Transforming Societal Norms

There was a time when I was in training to become a Sannyasi living in a monastic setting.  And while I was there, this was near the city of Banaras in India, an acquaintance of mine by the name of Ashok came to the training center.  He was of Indian nationality, but he had immigrated to the United States. 

He had taken up a study of engineering and got a job as an engineer in Virginia.  But he was coming back to India to get married.  His family had arranged a wife for him, so he was coming back for this grand event.  And he came by the training center and saw me, and there was one other American that was there, and he had this inspiration, deep inspiration.  He was passionate about it, to have me and this other American come to the wedding.  It would be a reflection for his family to be able to see this kind of international spiritual culture that had come out of India and was now spreading in the United States.  And to see that there were people from the United States who were coming to India to assimilate this wisdom.  And that we’re a part of a larger spiritual family that he was assimilating into in America.  Anyway, it meant a lot to him.

He sold me and my friend, Vinayak, on this idea.  He said, “I’ll cover all your transportation, your boarding, I’ll take care of everything.”  So, all we needed to do was get the permission of the trainer.  So Vinayak and I went and met with the trainer, and explained this, that Ashok was very desirous that we be present for his wedding, and we laid out the whole thing for the trainer.  And his face, as we were telling him, his face just kind of scrunched up like there was some bad smell in the room.  This was an Indian aphorism, by the way.  Who did that smell?  Imagine the translation.

Then he said, “Do you know, I’ve heard of these things, that there are sannyasis who have attended weddings, but this is not the thing.”  That was another Indian expression.  Instead of saying, you don’t do this, you say “this is not the thing”. He completely squelched the idea.  It was beyond the realm of norms for someone who was a diligent sannyasi to show up at such worldly affairs.

It was a kind of rarefied atmosphere that I was in for a number of months when I was pursuing this lifestyle, this calling.  It shifted my being while I was there.  I came back to America.  I got involved with bringing PROUT into a kind of bio-regional community of people who were trying to create a new kind of permaculture, sustainable, equitable vision; a new kind of cultural path for America.  So I would go to regional gatherings of people in the bio-region who were quite visionary.  Many still are.  

Soon after I got back, I was invited to give a presentation on PROUT.  And coming from the months of deep spiritual practice, and living in this environment, and assimilating the daily inspiration in my life, I was able to bring a lot of Shakti to the presentation I gave.  And when it was done, people came up to me.  They wanted to come close, connect and talk.  

One woman who came up was very inspired.  There were a little bit of tears in her eyes, and she wanted to have deep eye contact with me, and then wrap her arms around me.  But coming out of the environment that I had been used to, where even showing up at weddings was beyond the pale, to have a young woman looking deep into my eyes and wanting to give me some big bear hug was too much.  I was like a deer in the headlights.  I stepped back and gave the greeting, Namaskar, with my hands in prayer position.  One of my rules, and I still maintained it, was not to even look in the eye of someone of the opposite sex.  And I could kind of fake it.  I looked at the third eye, but when you’re really up close, it can be a little bit off-putting.  And then she just turned and ran away crying.  She was so affected by this feeling of rejection.

At any rate, it just kind of symbolized my personal cultural practices coming up against norms in the culture that I was trying to assimilate into.  And probably many of you have had this experience in one way or another, of having to make an adjustment between how you’ve chosen to live in a way that you feel is healthy for you, that carries practices from a tradition that you’ve assimilated on the one hand.  On the other hand, being in a society in which the people around you may be oblivious to these kinds of concerns, in which this may be quite foreign or even off putting to them.

We are social animals.  We’re part of a society.  There is the natural proclivity to assimilate, but how much to assimilate before it begins to undermine a certain personal culture that you feel is important?  I know early in my path, one example of this was my social circle, it was very common when people socialized to bring out some cannabis, roll up a joint and share it.  And then I started meditating, and it became hard for me to adjust to that social practice.  And eventually I put it aside, and a big part of why my whole social clique at that time was left aside, and I moved on to associate with other people.  

But there are ways that we eat, there are times that we take for our spiritual practices, there may be a variety of things that we’ve assimilated that we associate with spiritual life, and we hold important.  How much to maintain that in one social context, and how much to adjust? I think that for me, the way I’ve come to frame that dilemma that occasionally comes, is to look at it in the context of what is the purpose of these practices, of these Yogic lifestyle practices.  As for my understanding, the purpose is to increase sentience.  The word sentience, if you look up a dictionary definition, means the capacity to experience emotion and thought.  

There is a better Sanskrit word, sattva guna, and it has a little bit more expanded meaning.  It is not just the capacity to experience emotion and thought, but it is more the capacity to experience awareness.  The greater one’s capacity for awareness, the greater one’s capacity to experience life deeply, to maintain balance amidst the seeming cacophony of life, the greater the capacity to experience one’s inner being, the greater the capacity to be in one’s power in all circumstances.  Heightened awareness has tremendous value.  We are psychic beings.  We are a mind-body system, but fundamentally we are psychic beings.  We experience the world through our mind.  And as such, the capacity for heightened awareness is the capacity for heightened humanity.

The ultimate of heightened awareness, of course, is the capacity to experience pure consciousness.  Shrii Shrii Anandamurti once commented that the experience of a concentration of consciousness is Love.  Where there is a feeling of consciousness, there is the heightened feeling of love.  And this is what frames the intention behind so much of the yogic practices and personal culture.  Why is it we practice the Yamas and Niyamas?  It gives us tremendous balance to practice them.  It gives the mind tremendous capacity to be in the present, not burdened with inner conflicts, inner discrepancies between our deep inner self and how we’re expressing outwardly in the world.

Why is it we do the meditation?  It brings tremendous capacity of mind to be present and aware, and ultimately aware of self.  Why do we do all the dietary and lifestyle practices?  It brings a balance, a sentience to the physical body, which has of course, an effect on the capacities of our mind, the capacity of our mind to experience sentience.  So that, as for my understanding, is the measuring rod.  But we are affected, inevitably, by the culture around us. And the culture around us, much of it is caught up in a lot of crudity, that dulls the mind, and affects us in ways that make it harder for us to maintain balance, even to maintain physical health.

So, in this time that we’re in, our path as spiritual aspirants is not just to maintain the personal culture that gives us the strength, the capacity to go deep into the sweetness of sentience.  It is also to bring an adjustment in the society, bring a lifestyle and awareness into society that increases social sentience.  What happens when the whole society becomes harmonized in its diversity?  Free in its capacity for expression in a way that harmonizes around sentience.  Then it is not just a matter of individuals who feel called to spiritual life, struggling to maintain some practices in the social setting in which they live in, but they become part of a whole community that values ways of life that are uplifting to the mind and to the spirit, and we all lift each other up. 

This article was transcribed from a talk by Acharya Ravi given in June 2021.