Sermon: What is your Sadhana?
(The Hindu-Christian Relation)
Rev. Ha Na Park, Immanuel United Church, Winnipeg
Introduction:
To begin with, I am really looking forward to sharing what I learned this past week from the United Church’s study guide material: Honouring the Divine in Each Other: United Church-Hindu Relations Today. Before I read the study guide, I thought I had a fairly decent knowledge of Hinduism; I majored in Comparative Religious Studies for my Bachelor and Master’s degrees, I travelled in India and Pakistan for a month with a religious study research group; I even had a few opportunities to visit and worship at Hindu temples and Mosques in India and Pakistan. Back then, I was 13 years younger; my Christian faith journey had just started. There was a passion burning for Christian faith, but I was not yet mature enough. At the same time, my knowledge about Hinduism from books and a very limited in-person direct experience was solely intellectual. So, these were not united with the passion I now have in my heart towards the inter-spiritual and inter-religious quest to understand God and live God.
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| Here's the link to the study guide: CLICK |
I really want to give kudos to all who worked hard on formulating the study guide, Honouring the Divine in Each Other.
I find it very satisfactory, bold and brilliant. The United Church needs more works like this for the benefit of a kinder, more open and interesting universe. After my reflection, if anyone wants to learn more about our faith relation to Hinduism and Hindu neighbours on our streets and in our world, please ask me to send you the material, which includes the following questions:
-Can a Christian participate in Hindu worship?
-Misappropriation of Hindu traditions
-What can Christians learn from Hindus?: Attention to spiritual practice
-Is Jesus the only way? Theology in a Pluralistic World
-Can a Christian also be a Hindu?
-Can a Christian believe in reincarnation?
Sermon: “Flowing together”
So, where shall I begin today? During my research, I wondered, what information would be most helpful?
I thought we’d start with Hinduism in Canada. Traditionally, Hinduism was practiced only within the subcontinent of India. The global spread of Hinduism began when significant numbers of Hindus began to leave India and settle in different parts of the world. The initial movement of the population was engineered in the 19th century by the colonial authorities in India. Often against their will, contract workers were taken to faraway places such as Mauritius, Guyana, and Trinidad, and formed new social structures in those places.
After that, a second wave of emigration brought significant numbers of Hindu migrants to Europe and North America. In this case, the migrants chose to move, and the sense of displacement or diaspora was not as strong. In 1962, Canada eliminated immigration quotas based on race and national origin, which quickly led to an influx of doctors and professors from South Asia. As the immigration system was opened further, by the first decade of the 21st century, there were approximately a million and a half South Asians in Canada, including Tamil Hindu refugees from Sri Lanka and Hindu Christians.
One of the things I really liked about the study guide was its honesty: for example, The United Church of Canada regrets the church’s condemnation of Hindu worship practices; We regret the use of language of idolatry to condemn Hindu theological traditions; We regret the church’s complicity in colonialism and racism that evolved in the British Commonwealth.
Acknowledging that the major first contacts between Hindus and Christians were made under colonial rule, it is important to learn and care about the impact of the colonial era (which involved a sweeping condemnation of Indian culture) and the immigration history of our Hindu neighbours, if we intend for more genuine inter-faith and inter-religious relationships, friendships and conversations. In order to get to know others, we really need to know ourselves - how have we welcomed Hindus to Canada? How do we see Canadian Hindus represented in Canadian media or in our community?
Do you have a Hindu neighbour, friend or co-worker? The fun part of this interfaith and inter-religious exploration/journey becomes solid when we begin to share, show and tell the hidden treasure of each tradition’s faith with each other.
What can Christians learn from Hindus? What are the Gifts Under the Star? How shall we begin the conversation? Here are two helpful suggestions from Honouring the Divine In Each Other!
Ask, “What is your sadhana?”
(guided by many pictures of Hindu practices on the screen)
It is not uncommon for a Hindu to ask, “What is your sadhana, or practice?” Hinduism is far more about spiritual practice than belief, more about ritual than what Christians would traditionally understand as doctrine. It is through a sadhana that a Hindu moves toward spiritual awareness, liberation and perfection.
A discipline of sadhana might be meditation, chanting, or other forms of ritual behaviour. It might be done for personal purpose, for example, to gain something deeply desired or for the purpose of one’s own enlightenment. But the highest form of sadhana is done for the spiritual benefit of the cosmos.
Hindus also might helpfully ask us Christians, “What is your practice?” This would be a welcome question to the great mystics of Christianity. We have long had traditions of meditation, centring prayer, and spiritual exercises. But the Hindu would ask this question of all of us! How is it possible to be faithful without a practice? What rituals bring meaning and purpose to your daily life?
So, here’s the question for us! What is your daily, purposeful, spiritual practice (for the benefit of the cosmos)? For we Western Christians, (We might need more adjectives such as mainline, liberal, questing) may be overemphasizing words of faith rather than a daily practice of meditation, action and devotion (bhakti).
Honouring the Divine in Each Other suggests another way for finding hidden treasures in both the Hindu and Christians paths. If we remember that English, or any spoken language, alone is not a perfect vehicle for a heart-felt, deep sharing of each one’s truth, we, Hindus and Christians, can talk about how we experience God! (Even though it is thoughtless to use the term ‘monotheism’ and put Hindu practice in the fixed frame of monotheism as if it were parallel to Christianity, Judaism and Islam, Hindus think of Brahman (the ultimate reality) as One, and children grow up praying to “God”! They are shocked when they are sometimes told in school that they believe in “many gods.”
One of the most awkward elements of any conversation between Hindus and Christians may be the initiation of the discussion of the nature of God or deity. Christians during the colonial era condemned the Hindu worship as idol worship and misunderstood that they worship “many gods”. While we know that kind of language is very offensive to Hindus, we are often unsure of how Hindus do speak about deity/God.
It is important to learn that most Hindus will point out that all worship is directed toward one ultimate reality, Brahman. Each form or image expresses different attributes of the one divine power; devotion to one of these images is an expression of devotion to the ultimate. The multiplicity reflected in the gods and goddesses of Hinduism is rooted in an understanding that the ultimate/Brahman is a mystery far deeper and more complex than can be represented in a single image of divinity.
By the way, I take great delight in finding this treasure — many names/images — , because therein also lies a rich potential for Christianity! Last Sunday we learned that Muslims speak of ninety-nine names, or the thousand and one names for God in Arabic, Allah. Nowadays, with the aim of overcoming patriarchy, colonialism and other restrictions, Jewish people and Christians alike are rediscovering many metaphors in the scripture that celebrate the multiple ways God’s presence is known in the lives of the faithful people!
For example, lately I learned that (I am looking forward to reading the book Saving Paradise to learn more about the metaphors) before Christianity became the religion of empire in the 3rd century CE, and before the cross and atonement theology became the central, orthodox Christian faith expression and image of Christ, the early church used and had many life-affirming images; they filled their sanctuaries with them!
For example, Christ (or Christ-consciousness) was portrayed with the image of a mirror (as each of us), tree of life, water, rain, shepherd, teacher, healer etc. The potential of rediscovering many more images and metaphors (and icons) is so fabulous and important! It frees Christianity to be a more life-affirming religion. The book, Saving Paradise, says, “Once Jesus appeared as crucified and dying was virtually all Jesus seemed able to do, paradise disappeared from the earth.”
And hear this! I find this very interesting and exciting: Hindus generally take great delight in describing their devotion and joy in attending to the images in their home altars or temples. (The pictures) These are ishta-devatas or deities of “choice”, and, if you get to have an opportunity to have conversations about them it often leads to a rich and meaningful time of sharing personal experience of God and the spiritual life.
I remember one time when I was going to pick up my older son from his friend’s home, and the father greeted me. He was a Hindu, and when I pointed at the big picture of Krishna on the wall in a very nice frame, (the picture of Krishna disguised as the charioteer, instructing the warrior Arjuna, “Our bodies are known to end, but the embodied self is enduring, indestructible, and immeasurable; therefore, Arjuna, fight the battle.”
At that moment of the war, the young hero Arjuna is depressed because he does not want to go to war against his relatives. My neighbour took such delight in explaining the story and his faith with great pride, at length!
And hear this! “Hindus generally find the Christian’s effort to explain the divine and human aspects of the Christ figure fascinating. They are often more eager than their Christian friend to hear about the continuing presence of the Holy Spirit.” Isn’t that so fascinating? It made me wonder, Why? No surprise. Hindus, like Christians, are people of stories. Their gods and goddesses, for example, Siva, who takes a wide variety of forms as an ascetic in the Himalayan mountains, as Nataraja, the Lord of the Dance (dancing the cosmic dance), and as a family man with his wife Parvati and sons of Ganesha and Skanda, create and recreate, destroy and restore the universe and teach how we uphold the life of the holy, in greatly revered sacred texts like the Bhagavad Gita and Upanishads.
The real benefit, the true gift of interfaith and inter-religious engagement with our neighbours is that it teaches us that our Christian passion and commitment works best in serving for the benefit of all people and all living things in the universe, rather than assuming the superiority of our religion/faith. Reincarnation, which means “flow together”, depicts the ultimate condition of interconnectedness. In this universe, in this cosmos, in this world, on this earth, at home, at each time, in each relation and at each incarnation of new enlightenments, we progress towards perfection and to be released (liberation, moksa) from what makes us suffer.
… Finally, again, I ask you and me, “What is your sadhana? What is your practice, to make our universe be kinder, just, more open, more interesting and more loving?"
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