I approached a burly, silver-haired New Englander who looked like an authority figure from his confident stance and hawklike vigil over the book room. When he learned that I had come for a class, he pointed out the children's center across the foyer, and used the Christian term "chapel" to tell me where the day's adult services would occur. I received from him an invitation to "make [myself] at home," and a prayer card and brochures on the movement. Subdued anticipation permeated the lobby and book room's atmosphere, as a few women held hushed chats, while other individuals reclined in chairs or perused the books. Since I could not interview attendees without disturbing their reflection before prayer, I went to the chapel.
Church décor intermingled with Hindu icon adoration in the chapel. From my seat near the back, the chapel appeared churchly, with chairs on each side of the room's middle, and an elevated platform and podium at the room's front. I observed Hindu worship customs meld with the practice of Ramakrishna's teachings on the front wall, as lit candles and two framed pictures of religious figures, including Jesus Christ and Buddha, flanked each side of a large portrait of Sri Ramakrishna in "transcendental consciousness" (Jackson 19, 21, 37). To the immediate left, religious emblems clustered together to face the icons. Several devotees paid obeisance to Ramakrishna from behind the altar, while the rest silently sat facing the front wall; only sneezes and coughs perturbed the chapel's stillness. Unease filled me at the contrast of this pious somberness to Hinduism's relaxed temple etiquette. Hindus loquaciously catch up on each other's lives before services, and everyone, except the disabled, worships while sitting on the floor.
Approximately thirty people had filtered in when saffron-robed Swami Tyagananda strode across the middle to the altar, where he bade namaste, or pressed his hands together and bowed his head, to Ramakrishna ("Namaste"). Tyagananda carried himself with such austerity that I initially did not recognize him as the same, approachable person who had hosted my class a few weeks ago. I realized that he again stood before me when he ascended the podium to whisper a few verses of the sacred Hindu poem "Om Shanti". He lead the congregation in reading aloud from the prayer card, which praises the one "Lord, who is the origin of the Universe," of which the multiple icons stand as incarnations, and had us sing a gospel song which, among other statements, asks God to protect the singer from death. Tyagananda delivered a long sermon on "Expecting the Unexpected" by accepting God's will. Though I felt that the Swami spoke sagaciously, I grew increasingly restless in participating solely by listening. After the lecture, a man carried the collection plate to each row. I felt uncomfortable on the center's reliance on a human to solicit money, for the person's immediate presence with the plate compelled attendees to donate. Tyagananda again bade namaste to Ramakrishna, and walked to the room outside the chapel, where congregation members lined up to touch his feet. Since I did not regard him as my spiritual leader, we bade each other namaste.
Late-twenty to mid-thirty year-old middle-class married white couples seemed to fill most of the chapel's seats, and by extension, its parking lot. I saw one mid-thirty year-old couple of Asian descent, and about five male Indians, who also worshipped by watching the icons after the service ended. Two black women sat under the chapel's religious emblems, but they sat away from all other devotees. Though most individuals came dressed for church, one woman donned a sari, or Indian robe, but I failed to ascertain her other demographic affiliations.
Although the Boston Vedanta Society's Sunday service directly contemplated God far more than I had anticipated, I left disappointed in the center’s failure to establish an setting in which its members would have the insight and interest to discuss spiritual matters. Swami Tyagananda had convinced me on a previous visit that the center acts as a "spiritual supplement" for those who regularly attend church elsewhere. They come to the Vedanta Society to learn of Ramakrishna's findings that major religions are essentially the same. Though I understood from Tyagananda that the center's religious imagery merely establishes a pluralistic environment conducive to the propagation of Ramakrishna's teachings, I felt as though Hinduism stood underrepresented on the walls in comparison to Christianity or Buddhism, and in the chapel, where no Hindu icon neighbored Ramakrishna.
Yet, religiosity thrived during my visit. American Vedantism emerged as a hybrid of Hinduism and Christianity, as the icons, whose presence Hinduism had motivated, received Hindu-style reverence before and after Tyagananda led a Protestant-style worship service, replete with gospel and sermon. Conviction to belief, rather than concern for a set of facts, characterized the Swami's speech. Tyagananda's eloquence and charisma in claiming that God acts in every human’s best interest, in spite of what life's fickleness might lead us to perceive, captivated the entire audience. Despite the center's position that Vedanta represents a way of life in which one may "evolve morally and spiritually according to his or her own faith and conviction," (Vedanta 3) the sense of communion with the divine which emerged during the service felt religious in itself.
However, I found that the center perpetuated an image of India as a spiritual center without providing background on India's spiritual advances. Following the service, I interviewed a BU freshman named Alex, who derives such satisfaction from the worship service's spirituality that he only attends the center. Alex did not have much knowledge about the teachings upon which Vedanta rests, nor did he know much about the Sai Baba movement, whose literature he carried in his bag on that day, but he certainly displayed great enthusiasm at the thought of someday traveling to India. When I asked Alex what he thought of the guru-worship tradition, he told me that he did not regard the practice as very important.
Alex's responses prompt the larger question of how much exposure Western attendees get to Vedanta's philosophies. Despite several devotees’ overt demonstrations of adoration for the movement's Hindu facets, Christianity overshadowed Indian influence physically and metaphysically. Since the Vedanta Society provides an environment familiar to Christians, but in which all members can supposedly worship, I thought that the Christians had to make no investment of themselves in joining the movement, whereas I had to adjust to keeping my shoes on and sitting in a chair while observing. Most of the congregation appeared satisfied by cursory exposure to the exotic, through seeing Tyagananda's dress and hearing Sanskrit chanting, within the framework of an otherwise familiar Sunday worship service. Additionally, Tyagananda only quoted from Ramakrishna and Vivekanda in passing to support his assertions. Though he could have felt that his own thoughts would best serve the congregation, or perhaps he wished to hold his audience's interest by lecturing on the essence of previous monastics’ realizations, his lack of references to previous Indian spiritual accomplishments did not further the Society's mission to preserve “the spiritual teachings of the saints and sages that India has produced during the last 5,000 years” (Vedanta 3).
Works Cited:
Jackson, Carl T. Vedanta for the West. Bloomington, Indiana:
Indiana University Press, 1994.
"Namaste - Origin, History and Usage of Namaste." Hinduism Today. Rpt. with permission at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/7395/namaste.html. Found on 12 April 2001.
The Vedanta Societies of Boston and Providence. Vedanta in America
and the West
