival fraternal splinters is one of the central tenets of the epic Mahabharata, which advocates for a path of resolution and restitution motivated by war (McDaniel, 2022b), and which Vedic Purists acknowledge as part of the line of descent, but actively reject.

Contrary to Zoroastrianism, Vedic Purity advocates a position of faith free of founding creators and draws upon the central metaphor of the seed from which to draw its practice and beliefs. It motivates that all faith, energy, and good in the universe germinates from an original Vedic seed. That all divinity and creation is pollinated through the necessity of pure Vedic human activity, and that the seed is the true calling of all Hindus and Zoroastrians. It advocates a pluralist perspective that different descendant faiths may practice their aspirations and paths towards reconciliation with the seed in different ways, but ultimately seek a return to the original Vedic seed upon death. Conversion to Vedic Purity is possible, but only from descendant faiths, and inter-faith marriage, for example between Christians and Vedic Purity practitioners is forbidden. As a result, and echoing contemporary Zoroastrian culture, Vedic Purist communities have remained small over centuries.

Vedic Purists assert that one’s seed germinates upon birth, and through the suffering of life and the elemental forces of heat, light and the nourishment of water, threads a path through life where one’s desired outcome is simply to return to the maternal safety and wombic reassurance of the original Vedic seed. The One True Faith rejects Vedic deviation into practices of physical austerity and asceticism found in Hinduism and Zoroastrianism (McDaniel, 2022a) as simply regional dialects of a shared Vedic faith, and earthly corruptions attempting to manipulate the seed’s original elemental composition. However, for Hindus seeking an alternate path of liberation or moksha free of physical austerity and asceticism, or Zoroastrians seeking simpler alternatives of practice with the same outcomes of divine communion, it can prove appealing. The seed is a syncretic expression of diversity of practice and allows for these differences based on environmental context and necessity, but it forbids the express circumvention of physical behavior in attempts to generate heat, light and water as a means of reconciling with the original seed in ways that seek to cut corners on the path of belief.

Similarly, the beliefs of The One True Vedic Faith do not assert or recognize individual myths or their descendant beliefs or the lineage of creation myths. They do not assert a personified ultimate cosmic power outside of the principle of the Vedic seed, and do not draw divine relationships as in Zoroastrianism between light and dark, good and evil, or personified interpretations of the gods (McDaniel, 2022c). They do, however as in Hinduism and Zoroastrianism, recognize and revere the elemental forces and practices necessary to cause the seed to flourish in life, and the natural environmental rituals which cause it to mature. In this sense, the notion of the Vedic seed echoes that of the Hindu concept of one’s atman, or soul, and its aspiration to connect with the brahma, or oversoul by casting out divine connections, or bandhus through the rituals and behaviors of one’s life (McDaniel, 2022d). As with both Hinduism and Zoroastrianism’s focus on karmic reduction in life, Vedic Purity practitioners also assert that all life is predicated on the reduction of suffering caused by the germination of the seed. They seek to return to the seed itself upon death. Individualized elemental interpretations of what it takes to reconcile with the original Vedic seed are most thoroughly articulated in the four branches of early Vedic texts, the Samhitas, the Brahmanas, the Aranyakas and the Upanishads, which draw out the elemental forces of heat, light and nourishment as a means of acting upon the original seed to not only make it grow but ease one’s suffering through life.

These early Vedas, especially in Hinduism begin to personify and ritualize the elements into gods of water, fire and nourishment in the Samhitas, and offer practical instruction for manipulating these forces in the Brahmanas and Aranyakas (McDaniel, 2022d), but it’s in the Upanishads that we get the clearest articulation of the Vedic principle of the seed, that which contains the atman, but also the very energy universe itself, and from which all subsequent cosmology evolves. The parable of Yajnavalkya’s conversation with a student, where he divides, and divides again a piece of fruit, reducing it to its original seed, is a literal but also metaphoric means of articulating the imperceptibility of the energy which allows the tree to grow (McDaniel, 2022e), and which exists at the very core of Vedic Purity. That all Vedic practice, irrespective of individualized belief inside of Hinduism, Zoroastrianism or Sikhism, motivates at its root a pan-faith unifying elemental desire to commune with the divinity held within the original seed and that life itself is simply a conduit for returning to it.

The practices by which followers of the One True Vedic Faith reconcile these elements vary in complexity and ritualized behavior, but all center around the notion of the elemental focused observation, not manipulation, of self and environment. They believe that observation and contemplation of heat, not through asceticism but through the nurturing, nourishment and consistency of flame is central to the sustaining of one’s faith. That through consistent meditation, one loses oneself to the flame, and is through this able to commune with the element of flame itself. As in Zoroastrianism, families seek to maintain ongoing shrines containing eternal flames in their homes, frequently over many generations (McDaniel, 2022c), but such behavior also diminishes activities where families can travel together. There must always be someone at home to observe and nourish the fire and has often precluded larger communal outreach and growth. These activities also extend to non-invasive methods of agriculture echoed in Zoroastrianism, where the soil is tilled, but food grown underground and devoid of light is forbidden to be consumed. As such, the Vedic Purist diet consists primarily of fruit and grains, and other vegetables which consolidate their growth through the elemental combination of heat, light and water. Underground foodstuffs do not require light in which to grow, and as such are viewed as impure and not for consumption. The growth and maturation of seeds into food becomes a metaphor for what one puts in one’s body and one’s communion with the seed, but also how one aspires to live one’s life.

The unifying pan-faith desire across Hinduism and Zoroastrianism to return to a pure Vedic seed, the atomic unit of existence and faith, that which is purest and the ultimate reduction and validation of the divine in the universe, is starkly characterized by the suffering and struggle of life itself. That the growth from seed into nourishing food, or from birth to death through heat, light and water is itself an intensely painful cycle, ultimately finite, and that the nature of what one’s seed germinates into still rests with the agency of both Hindus and Zoroastrians. But the Vedic seed is where its believers feel safest, their lives spent in service of a return to its cosmic maternal security, finally free of the samsara of earthly existence. This return occurs upon death, where the elements of heat, light and water finally converge into a liberating moksha, and where the seed of one’s life is simply carried off into the wind, awaiting germination in the next life.

Burial is ecologically non-invasive, mirroring agricultural practice, and affords sensitivity and acknowledgement of both the cremation of Hinduism and the sky burial ritual of Zoroastrianism (McDaniel, 2022c). The disciple is simply cast into the warm waters of the Karun River at dawn, again consolidating the elemental forces of heat, light and the nourishment of water on what becomes one’s final journey back to the seed. The river becomes a sacred metaphor for the passage of life, but also a literal receptacle of lineage and documentation of its disciples.

But in conclusion, such unifying aspiration is not without challenge. The premise of Vedic purity has received objection from both Hindu and Zoroastrian followers centered on its embrace but simplification of the original Vedic texts, and in particular its interpretation of the Upanishads. For Zoroastrians the lack of identifiable founder, or personification of evil in the world has been problematic, and for Hindus the adjustment of worship from physical austerity to simple meditative observation, and its dismissal of asrama as a ritual means of organizing one’s aims in life has also caused many to remain with their current faith.

The One True Vedic Faith aspires to a unifying, communal purity in Vedic tradition, and seeks to revert the tribal schisms of the 1700s BCE which resulted in the development of Hinduism and Zoroastrianism. Rejecting such later deviation, but embracing its desire to unite, there is intense focus upon spending one’s life in communion with the Vedic seed, practiced through observational elemental rituals of heat, light and the nourishment of water, and the rejection of harsh physical austerity and ascetic practice. Vedic Purity disciples follow a simple, highly localized existence, and while accepting of pluralist perspectives and diversity of practice, are highly disciplined in diet, lifestyle, and their expressions of faith in much the same ways as contemporary Hindus and Zoroastrians. Their faith seeks to draw both Hindus and Zoroastrians home, and in celebrating that which is purest in life, the very cosmological seed from which all energy germinates, they bring not just themselves but all Vedic people closer to the divine, and to the very unifying energy of the universe itself.

Critical Analysis Paper: The Bridging Paths of Faith

The ritual span of place in Asian Religion

“The Lord pervades every heart. He dwells concealed in the waters, the land, all that is in between the heavens and earth.” (Adi Granth Scripture in McDaniel, 2022a)

Faith is often a place we turn to build bridges between places and people. These bridges might span the limbic spaces between the chaotic samsara of earthly existence and the peaceful calm of the divine, the locus of the fires of our internal faith and the broader external communal beliefs of those who feel the same, or the faith we form around our notions of past, present, and future. We share epic stories of the bridges between ourselves and the divine, of Heaven and Hell, of heroic lives and what follows upon death. We use faith to unite division and find the common ground across differences of place. We travel in the real world to places of worship through habitual, local ritual or through larger efforts of pilgrimage. Yet whatever form our travel takes, faith acts as a life-giving binding agent between people, drawing places and spaces closer together, bringing us nearer to the divine, and connecting our belief with that which we seek.

There are three distinct forms of bridging which surface in Asian religious practice. Faith as ritual bridge between places internal and external. Faith as bridge of liberation between and over the chaotic places of past, present, and future. And faith as bridge for collapsing distance between ourselves and the divine. Each motivates an approach where we can draw powerful commonality of place across different faiths, while retaining and respecting the individual specificity of ritual and worship within religions.

First, bridges of faith between the internal and external appear prominently in Vedic ritual, focusing on the manipulation and transference of heat. Early Vedic ritual emphasizes one’s internal fires, one’s ascetic heat in the form of one’s tejas, one’s glowing inner power (McDaniel, 2022b). Through ascetic practice such as harsh physical austerity, yogic ritual or breathing exercises, disciples might churn one’s inner fire, stoking it in service of bridging the space between one’s Atman, one’s soul, and the Brahma, the oversoul (McDaniel, 2022c). It’s bridging ritual which motivates the closing of space between inner and outer existence, drawing the ultimate nearer, and connecting the inner fire of one’s soul to the larger communal and divine fires of the oversoul. And through this manipulation of heat and fire, Vedic faith bridges the space between earthly existence as a place, and the continued sustenance of the divine (McDaniel, 2022c). Transcending physical scale, it spans personal microcosm and ultimate macrocosm, and through adherence to Vedic texts and ritual, ultimately allows worshippers to place faith in their belief in manipulating their immediate surroundings such as weather or natural experiences otherwise out of one’s control (McDaniel, 2022c).

This ritual casting out of bridging connection between Atman and Brahma, the bandhu, aligns our individualized, small personal places with the cosmic spaces of the divine, and the power to span this gap fosters environments in which disciples might thrive during their time on earth. Ascetic practices such as fasting, mediation, or the harsh physical austerities of not bathing or growing out one’s hair and fingernails are all designed to increase the heat of one’s body, and in doing so, increase the churning power of one’s chakras, the wheels of glowing energy which turn through our bodies (McDaniel, 2022c). Similarly, rituals such as the Agnihotra, the manipulation of a small, intimate fire, where oblations are given up while mantras are recited, motivate further reduction in space between the places of Atman and Brahma (McDaniel, 2022c). Instructions for such bridging rituals appear in the four texts of the early Vedic corpus of the Samhitas, the hymns to the Gods, the Brahmanas, a set of ritual instructions, the Aranyakas, a set of forest teachings centered around how to control one’s body, and the Upanishads, philosophical reflections upon the Vedic faith itself (McDaniel, 2022b). Through the corpus, bridging ritual not only spans the inner Atman and the externally divine Brahma through instruction in how to cast out our bandhu, it also folds together the places of past and the present, with such teachings preserved and handed down through generations of practice, but also shaping our ritualistic present and our aspiration for the future. Vedic faith, and in its later form as Hinduism, Zoroastrianism and Sikhism, offers ritual instruction through the manipulation of heat to bridge the places of internal and external, and seeks to draw believers closer to the divine by collapsing the distance between the two.

Second, faith also acts as a bridge of liberation between the past, present and the future, freeing us from the samsaric maelstrom of life, and offering refuge and salvation from the very suffering of being alive. But with so many distractions, desires and designs on life, our challenge in achieving the bridge of liberation, our moksha (McDaniel, 2022d), is to achieve self-knowledge, in turn reducing one’s impact and action to an ultimate natural state of equanimity and harmony with the world (McDaniel, 2022e). Through slowly reducing one’s impact, as appears strongly in Jain faith, we draw closer to breaking the samsaric cycle of reincarnation, revealing our true existence and the souls of others.

The Jain teachings of Mahavira reject the Brahmanic asceticism associated with Hinduism and the speculative texts of the Upanishads, in search of changing the focus of these teachings to emphasize the reduction of karma (McDaniel, 2022e). That past and current action strongly inform future consequence, and that in stressing the reduction of impact, and by living a peaceful, meditative life, we inflict less damage upon the world, suffer reduced consequence, and collapse the places of past, present, and future together. Jainism does this through the Dharma, its narrative teachings, itself a Sanskrit derived word for the essential in the past which is carried down (McDaniel, 2022e). The ethics of Jain Dharma motivate the idea that all humans have a Jiva, a soul, or life force similar to the notion of atman we see in Hinduism, and that one’s Jiva transfers from body to body over time upon death and over time, aspiring to an existence of radical equanimity with all living beings. But if the natural state of the Jiva is a state of stillness (McDaniel, 2022e), Jain faith acts as a bridge of calm and liberation over the chasm of chaotic samsara and suffering motivated by the impact one has upon the world. It spans the gaps between the handed-down teachings of the past in the form of the Dharma, one’s actions in the present, and the consequences of both for the future.

But in this contemplative peace amidst the swirling chaos around us, the reduction in one’s impact upon the world inevitably has a strong moral component, where everything we do in life has consequences intimately woven with place. All impactful actions and reactions generate karma, and cumulatively add to the sum of a person’s existence, which in turn determines our destined fate in future existences. Actions of faith exist in the present, are blended with the actions of others and with the past, and strongly inform what becomes of us in the future, even if that future happens in the places after death.

Finally, faith can be a bridge for reducing the distance between the places of earthly existence and the site of the divine. This is particularly relevant in animistic faiths such as Shinto, which asserts that objects and places can hold memories, and within those memories are traces of the divine (McDaniel, 2022f). In Shinto, there is no explicit physical place of divinity which we seek to bridge as in Hinduism, Jainism, or even the Heaven of Christianity, as the divine exists in objects all around us, and can be invoked, worshipped, and propositioned by that which we can see and touch. But as in Jainism, it fosters a large degree of respect for the natural world and the places around us, and where the beautiful empty and quiet spaces of meditative temples consciously blend places of worship with places of nature (McDaniel, 2022f). Starkly different from the enormous imposing stone cathedrals of western Christianity. In animistic faith, there is no bridging space to cross outside of reverence for the individual ritual and worship of kami, the spirits which dwell in trees, rocks, streams, and other features of the environment. Yet in collapsing the space between divine and earthly, animism firmly attaches itself to the specificity of place. Kami are associated with specific environmental features, tethering the faith to individual locations (McDaniel, 2022f), a consequence which has motivated Shinto to stay largely confined to Japan. If one can cast out one’s bandhu from anywhere in the Hindu world, animism pulls the disciple’s faith into a focused and more specific means of literal, physical connection. In honoring the land, there is a high degree of respect which Shinto practitioners associate with the appeasement and worship of natural spirits, and explicitly respects the ancestry of place.

Sikhism centers itself on the similarly omnipresent faith that God is everyone and everything. All the earth, the universe, and in the hearts and bodies of every person. In drawing themselves closer to the divine, Sikhs also practice the purity of thought and bridging to divine presence similarly motivated by animism, that it’s our role as humans to concentrate upon the divine order of things, the Hukam, and reflect upon the spaces between nature and ourselves (McDaniel, 2022a). Observing what is immediately around us reveals God’s presence, and through the teachings of the Adi Granth and the reflections of Guru Nanak, we can calm ourselves, steady ourselves, and finally hear the word of God (McDaniel, 2022a). When we do this, God no longer becomes abstract and distant, He becomes near, collapsing the space between the place of divine and our place in the world. And if God is close, there is no need for symbols and statues as we find in Christianity, and where we feel God’s presence, but know there is a space between Him and us. If, as Guru Nanak says, the one God dwells within all, He will bestow his grace upon you through a calm mind and acute method of ritual listening (McDaniel, 2022a).

If animism motivates a physical proximity to the divine, and Sikhism articulates a divine omnipresence, then the final ritual of Zoroastrianism’s sky burial provides a literal and beautiful ritual fusion of earthly existence and the natural divine. Instead of cremating a body upon death, or interring it underground, Zoroastrian faith exposes the body to the elements atop a Tower of Silence, where the natural processes of nature are given the gift of one’s body, of one’s flesh, and disciples truly become one with the place of nature, consumed by its very inhabitants (McDaniel, 2022g).

In conclusion, faith is intimately, deeply, richly interwoven with ideas of place in Asian religion. We use faith in Hinduism as a bridging framework to stimulate and motivate closer connections to the divine through ascetic ritual, stoking our internal fires to draw our atman closer to the brahma. And we draw insight, guidance, and comfort from the Vedic corpus to span the gaps between ourselves and the oversoul. We lean on faith in Jainism and the teachings of the Dharma as a bridge to liberation from the samsaric suffering of past, present, and future existence, reducing our karma to minimize our impact upon the world and achieve the moksha we all seek. And when the divine is all around as in animistic faiths such as Shinto, we use our beliefs to collapse the distance between the place of our existence and the locus of the divine. The divine is all around in Sikhism, and physically bound together in the finish for Zoroastrians.

The nature of the places we travel to and surround ourselves with varies across faiths, but it is faith itself which serves as the bridging agent between our lived existence and the divine. This faith can be motivated through elemental forces or ritual behavior, harsh ascetic austerity, or quiet meditative practice. But common to all is the desire to draw the divine closer, to span the gap between the here of life and the there of God. And when we find such common ground between and across faiths, we intimately attach ourselves to the reconciliation of conflict and the building of bridges between not just believers, but all people.