Spiritual materialism

Pushkar (Rajasthan) is a small town beside a lake somewhat related to Brahma the Hindu god. The water of the lake is holy for the religious crowds and they go and bath and drink from it, (it looks quite greenish by the way, and big big fish lives in it since fishing is not allowed - they survive despite the amounts of incense and flowers that are thrown daily from the shore).

When I arrived in the late afternoon I thought of going to watch the sunset, but there are lots of warnings in the magic guidebooks about touts that want to "help" you to make a pooja (offering). Thus I looked for a quiet place, (actually there was not even a direct view of the sun setting down). A guy here and there would come and do their ablutions in the green water. Then a priest came and cleaned up (indian cleaning) some of the steps by throwing buckets of the holy water, and then his gadgets for the ritual. Afterwards he went for a bath himself and, since at that moment I was the only alive person around, he asked me if I could stay at least for a few minutes and then I would look after the gadgets - in case a doggy would come I should keep them safe.

The guy even swam a bit and went to change loincloths and came back and started his pooja. An old man joined him with a cymbal and a stick. Eventually they needed somebody to wave a kind feather duster (holy one) to welcome the gods - they asked me as a last resort. I joined and we did the thing and tossed flowers to the lake and the priest sat down and started singing (praying). It was nice, relaxing, lonely, even if his voice was not melodic. Pleasant. When the fire was finish the priest stopped. Then we talked a bit, he explained me that he was praying for shanti, (calm, meaning non-aggression). His english was crap, when I asked something the answer made no sense to the question (or maybe it was mysterious), and I guess he got a similar impression of me since I did not understand when he was asking something. At the end he recommended me a couple of simple mantras. I'd guess he was a honest hindu believer.


The ritual was kind of nice, curious, as I say the full scene was peaceful, agreeable, and maybe if I tried the mantras I would feel ok with them. It's quite common for we westerns to have those kind of feelings. There's a buddhist writer who explains it using a very good example: some meditation techniques are supposed to bring boredom to the practitioner but actually for the foreigners are enjoyable, they say they find them "an amazing experience". This guy (Trungpa) calls it "spiritual materialism", a mistake of even truthful spiritual seekers, who try a technique and find it nice and get a result, but then their rational mind makes a full setup about it which has nothing to do with it, (since it has nothing to do with anything rational), and in the worst cases there is a masala mix of rituals and details that he/she likes or finds powerful, of several religions and woodo and shamanism.

Of course the half mystics of Leh and Pushkar and all around India are the perfect embodiment of it. But nobody seems to be free: myself if you would had asked me only a few days before I'd told you that no no way I would never be the altar boy of a priest, whichever religion it was...