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Grace is not Eastern or Western — it’s just human
A Western gal wrestles with Eastern wisdom — and finds grace waiting at home.
By Janet Marugg | FāVS News Columnist
The views expressed in this opinion column are those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of FāVS News.
There is no denying that I am a Western gal. My roots are deep in the Rocky Mountains, my life a mirror to the sharp emotional peaks and cold, shadowy valleys. My body reflects the folds and scars of the land, my mind sometimes blows loose and wild as the wind.
The West is a fine place to wander and sometimes to wander away from. But there is no finer place for returning.
Back in the day, before yoga studios and classes were a thing here, Westerners pilgrimaged to the East in search of enlightenment. My oldest roommates traveled to India to find their dharma and never returned.
We all know people who went to India. George Harrison went to India and brought us “My Sweet Lord,” John Coltrane featured Vidic chant melodies in a song titled “OM,” and the raga rock sounds of The Byrds and the Rolling Stones are a guaranteed lift on a heavy Western winter’s day.
This Western gal did not commune with Hare Krishna or Rajneesh. Not that I wasn’t a seeker, just a homebody. I sat Western sunsets reading Ram Dass, the Upanishads and Richard Bach.
I took the Erhard Seminars Training (EST), where I gained nothing, but not the bad kind of nothing — the baggage-free, clean-slate kind of nothing that freed up a Western-sized space for the rest of my life.
The spine as steeple
In India, the people I knew went from ashram to ashram practicing yoga poses designed to align the spine to improve spiritual energy flow. There was talk of chakras, “kundalini” energy and “third eye” spiritual experience.
Talk like that draws my skepticism, but all these decades later, I admit that a well-stacked vertebra is a pretty good thing to have, considering the alternative.
I imagine practitioners of yoga — the yogi and yogini — treat the spine as a personal steeple, a vertical bridge to the divine, a personal compass point oriented to the cosmos. In this oldest religion, the spine contains the power to become enlightened and ascend to moksha. Maybe even without dying first.
I declined to live my life in poses; a still life for me was not to be. The human vertebrae are not unique. Having a spine is nothing special.
We walk upright in this world because of the shape of our feet. The place we make contact with the Earth is distinctly human.
In her book, “Skeleton Keys: The Secret Life of Bone,” American paleontologist and science writer Riley Black explains that the skeleton “key” to our species of human beings that gives us our ability to walk upright is our feet.
I giggle to think that foot worship could’ve predated spine worship, but I don’t know of any anthropological evidence beyond fetish.
Still, there is something about the place in our body that makes contact with the Earth that is as worthy of consideration as a spine. These days, I care about both my spine and my feet, less about enlightenment.
I’m settled in the Western secular values of freedom, justice, equal human rights, dignity, autonomy, due process, pluralism, ongoing ethical development, continued scientific discovery and knowledge.
All of my values struggle with the Hindu Vedas, the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita’s jnana, bhakti and karma yogic paths. I cannot get past the ideas of reincarnation and karma.
My Western value that I’m “free-to-become” rejects the rutty stuckness of karma and caste systems based on Eastern belief in reincarnation. My values are a dharma buster.
Most world religions — even the Western religions — do not support my Western values. I refuse to accept caste and systemic subjugation held in place by an idea of karmic reincarnations, a moksha, a nirvana or a heaven. I want to walk upright in a just world, unmolested by religious worries.
Feet on the ground, eyes on justice
Whether a person takes lifetimes to walk the yogic paths to enlightenment or not doesn’t matter. All in all and in the end, there is grace — even for a Western gal. Grace is liberation, and there is nothing better than liberty. Big liberty — like a canvas wiped clean. How else would a person ever get out of karmic ruts and walk anywhere with their fine, human feet and well-stacked spine?
Grace — the radical granting of acceptance of things as they are is a common thread through world religions, but religious belief does not own it. Grace is not Eastern or Western — it is universal. It lives in our stories of redemption, the mental click as we learn from our mistakes, the rush of epiphany and the insightful moments that make up a life.
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