My Life in an Ashram

Qualitative Inquiry http://qix.sagepub.com My Life in an Ashram Edward M. Bruner Qualitative Inquiry 1996; 2; 300 DOI: 10.1177/107780049600200304 The online version of this article can be found at: http://qix.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/2/3/300 Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com Additional services and information for Qualitative Inquiry can be found at: Email Alerts: http://qix.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://qix.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Citations http://qix.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/2/3/300 Downloaded from http://qix.sagepub.com by somsit asdornnithee on February 1, 2009 My Life in an Ashram Edward M. Bruner University of Illinois This article describes the author’s experiences at the Himalayan Institute, a New Age ashram located in Pennsylvania, from the dual perspectives of an ethnographer interested in understanding transplanted Indian traditions and as an individual engaged in a spiritual quest. The article reflects on the nature of the self in a meditative state, presents a brief ethnography of the ashram, discusses principles of yoga philosophy as applied to the author’s own life situation, and ruminates on the relationship between the ethno- graphic self and the personal self . In this era of shifting boundaries, vast international migrations, and massive cultural flows, anthropologists have become more aware of the importance of transplanted traditions, those traditions that originate in one place but take hold and flourish in a new locale. In America-indeed, in the entire Western world-various Eastern religions and Asian spiritual beliefs such as Zen Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, yoga, and some of the martial arts have become entrenched in the West and have become an accepted part of New Age practice. Religious specialists from Japan, China, India, and Korea have exported their particular brands of spirituality to the West. My concern in this article is with Hinduism and yogic practice. Westerners sometimes travel to Asia as scholars or tourists to study or experience the exotic, including some few who are serious spiritual seekers and who go for long periods of time to study with a guru. It is not necessary, however, to travel to India to study with a guru, for these gurus have themselves traveled to the West and have established their own ashrams within the centers of Western power (see Appadurai, 1991, pp. 200-201). Their traditions have been transplanted. Anthropologists now fully recognize that place and culture are not isomorphic (Appadurai, 1988; Gupta & Ferguson, 1992; Rosaldo, 1989), but within the vast field of possible types of border crossings by immigrants, exiles, refugees, expatriates, scholars, and tourists, the phenomena of transplanted spiritual traditions are a distinct genre. In this genre a few Indians, or possibly Author’s Note: I thank Nina Baym, Alma Gottlieb, Richard King, Kirin Narayan, David Plath, Shanta, Samskrti, Shanshan Du, and Edith Turner for their helpful comments. Qualitative Inquiry, Volume 2 Number 3,1996 300-319 © 1996 Sage Publicahons, Inc. 300 Downloaded from http://qix.sagepub.com by somsit asdornnithee on February 1, 2009 301 even Westerners previously converted to Hinduism, establish a new community in the West for the specific purpose of teaching and practicing &dquo;Indian&dquo; belief and practice. Most of the new converts are locals who may never have been to India, have no Indian ancestry, and speak no Indian language, yet they follow a variation of an Indian religion, some passionately It is the tradition that has been transplanted, and it establishes its roots in a new societal context. The founders could be considered missionaries of sorts, although the missionary metaphor may be misleading, especially if one has Christian missions in mind. In the case of transplanted Indian traditions, there is no central church, no financial support and control from the homeland, and no expectation that new disciples will renounce their own religions, and the founders of the traditions assert that they are not missionaries and that what they advocate is spirituality, not religion. One can practice yoga and meditation yet remain Christian. The export of spirituality from India is very old. One thinks, for example, of the vast spread of Hinduism and Buddhism to Indonesia and Southeast Asia starting from the second century A.D. Indeed, Narayan (1993, p. 478) writes that accounts of Hindu holy men have been circulating in the West since at least the fourth century B.C. The historical parallels between these millennia-old influences and more recent ones may be fascinating to trace, and they remind us that transplanted ideologies are not just a recent postmodern event. This article, however, is more limited in scope. It takes an ethnographic and experiential approach to the study of one Indian ashram in America, in Honesdale, Pennsylvania. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, an ashram is a sanctuary, a hermitage, a place of religious retreat where those in search of peace might have an opportunity for quiet and meditation. It is also a place of learning where disciples go to study with a holy man, who might be called a guru, a swami, or a yogi. I became involved in yoga early in 1993.I wanted to learn about relaxation techniques and meditation to relieve stress, and I had been told that the Himalayan Institute of Yoga Science and Philosophy was an excellent place to learn these techniques. The Himalayan Institute has branches in India, Great Britain, France, Germany, and even closer to home in Milwaukee, Indianapolis, and Chicago, but the international headquarters are in Honesdale, Pennsylvania. The Himalayan Institute is a transnational not-for-profit organization. In this article, I propose to describe my experiences at the institute in Honesdale, both as an ethnographer interested in understanding transplanted traditions and as an individual engaged in a spiritual quest. My approach is personal and experiential. Rather than offering an objectively neutral description from the outside, I describe my experiences as they emerged to my consciousness. It is for the reader to decide if the scholarly and the personal objectives are compatible or contradictory. Downloaded from http://qix.sagepub.com by somsit asdornnithee on February 1, 2009 302 The work of Kirin Narayan serves as a point of reference for this article, for she has studied gurus in India (Narayan, 1989) as well as transplanted Indian traditions in America (Narayan, 1993). I sent Narayan a draft of this article, and she wrote (personal communication, January 10, 1994) that the issues were very familiar to her because &dquo;they were the stuff I was raised with, the ashram scene a sort of backdrop of my childhood, so it is especially fun to see a likeminded person with an anthropologist’s eye discover this world.&dquo; Here we have the quintessential postmodern predicament-Narayan, born in Bombay and trained in Berkeley, with a Gujarati father and a GermanAmerican mother, gathers material for her Ph.D. dissertation by returning to the ashram scene of her childhood-in her words, a return to the familiar rather than an exploration of the exotic-and Bruner, bom, raised, and trained in America, who seeks out an Indian transplanted tradition at an ashram in Pennsylvania in order to seek spiritual peace, and who then decides to write an ethnographic account of the experience. They follow different paths but end up with the study of the same, or at least similar, traditions, which makes one realize again that culture is independent of locality, that borderlands are mobile and porous, and that this world is full of ironies and contradictions. Narayan herself is a transplanted person, for she may have had to leave India to study elsewhere in order to write about her home tradition. Bruner stays in place only to have the same Indian tradition come to him in America, but Bruner too has become transplanted, spiritually, in his quest for serenity in a heritage other than his own. If a traditional ethnologist (whatever that is!) goes to India to study the practice of Hinduism, a dichotomy is set up between the ethnographic subject and the native object, between the self and the other. When Narayan studies ashram culture in India, subject and object merge, as Narayan’s other, her object of study, is an essential part of her self, her childhood self. When Bruner studies an ashram in Pennsylvania as an outgrowth of a personal quest, the object of his study, formerly alien, becomes incorporated as part of his inner self, his spiritual self, insofar as he becomes transformed by the experience. Polarities such as self and other, home and field, personal and scholarly, are called into question. THE MEDITATIVE STATE I knew very little about ashrams or yoga when I chose to attend one of the 5-day seminars on meditation at the Himalayan Institute in Honesdale in February 1993.I telephoned my request for a reservation, asking for a large double room with a bath for my wife and me. The institute staff informed me that they had two kinds of rooms, one with cots and one with mats on the floor, and all the bathrooms were down the hall. We took a room with cots. This was my first introduction to asceticism and simple living. After that visit, I wanted to return to the institute on my own for more intensive instruction. Downloaded from http://qix.sagepub.com by somsit asdornnithee on February 1, 2009 303 I had a sabbatical during spring semester of 1993, but one problem was that I was in the process of revising an article for the American Anthropologist and the editor had given me a deadline. So I told the Himalayan Institute that I could come for 2 weeks in April but that I would have to bring my portable computer, and that I proposed spending some time every day working on the article. They said it was unusual to come to the institute with a computer, but they agreed. I worked every day, and the article was completed,’ but in addition to the article I also typed field notes of my daily experiences at the ashram. Thus scholarship intruded into the personal ashram encounter from the very beginning. The Himalayan Institute was founded in 1971 by Swami Rama, an Indian yogi who had spent the early years of his life in the cave monasteries of the Himalayas. He had previously created an ashram in Rishikesh, India; an institute in Kanpur; had traveled in Europe from 1965 to 1967, studying at various universities and teaching yoga; and had set up a spiritual center in Japan. He was truly a transnational figure. In 1970 he was invited to the Menninger Foundation in Kansas to participate in what was called the Research Project on Voluntary Control, to study yogic control of the body. Among the things Swami Rama was reported to have done in the Menninger laboratories was to stop his heart beating for 17 seconds. He also made the temperature on one side of his hand higher than the other side just by using his mind, and then he reversed it. He entered such a deep state of meditation that the physicians who were monitoring his body functions concluded that he must be sleeping, but then he emerged from the meditative state and proved that he had been awake by repeating the conversations that had taken place. Following his experience at the Menninger Foundation, Swami Rama established the Himalayan Institute of the United States in the northwest suburbs of Chicago and began lecturing there. Yogic control of the body is not as extraordinary as it might seem. Swami Rama says that although the 1970 experiments were striking to the doctors at Menninger, they were simply routine in the Himalayan cave monasteries. Through breathing exercises and relaxation techniques, one can influence the autonomic nervous system, can decrease pulse rate and blood pressure, and can change body temperature and even brain waves. After some practice, I learned to control my own brain waves. It wasn’t too hard. Attached to biofeedback machines and a computer, my brain waves on the right of Figure 1 (what looks like mountains) were my normal resting state while I was consciously trying to relax. Nevertheless, the brain waves indicate considerable activity When it became apparent that my conscious efforts were not working, I was told to let go of all attempts at control, and to begin breathing and meditative techniques. You can see the results of this effort on the left of Figure 1. The purpose of meditation is to quiet the mind. At the Himalayan Institute I was asked to reflect on the functioning of my mind. I experienced a procession Downloaded from http://qix.sagepub.com by somsit asdornnithee on February 1, 2009 304 Figure 1. The Author’s Brain-Wave Pattern of thoughts, images, and feelings that seemed to come in a never-ending series. Even when sitting at rest, our minds don’tstop, and usually we can’t control the thoughts that keep coming into our heads. Our minds wander and they are restless. At least this has been my experience. Now every morning I try to set aside time for a period of meditative practice to quiet my mind. With a typical academic schedule, I don’t make it every day, but then I try to squeeze in a practice some other time, or another day This is what I do in my practice. I turn off the telephone and go to a quiet place at home where I will not be disturbed. I begin with hatha yoga, which are stretching exercises, called asanas. The purpose of the asanas is to relax the muscles, and to put the body at ease; they also build strength, although that is not one of my aims. Then I lie down on the floor and do relaxation exercises, followed by breathing practices, for about 10 minutes to further quiet my body and mind, and only then do I begin 5 to 15 minutes of meditation itself. To meditate I get into a restful posture that aligns my head and spine, I close my eyes, and begin to repeat my mantra silently to myself. The mantra is a series of Sanskrit words that I say over and over and over. What then happens is quite remarkable. With the body at rest, with no aches or pains or twitches, no internal or external distractions, the repetition of the mantra focuses the it more and more at rest, and the body further relaxes, and all disturbances and confusions seem to melt away. The troubles of the world seem so distant from the serene state within. One is totally conscious but relaxed. How can I further explain the meditative state? The problem becomes how to describe one’s own experience when part of that experience is not to experience anything. The aim of meditation is to not think or analyze. The greatest impediments to meditation are involuntary thoughts that flow into mind, puts Downloaded from http://qix.sagepub.com by somsit asdornnithee on February 1, 2009 305 the mind. Concentrating on those thoughts defeats the purpose of the meditation. Reflexivity and even free association are the antithesis of meditation because these processes imply that you engage your thoughts, that you reflect about them or attend to them, whereas in meditation your mind is not attentive. Even in a state of sleep the mind is more active than in meditation, because when you sleep you dream, and dreams (and nightmares) are characterized by an overabundance of images and ideas, all densely packed, racing around and tumbling over themselves. Dream thoughts are bizarre and disguised, whereas in meditation one is fully conscious and the flow of thoughts is more coherent. Others have characterized the meditative state as &dquo;bliss,&dquo; &dquo;a profound tranquility,&dquo; or &dquo;an ocean of calm,&dquo; (Laughlin, 1994, pp. 119-120), and although that may be a goal of meditation, I don’t experience the meditative condition in quite that way, at least not while engaging in the act of meditating. For me, there is a dynamic fluctuation during meditation. On the one hand I try to quiet my mind, but on the other hand the thoughts keep intruding. A quiet mind is hard to achieve. My intrusive outside images and feelings might include a picture of myself with my mother, or an errand I forgot to do yesterday but must attend to tomorrow, or the words I wrote earlier on my word processor, or a problem to solve in a paper I am writing, or the response I should I have given when I was mildly criticized and was too flustered to do so, or feelings that seem to arise from nowhere. These images and feelings are from my past and current life, and they seem to appear in no logical order, without any pattern that I can discern. While meditating, I seem to catch myself periodically and become aware that intrusive thoughts are present, already there. Sometimes what trespasses on the meditative state is not just an image, but a mininarrative; for example, an image appears and I take action and there is further response, so that in effect there is a play in my mind, a story, a series of actions. When intrusive thoughts appear, the worst action one can take is to do battle with the thoughts or consciously attempt to banish them from the mind. Then all is lost, for you have become trapped in the thoughts by the very act of engaging them and are no longer meditating. When the thoughts become demanding and impertinent (and engaged), a failed meditation has occurred. There is no point in sitting in the meditative posture gritting your teeth and fighting with meddlesome thoughts. It is better to stop meditating and continue with the business of the day. Meditative practitioners over the ages have developed ways to overcome intrusive thoughts and images. The best technique is to refocus the mind on the mantra or on the breath, for then the thoughts gradually diminish and eventually dissolve. Indeed, the purpose of the mantra is to help the meditator concentrate. In my own practice I let the intrusive thoughts go, which I do in effect by saying goodbye to them. I literally see them floating away, as a cloud floats by in the sky on a balmy summer afternoon. An aim of medi- Downloaded from http://qix.sagepub.com by somsit asdornnithee on February 1, 2009 306 tation is to be totally in the present, in the here and now, and not in the past with old thoughts. Most often my meditative sessions are successful, although some are better than others in the sense that they are longer and the meditations deeper. There are invariably meddlesome intrusions in every meditation, but most of the time I refocus and continue to meditate, and I alternate back and forth. Sometimes I will look at my watch to note the time before beginning a session, and afterward I will look again to see how long I have been sitting. In the best meditations I become aware retrospectively that I had meditated for much longer periods than I had realized-for whole chunks of time, periods of 10 to 15 minutes-without being conscious of time, and I realize afterward that I had been in a deep meditative state, with no recollection of where the time went. For purposes of this article, I experimented with myself during meditation by keeping one part of my mind alert to what I was experiencing so that I could report upon it. During the best meditations I had a sense of weightlessness, of not being in my body or not being aware of my body, as I was so centered on my mantra. I became especially aware of my forehead, as it seemed to be a point of concentration of my mantra, almost a concentration of self. The words of the mantra became centered in my forehead. At times I could not tell where my arms or legs were, as if they were out of consciousness. Apart from the words of the mantra and my breath, I heard silence. As mentioned earlier, the terms bliss, tranquility, and calm are prominent in the discourse about meditation. A crucial distinction is between reality, experience, and expression (Bruner, 1984/1988; Turner & Bruner, 1986). Reality, what really happened during meditation, is never known to us directly; experience emerges to consciousness in the meditative state, and expressions are our narratives and representations about meditation. Even though I have tried to report the experience I have while meditating, I fully realize that the conventions of discourse about meditative states inexorably enter into my description. Terms such as bliss and tranquility are simply the current discursive terms of expression employed by others to describe meditation. I find it difficult to describe my own experiences freshly and independently of the old, tired words of the discourse. After a good meditation, however, I do feel clearheaded, at ease, and open to the world, better able to deal with outside stimuli after nurturing the self within. Just as one clears a computer screen by pressing the correct key, meditation is the key that clears my mental screen. The one term that best characterizes meditation is focus, for the purpose of yoga and meditative practice is to quiet the mind so that one can attend to the spirituality within. The yogis believe that spirituality is within each person, and we just have to quiet down and learn to listen to ourselves. Our educational training in the West, they say, is designed to acquire knowledge of the external world, not the world within. I first went to the Himalayan Institute to learn some relaxation techniques, but it turned into a more spir- Downloaded from http://qix.sagepub.com by somsit asdornnithee on February 1, 2009 307 itual quest. I also found other benefits of meditation-primarily, increased creativity-and I believe this has helped my scholarly work in anthropology. The reader might be interested in knowing more about my mantra. It is a personal mantra; I can’ttell anyone what it is, although I can describe how I received it. After my second visit to the ashram, after my commitment and seriousness became evident, I was asked if I wanted to be initiated. In the process of initiation I was told that I would receive a personal mantra from the current spiritual leader of the ashram, Pandit Rajmani. As an anthropologist, this was fascinating to me. My wife and I have done our fieldwork together, and she has been initiated into the clan system of Mandan Indians of North Dakota and the Simandjuntak clan of the Toba Batak, a Southeast Asian hill tribe in Sumatra, so I was used to initiations. I looked forward to it, even as I wondered how the pandit could give me a personal mantra, one specific to me, without knowing me. Although I had heard him lecture, we had never met. I expected to be interviewed by the pandit, who was a Ph.D. and a Sanskrit scholar, and I figured we would have an academic conversation. I was wrong. As I was ushered into his office, I found him sitting in the lotus pose on a mat on the floor. He invited me to sit down opposite him, and I was told to begin meditating. He didn’t say anything else. His eyes were closed, so I closed my eyes and began meditating. We meditated separately. After 2 or 3 minutes, the pandit said he had received my mantra, and he proceeded to reveal it to me. The process was known as channeling.2 The pandit himself did not make up my mantra, he had just been a channel for the mantra that came from the tradition of the Himalayan sages, a tradition 2 to 3 millennia old. The sacred language of my mantra had been revealed to him. This is what I was subsequently told about the channeling process, and I accepted it. My attitude, as an initiate and as an anthropologist, is to adopt a willing suspension of disbelief, to enter into other cultures and traditions, to open myself to new experiences and not to intellectualize. This is what I do initially, so that I may learn. Later on I write about the experience, analyze it, and may even become quite critical. In the beginning, however, I give myself to the encounter so that I can experience it more fully I like my mantra and believe it was an appropriate one for me. After my initiation I made a $50 offering to the ashram, and I have used my mantra almost every day since I received it. Channeling works. The people at the institute say that as I have now been initiated, I am one of them, part of their group, a direct descendant of the Himalayan sages, a member of their tradition. I enjoy this characterization. A TRANSPLANTED TRADITION Before describing the ashram itself, I want to return to the meaning of yoga Yoga is generally believed to have been introduced in the United in America. Downloaded from http://qix.sagepub.com by somsit asdornnithee on February 1, 2009 308 States in 1893 when, at the Columbian Exposition at the Chicago World’s Fair, Swami Vivekananda of the Ramakrishna Mission made a presentation at the World Parliament of Religions. Ellwood (1987, p. 36) reports that the swami gave a &dquo;spectacular&dquo; performance and created a &dquo;sensation&dquo; among the American public. Following his teachings, the first Vedanta Society was formed in New York in 1895, but others soon followed in Boston and Chicago. The most prominent was the Vedanta Society of Southern California, which counted Aldous Huxley and Christopher Isherwood among its converts. By the 1920s, centers of yoga study were spread over the United States, and the trend accelerated in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In 1961 the first &dquo;yoga for health series&dquo; was broadcast on television, and the Esalen Institute even had a yogi-in-residence. This was not the first time Western thought had embraced Hindu ideas, however. Hindu texts were translated into European languages throughout the 18th and 19th centuries (Narayan, 1993, p. 489), and in the mid-1830s the writer and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson and a group of other intellectuals in Massachusetts (centered in Boston and Concord)-who became known as the transcendentalists-gathered to discuss European philosophy and theology, including translations of Hindu texts. Writer, philosopher, and naturalist Henry David Thoreau described himself as &dquo;at rare intervals&dquo; a yogi, and his Walden (1854) contained reflections on Hindu philosophy It was only in the 1960s, however, that Indian philosophy came into its own in America. In the popular view it is associated with burning incense, LSD and the drug culture, the Beatles, Hare Krishna, Eastern religions, communes, dropping out, sexual promiscuity, political activism, health foods, leather sandals, and a generally antiestablishment temperament. Those I met at the Himalayan Institute abhor this characterization, and they do everything to remove themselves from this stereotype. Even those who were part of the 1960s counterculture, now teachers or associates at the institute, say they felt their yoga practice in the 1960s was beyond the drugs and incense, which they regarded as a kind of adolescent acting out. Emphatically now in the 1990s, the Himalayan Institute dissociates itself from the popular images of the 1960s. Its members are also quite insistent that they are not a religion. Associates and disciples at the institute are mostly Christians and Jews, with some Hindus, and it is clear that Moslems and Buddhists would be very welcome. They see a universality in all religions. Many at the institute practice their own religion and go to church regularly They say that yoga is a spiritual practice, not a religion,3 and they state emphatically that yoga is not the 1960s popular version of an Eastern religion. They acknowledge, however, that they are part of the New Age of the 1990s. At the Himalayan Institute in Honesdale there is a pharmacy managed by a registered pharmacist devoted to homeopathic (alternative) medicine, and there are many references to health and diet, the realization of human potential, and the influence of the mind on the body. Downloaded from http://qix.sagepub.com by somsit asdornnithee on February 1, 2009 309 The Himalayan Institute founded by Swami Rama is only one of a number of similar ashrams, institutes, and societies transplanted to America. Although I am not competent to make generalizations about all transplanted Hindu traditions, some common characteristics may be discerned (Ellwood, 1987). They are led by a charismatic teacher (e.g., Swami Vivekananda, Paramahansa Yogananda, Sivananda, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Rajneesh, and Swami Bhaktivedanta). They offer the &dquo;spiritual wisdom&dquo; of India and establish communities of followers. Their teachings stress the universality of all spiritual traditions, and they cultivate the divine that is within each person. Although based on a complex philosophical system, the emphasis is less on abstract doctrine and more on the techniques needed to achieve spirituality and inner peace. It would be misleading, however, to overemphasize the historical continuity between the transplanted Indian traditions that have come to the United States over the past century, because Hinduism and yoga philosophy have been reinterpreted to fit each historical era. Although practitioners of any tradition may see a long unbroken history, there is actually a series of new constructions. Yoga practices themselves may go back thousands of years (the first codification is traced to a book called the Yoga Sutras, written by Pantanjali in 200 B.c.), but what is taught in the United States in the 1990s is a U.S. 1990s interpretation. Just as ashrams in India evolved over thousands of years, ashrams in America are also evolving as the times change, for all continuing traditions are always in the process of reinvention. In the 1960s the yoga movement, part of the antiestablishment counterculture, featured Indian philosophy, offered a new lifestyle, and embodied a critique of America. In the 1990s the movement stresses alternative medicine and holistic health, and ancient practices that are now seen to have a medical and scientific basis. The religious &dquo;authority&dquo; of the Himalayan Institute now rests less on ancient texts and more on the authority of modem science. There have been marked changes in the 30 years separating the 1960s from the 1990s, and who knows what will happen 30 years hence, in the 2020s?4 Change occurs not only in time, but in space. Contemporary American ashrams should not be seen as a degeneration from an Indian original, with one more authentic than the other, for each adapts to its own setting, and there is a flow in both directions. For example, tour groups of Americans recruited by the Himalayan Institute in Honesdale go for a 1- or 2-week stay in India to their ashram in Rishikesh, accompanied by American staff, so that a transplanted tradition (from India to America) is in effect retransplanted (from America) to its place of origin (India). Ashrams in India have been influenced by the backflow from developments taking place in the new ashrams in the West (Narayan, 1993). It is ironic that the Himalayan Institute carries on a tradition reported to be thousands of years old and yet identifies itself as New Age and sees itself practicing what its members feel will be the medicine of the 21st century. They Downloaded from http://qix.sagepub.com by somsit asdornnithee on February 1, 2009 310 advocate stress management, aerobic exercise, vegetarianism, meditation, and a lifelong spiritual quest, all New Age buzzwords. There are many references to Dean Ornish, the San Francisco physician who treats cardiac patients with diet, exercise, and meditation. They refer to Bill Moyers’ PBS television series on the mind/body relationship, the recently established alternative medicine research program at the National Institutes of Health, and the Consumer Reports article (1993, p. 10~ titled &dquo;Can Your Mind Heal Your Body?&dquo; That article says, &dquo;Positive thinking won’t cure cancer, and meditation won’t supercharge your immune system. But the power of mind/ body medicine may be greater than you think.&dquo; It concludes that such approaches have helped many people and can improve the quality of life, at virtually no risk. Everywhere these days one hears about mind/body relations; the Himalayan Institute sees the world as finally catching up to what they have been advocating since their establishment over 20 years ago, and what their yogic tradition has advocated for millennia. Of course, they are putting a contemporary cast on their activities. The institute sees itself as combining the best of Eastern and Western traditions. The director is Dr. John Clarke, a board-certified specialist in internal medicine and cardiology who graduated from Harvard Medical School and who also practices yoga and homeopathic medicine. The institute has other medical doctors, registered nurses, a registered pharmacist, and a number of Ph.Ds. in clinical psychology on the staff. I have taken yoga lessons from David Coulter, a Ph.D. and for 18 years a professor of anatomy at the University of Minnesota. He gave up his academic position and now teaches yoga in New York and at various institutes, and he is writing a book on yoga postures. THE HIMALAYAN INSTITUTE Before talking about physicians and staff, I need to examine the physical space of the institute and its economic structure. The institute is located in the Pocono Mountains in northeastern Pennsylvania on 420 acres. It was formerly a Catholic seminary, and the swami purchased the buildings and the land from the priests. It’s said that he was a tough bargainer for the property, which had been on the market for many years. The sparsely furnished buildings and rooms are soundly constructed. In each room there are cots or mats, a small closet, a washbasin, and a bedside table with a lamp. The building complex includes an auditorium, a communal dining room, a kitchen, library, dormitories, the pharmacy, and a bookstore and gift shop. On the grounds there are nature trails for walks, a pond for summer swimming, two tennis courts, a privately run Montessori elementary school for staff children that is also open to the public, a printing press, and the homes of the staff. Nothing about the institute is posh or luxurious. Downloaded from http://qix.sagepub.com by somsit asdornnithee on February 1, 2009 311 As the institute is a nonprofit organization, I was especially interested in its economic operation. What are the sources of income? A series of seminars and workshops on a variety of topics, for one. The institute’s brochure states, &dquo;Institute programs combine the best of ancient wisdom and modem science, of Eastern teachings and Western technologies. We invite you to join us in this ongoing process of personal growth and development.&dquo; Seminar titles include &dquo;Creating More Loving Relationships,&dquo; &dquo;Dynamics of Meditation,&dquo; &dquo;Science of Breath,&dquo; &dquo;Becoming a Vegetarian Cook,&dquo; &dquo;Hatha Yoga: Gateway to the Subtle Body,&dquo; &dquo;Strengthening the Immune System,&dquo; &dquo;Homeopathy,&dquo; &dquo;Fearlessness: The Path of the Spiritual Warrior,&dquo; &dquo;Creativity,&dquo; &dquo;The Art of Joyful Living,&dquo; and &dquo;The Quiet Mind.&dquo; For a typical weekend seminar, participants arrive for supper on Friday and remain until Sunday afternoon. The program consists of lectures and workshops and may involve two to six different instructors. The total cost for the 3 days is about $200 per person, including room and board, certainly a modest price. The seminars occur throughout the year, packed to capacity in the summer and with more limited attendance in the winter. The institute also sells yoga-related tapes, books, and gifts. Most of the books were written by the institute staff and are printed on their own press. The staff sees its mission as education, and output is prolific. Swami Rama himself has written over 20 books. The institute also owns the largest New Age bookstore in New York, the East-West Bookstore at 13th Street and Fifth Avenue, and the pharmacy in Honesdale has a mail-order business. Income is also derived from the $35 membership fee, which includes the institute’s journal, Yoga International. Everyone on the staff-including the physicians, psychologists, and scholars-is deeply involved in the Himalayan tradition. They are practitioners and disciples, and many have been with the program since the 1970s. I don’t know their exact salaries, although some members of the staff have confided in me. Let me take as an example Mary and John Brooks,5 a couple in their 40s. They have been with the swami for 20 years, have two children, and live in a house in the area of the institute. The institute provides rooms for the staff and has some apartments and a number of separate houses. Mary yoga teacher and works in the business office, whereas John is a printer. Mary receives a salary of $350 a month from the institute, and I doubt that John receives much more. How can they raise a family, buy clothes, send their children to college, and make ends meet? The institute provides their housing, they and their children are free to eat in the communal dining room, and their medical needs are met by the on-site pharmacy and the in-house physicians. The core staff have medical insurance. Beyond this, they are on their own. For income, the Brookses run a limousine service from the Scranton airport to Honesdale, and John works as a part-time bus driver for the local school district. Not all resident families at the institute generate outside incomemany live on what the institute provides. is a Downloaded from http://qix.sagepub.com by somsit asdornnithee on February 1, 2009 312 I asked Mary why they stay at the Himalayan Institute. It is exploitation, I said. Mary replied that she and her husband met at one of the swami’s first classes, that they have been at the institute for most of their adult lives, that they are devoted practitioners, and they prefer to remain in the ashram. It is their home. They practice yoga in their daily lives and they feel secure and happy within the institute. Mary meditates twice a day, every day Both are intelligent, personable, college-educated people, and they could choose another lifestyle. Some of the professionals, such as the doctors and psychologists, have small private practices, and Dr. Clarke has a homeopathic practice in New York in offices above the East-West bookstore. Everyone on the staff simply makes do with less-sparse living is part of their philosophy. An ashram is a kind of monastery. Further, if there are any profits at the end of the year, they are sent to support a hospital complex in India that is being built by Himalayan Institute International with supporting funds from various international agencies, private donors, and the Indian government. The hoswill be built on the model of an ashram, except with more doctors and medical facilities, and beds for patients. They envision a total cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, but they are building it slowly, in stages. It is an ambitious undertaking. The hospital is already operating in the first stage, with 100 beds, an emergency ward, a nursing program, and a cancer screening clinic. It aims to be a model of rural health development that combines local knowledge and Western medicine. The institute advertises its seminars and workshops, and offers special services such as a shiatsu massage, psychological counseling, a medical assessment, or biofeedback for a fee. I once availed myself of one of these services for the fee of $60 per hour, which I assumed was going to the person who supplied the service (it was done off hours), but I was told to make the check out to the institute, and I later learned that the entire fee was donated to the hospital in India. The chapter in Buffalo, New York, was asked in 1993 to contribute an extra $20,000 to support the hospital in India, and I assume that each of the branches of the institute received similar assessments. I was visiting with a friend in Buffalo, a partner in a large Buffalo law firm whom I met during one of my stays in Honesdale and with whom I was initiated, when the request was made. He made a substantial contribution to the hospital drive; I donated $250. The Buffalo chapter is run by a man and his wife. He has a doctorate in psychology and works three days a week in private practice, and her degree is in counseling. Their salary for codirecting the center and teaching classes is $250 a month. The institute has a core of dedicated disciples who conduct their lives within the ashram, and this is what keeps it going. They also have many volunteers, and a residential program that they describe in their brochure as follows: &dquo;We offer opportunities for an extended residence of three months or more, for those who would like to be part of a small residential community pital complex Downloaded from http://qix.sagepub.com by somsit asdornnithee on February 1, 2009 313 dedicated to personal transformation, selfless service, meditation, yoga, and holistic health.&dquo; To be a resident costs about $400 a month, with food and board included, and the residents agree to work for at least 5 hours a day in community service. They may work in the kitchen or the garden, clean the rooms, answer the phones, type letters, and carry on the business of the ashram, whatever is necessary The institute conducts its activities with minimal costs for labor because it is based on a philosophy of service. Those who do the work are not employees, they are disciples. I estimate there were about 40 total staff at any one time, some from overseas (Germany, India, and Japan). They are the core community, and they meditate and socialize together (of course, there are cliques and tensions, and not all are exemplars of the spiritual life). A RETREAT My schedule for the 2-week program I attended in April 1993 began at 5:45 each morning. I took a shower and prepared for the 6:30 hatha yoga exercise class, which lasted until almost 8 a.m. I then ate breakfast, which consisted of hot cereal, toast, yogurt, oranges, and bananas. There was no coffee or tea. The members believe that drinking any liquids during meals hinders digestion. I was defiant and brought my own decaffeinated instant coffee. The big meal is lunch at 12:30. Each meal followed the same pattern. It was strictly vegetarian. There were vegetables, especially green leafy vegetables such as spinach and kale, always basmati rice, sometimes tofu, and always beans or dahl, as well as salads. The diet is basically grains, legumes, and vegetables, lightly seasoned in a modified Indian style. Supper at 6 p.m. was austere, maybe a vegetable soup, bread, and an apple. They believe a person sleeps better by eating the main meal at noon and a light supper. After a few days of this diet, I would have killed for a hamburger, even one from MacDonald’s, but I got used to it.6 I do eat meat, although my wife and I are nominally vegetarians. There were tables set aside in the dining room for those who preferred to eat in silence, and all meals on one day a week, Monday, were silent. It was strange to be in a completely silent dining room full of people eating, each with his or her own thoughts. The purpose is to communicate within oneself, not with others, as the route to spirituality is seen as an inner quest. During my 2-week program, yoga and relaxation exercises were scheduled 4 times a day, before each meal and before bed. In between there were lectures, workshops, instruction, visits with Dr. Clarke and with a psychologist, biofeedback training, and long walks in the countryside. At 10 p.m. it was lights out and no loud talking was permitted. There were no radios, newspapers, or television. The staff believe that a quiet monastic life provides the setting in which the external world recedes so that each individual can be more in touch with his inner self. Downloaded from http://qix.sagepub.com by somsit asdornnithee on February 1, 2009 314 It was a lovely experience for me. I found myself sleeping more soundly, and was more relaxed and &dquo;together&dquo; than I ever remembered being. My posture improved and I got taller, really-possibly a result of the stretching exercises. I became less distracted, felt recharged and, I think, more creative, and my life was more focused. The Himalayan Institute in Honesdale is not the real world, however, at least not for me. I enjoy the pleasures of this world too much and do not want to renounce them. I have a wife, children, a research program, graduate students, a house, investments, and a life to live outside the ashram. Honesdale was a retreat, which, by definition, is temporary. It has a marked beginning and ending and is a time out from life only because there is a life to go back to. For me, the institute had the characteristics of a liminal experience, as Victor and Edith Turner have described it. The institute advocates that one engage the world and live in it, although there are a few special persons-swamis and yogis-who do renounce the world. The members say this path is reserved for the few saints that one finds in all religions. Swami Rama says that Saint Francis of Assisi was one of the greatest yogis that the West has produced. Renunciation, however, is not for the average person. They do say, however, that yoga and meditation practices can help the average person live in the world more fully and completely, with more joy and spirituality and less stress. Further, over the years, the institute has developed some recipes and principles for living, and I now turn to these. The members tell this story about the Lord Buddha. He and one of his disciples were begging for their food, as monks do, and they came upon a woman milking a cow. She had already given to two other monks earlier in the day and was becoming irritated. Instead of milk, she put the cow’s excrement in the Buddha’s begging bowl. The Buddha smiled and said, &dquo;Mother, I don’t need this,&dquo; and he overturned his bowl. As they walked away the disciple became very excited and angry He said, &dquo;Master, that woman insulted you, and I am very upset with such disrespect. What she did was terrible and it makes my blood boil. Who does she think she is?&dquo; The Lord Buddha turned to his disciples and said, &dquo;What the woman gave me, I left with her, but you have carried it along with you.&dquo; Although you can’t control others, you can control your own reaction and what you take away from encounters. At the institute it’s said that if you feel insulted or become angry at someone, then you must ask yourself what you want from that person. If you feel hurt, then that person exercises some control over you-perhaps you want their approval or respect-because if you didn’t want something you could just walk away. Whatever happens externally is just an event outside of you; it is your reaction that is crucial. This may be simplistic pop psychology, but it applied to me. I learned from these stories. In a more general sense, the institute advocates nonattachment (vairagya), the ability to achieve inner peace so that you can work better in the world. The aim is not to renounce all material possessions and personal desires or retreat to a Himalayan cave monastery. The aim is to work toward Downloaded from http://qix.sagepub.com by somsit asdornnithee on February 1, 2009 315 achievement of nonattachment in this world. One technique to help achieve nonattachment is what is called &dquo;becoming a witness.&dquo; To become a witness means to see your life as if it were a movie, something out there, not attached to your ego. You observe yourself. For example, after I returned from 2 weeks at the institute, I received a letter informing me that I had not been elected to the International Academy of Tourism, an organization of scholars and practitioners in the tourism field who have meetings and a publication program. They elect new members every 2 years. In 1993, 9 people were nominated worldwide, including me, and 5 were elected. When I received the rejection letter I thought to myself, &dquo;Here is an opportunity to practice nonattachment.&dquo; I decided to witness the event as if I were outside it. I thought, &dquo;Here is this anthropologist with a big ego who thinks that he is so important that everyone in every discipline should recognize his genius, even though he has only recently published in tourism studies.&dquo; It is a trivial example, I know, but it is part of my effort to practice nonattachment. The idea is to enjoy your work without being dependent for your satisfaction on the rewards of that work. To do the work you enjoy, with no expectation about possible future rewards, is a path to liberation. Swami Rama says that Americans are frightened by the idea of sacrifice, of not achieving rewards, because they fear that they will not get enough for themselves, so sacrifice is seen as a loss. For the swami, however, sacrifice is love. And in the end we all have to give it up, because we all die and are just passing through. These are profoundly religious ideas, found in many faiths-certainly in the old Sanskrit epics, and especially the Bhagavad Gita, which is derived from the Mahabharata epic. Actually, I don’t feel very comfortable with nonattachment yet. I understand it in principle, but the truth is I don’t yet know how to put it into practice. How to apply nonattachment to one’s own life is a common problem shared by many other disciples. Many of the institute staff themselves struggle with this dilemma. Another, similar technique is to say, &dquo;I’m just pretending to be an important anthropologist, but really I am a spiritual seeker, an apprentice yogi-in-themaking. The real Ed Bruner is the sage, and the pretending Ed is the ’distinguished’ anthropologist.&dquo; There are, of course, some social and academic issues worth fighting for, and the institute says that if you decide something is critical, a worthy cause, then you should go all out and fight for it, but only after making sure that it is really important to you. Make that a conscious decision. Otherwise, let it go. Your self-talk and how you define issues to yourself is crucial. At the institute they tell the story of the three umpires. The first umpire says, &dquo;I call them as I see them.&dquo; He was the youngest. The second umpire, more confident, says, &dquo;I call them as they are.&dquo; And the third umpire, the oldest, says, &dquo;The way I call them, they are.&dquo; You have to be careful what you label as an important issue. Downloaded from http://qix.sagepub.com by somsit asdornnithee on February 1, 2009 316 everything they taught me at the Himalayan Institute. It’s accept reincarnation and homeopathy, and I generally approach it all with a relaxed skepticism, with an anthropological detachment, maybe like the Buddha’s nonattachment. I participated in the tradition-indeed, I joined the tradition-and it was good for me, and fun. I wonder, however, what other things of which I may not be aware I’m buying into when I accept yoga practice and philosophy. Is there a dark side? Am I being taken in by what is in effect a commercial effort, a packaged spirituality, an international marketing ploy? I’m not sure, but I’m free to accept selectively, to take I don’t believe hard for me to what I want and to leave the rest. My wife and I enjoy the Himalayan Institute so much that we spent our 1993 Thanksgiving vacation there, and we went again for a weekend during spring break in 1994. It was my fourth trip. We were joined by our friends from Buffalo and had many good conversations and bonded. My friend and I went to the same public high school in New York, Stuyvesant High School (an exceptional institution), and have much in common. The yoga and meditation were wonderful, and a specialist helped me with my exercise routine and offered suggestions for improving my practice. There were long walks in the woods, as the institute is adjacent to a state park. There were so many deer on the property that we saw some every day of our visit, and counted 13 on one walk alone. I found that I was even getting used to the completely vegetarian diet. Yoga teaches you to listen more closely to your body, to become aware of and to protect your self, to practice being still, to listen to the center of consciousness within you, to live in the here and now, to ignore some of the noise and chatter in the outside world, to realize that things in the world are to be used and not possessed, and to have fewer expectations about the fruits of your work and your action in the world. The spiritual path is still new to me, but I’m groping toward it. THE ETHNOGItAPHIC AND THE PERSONAL I have described how I experienced the Himalayan Institute from the of a neophyte, as a person new to the mysteries of yoga, Hinduism, and meditation. This was my personal self. However, the skeptical, questioning, probing, ethnographic self was there from the beginning, too, although it was only later, after leaving the institute, that I decided to write a paper about my experience. The subject became the object. The relationship between the ethnographic self and the personal self has been prominent in recent years in anthropological discourse, although it is actually an old issue (see Bruner, 1993; Tedlock, 1991). Kondo (1990), Lavie (1990), Abu-Lughod (1992), Behar (1993), and Steedly (1993) are among those who have done important work on the topic recently. My contribution differs, however, because I went to Honesdale, Pennsylvania, the site of a transplanted subject position Downloaded from http://qix.sagepub.com by somsit asdornnithee on February 1, 2009 317 tradition, to learn about meditation for my own personal reasons rather than going to an exotic locale (Japan, Israel, Egypt, Cuba, or Sumatra) on an explicit ethnographic quest after writing a research proposal and obtaining a research grant. What started out as part of my personal life was soon transformed into part of my professional life. The point is that, for an ethnographer, any experience-at home or abroad, of self or of other-ffers the potential to become fieldwork. We select only a small segment from the vast expanse of life encounters to write about. For me, my personal and my ethnographic persona have become so intertwined that it would be impossible to separate them even if I wanted to do so (Bruner, 1993). In conversations with my instructors at the institute, I found myself sometimes asking questions about how to meditate better, or about a particular yoga posture, whereas at other times I asked how the institute was organized and what were the lines of authority and power. I vacillated between Shiva and Radcliffe-Brown. Can anthropologists examine their own lives anthropologically? Are there limitations to this strategy and subject position? In a larger sense, all my field studies-starting with American Indians and moving to Indonesia, Kenya, Ghana, and the contemporary United States-have combined the personal and the scholarly. My work on acculturation, urbanization, and tourism focuses on persons raised in one culture who at a stage in their lives move, permanently or temporarily, to another culture. My academic work can be read not only as a reflection of my own life, but as an effort to come to terms with a dominant predicament of my life, and to better understand myself as someone who has &dquo;changed&dquo; cultures. In a sense, my scholarly pursuits have been an effort to solve a personal problem, a master dilemma of my own life situation. I see myself as transplanted. I have always studied transplanted persons and traditions, for example, Mandan Indians from the reservation who have emulated the White man’s cultural practices (Bruner, 1956), Toba Batak from the villages of Sumatra who have moved to the city (Bruner, 1961), or tourists who have traveled to the Third World (Bruner, 1995). Traveling theories and transnationalism, process and movement, and current buzzwords have been part of my scholarly efforts from the start of my academic career. The personal has inexorably accompanied the scholarly. I joined the Himalayan Institute and became an initiate to learn about meditation and stress reduction, not just as a methodological ploy to gain rapport for an ethnographic study. I subsequently found that I believed in much, but not all, of what is taught there. Still, the Himalayan Institute as a transplanted tradition is fascinating to me as an anthropologist, and I want to learn more about how it functions and what it means to the core staff, the temporary residents, and the participants at the seminars. At the same time, as I struggle with how to apply nonattachment to my everyday life, I have one eye looking over my shoulder in this postmodern era at a not-for-profit transnational organization exporting a commodified spirituality to the world. I find myself silently chuckling at the ambiguities of reconciling the different Downloaded from http://qix.sagepub.com by somsit asdornnithee on February 1, 2009 318 agendas of my personal and my ethnographic selves. But this is a familiar predicament, one that I have been struggling with and enjoying all of my life, as I am always balancing the personal and the professional parts of myself. I have been doing this balancing act for so long that it has become almost comfortable. Now I wonder what ashrams are like in other places in America, or even in India, and how to get there to experience and study them. NOTES 1. See Bruner (1994). 2. The word channeling is not connotations, but Pandit generally used by the staff because of its many Rajmani’s secretary did use the term when she set up my appointment. 3. I am not sure about the validity of the institute’s claim that it is not a religion, as of the institute’s practices do seem religious to me. In part, it is a matter of how religion is defined; the claim may well be a political strategy by a Hindu movement seeking recruits in a Christian country. 4. Compare Thomas (1930), Cox (1977), and Ellwood (1987). 5. Pseudonyms. 6. My desires were not unique at the Himalayan Institute. Backsliding and evidence of human weakness were evident everywhere, even among the core staff, which is perhaps an inherent part of any institution with so many prohibitions. some REFERENCES Abu-Lughod, L. (1992). Writing women’s worlds: Bedouin stories. Berkeley: University of California Press. (1), 36-49. Appadurai, A. (1988). Putting hierarchy in its place. Cultural Anthropology, 3 Appadurai, A. (1991). Global ethnoscapes: Notes and queries for a transnational anthropology. In R. G. Fox (Ed.), Recapturing anthropology: Working in the present (pp. 191210). Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press. Behar, R. (1993). Translated woman: Crossing the border with Esperanza’s story. Boston: Beacon. Bruner, E. M. (1956). Primary group experience and the processes of acculturation. American Anthropologist, 59 , 605-623. Bruner, E. M. (1961). Urbanization and ethnic identity in North Sumatra. American Anthropologist, 63, 508-521. Bruner, E. M. (Ed.). (1988). Text, play, and story: The construction and reconstruction of self and society (Proceedings from American Ethnological Society, 1983, Washington, DC). Chicago: Waveland Press. (Original work published 1984) Bruner, E. M. (1993). Introduction: The ethnographic self and the personal self. In P. Benson (Ed.), Anthropology and literature (pp. 1-26). Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Bruner, E. M. (1994). Abraham Lincoln as authentic reproduction: A critique of postmodernism. American Anthropologist, 96 , 397-415. Downloaded from http://qix.sagepub.com by somsit asdornnithee on February 1, 2009 319 M. (1995). The ethnographer/tourist in Indonesia. In M. F. Lanfant, J. AllE. M. Bruner (Eds.), International tourism: Identity and change (pp. 224-241). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Can your mind heal your body? (1993, February). Consumer Reports. Cox, H. (1977). Turning east: The promise and the peril of the new orientalism. New York: Simon & Schuster. . New York: Paulist Press. Ellwood, R S. (1987). Eastern spirituality in America & "culture": A., J. (1992). Ferguson, Beyond Gupta, Space, identity, and the politics of difference. Cultural Anthropology, 7 , 6-23. Kondo, D. K. (1990). Crafting selves: Power, gender, and discourses of identity in a Japanese workplace. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Laughlin, C. (1994). Apodicticity: The problem of absolute certainty in transpersonal Humanism, 115-129. 19 ethnology. Anthropology and (2), Lavie, S. (1990). The poetics of military occupation: Mzeina allegories of Bedouin identity under Israeli and Egyptian rule. Berkeley: University of California Press. Narayan, K. (1989). Storytellers, saints, and scoundrels: Folk narrative in Hindu religious teaching. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Narayan, K. (1993). Refractions of the field at home: American representations of Hindu holy men in the 19th and 20th centuries. Cultural Anthropology, 8, 476-509. Rosaldo, R. (1989). Culture and truth: The remaking of social analysis. Boston: Beacon Press. Steedly, M. M. (1993). Hanging without a rope: Narrative experience in colonial and postcolonial Karoland. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Tedlock, B. (1991). From participant observation to the observation of participation: The (1), 69-94. emergence of narrative ethnography. Journal of Anthropological Research, 47 Thomas, W. (1930). Hinduism invades America. New York: Harper & Row. Turner, V, & Bruner, E. M. (1986). The anthropology of experience. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Bruner, E. cock, & Edward M. Bruner is professor emeritus of anthropology and of criticism and interpretive theory at the University of Illinois. He was a past president of the American Ethnological Society and of the Society for Humanistic Anthropology. He has done fieldwork among American Indians and in Indonesia and Affica. He has written extensively on culture change, narratology, ethnographic writing, and tourism. His edited volumes include Text, Play, and Story: The Construction and Reconstruction of Self and Society and The Anthropology of Experience (with Victor W. Turner). Downloaded from http://qix.sagepub.com by somsit asdornnithee on February 1, 2009