beings, some of whom may be more intelligent, powerful, and virtuous than we are, the Great Spirit, for example. Nor does it tell us how we should live with one another. There seems to be no reason, therefore, why we can't accept the white man's medicine with gratitude while continuing to take seriously the wonderful explanatory myths that our ancestors entrusted to us.
If, as I say, the chiefs could reason this way and hold true to that reasoning, science would not be a problem. But they can't. We moderns and postmoderns can't. And I can't—not wholeheartedly, so scientized is the culture that encases me. But trying to change it is happiness enough.
2
The Way Things Are
TIMOTHY BENEKE Tell us how you started your day.
HUSTON SMITH I began with the Islamic morning prayer to Allah. That was followed by India's hatha yoga, and after that a chapter from the Bible—this morning it was the Gospel of John—which I tried to read reflectively, opening myself to such insights that might enter. Then I was ready for coffee.
BENEKE What do those practices do for you?
SMITH Rabbis say that the first word you should think of when you wake up in the morning is the word God. Not even thank-you should precede it. I begin my day with the Islamic morning prayer as an extension of that point. I say it in Arabic. Not that I know Arabic, but I learned to pronounce the prayer phonetically because Islam is one of the three religions that require their canonical, prescribed prayers to be said in their original tongues; the other two are Hinduism and Judaism. And, of course, I know what the Arabic syllables of the prayer mean.
BENEKE What do they mean? What do they mean to you?
SMITH A great deal. That so much of what is important in life could be packed into just seven short phrases is almost proof in itself that Islam is a revealed religion.
The prayer opens with “Praise be to Allah, Creator of the worlds.” Right off we are given to understand that life is no accident. It has derived from an Ultimate Source that is divine. But what is the character of divinity? The prayer addresses that immediately, in its second line, “the merciful, the compassionate.” The Sufis from whom I learned the prayer give different nuances to those two words. Allah is merciful in having created us, and he is compassionate in that he will restore us to himself when our lives end, in keeping with the Koranic assertion “unto Him all things return.” Some Sufis use that verse to argue that everyone reaches heaven eventually. Unlike other Muslims, they see hell as a place where sins are burned away; no souls stay there forever. But to continue with the prayer: the assurances of its second line are comforting, but they run the danger of inducing complacency. So the third line counters that danger immediately by adding “ruler of the day of judgment.” Not everything goes. Actions have consequences, so we had better watch our step.
Then comes what (from the human standpoint) is the crucial fourth line: “Thee do we worship, and thee do we ask for aid.” I was taught that when you come to that central line in the prayer, you should take stock of how your day is going. If it's going well, you should accent the first phrase, “Thee do we worship,” and pour out your gratitude like Niagara Falls. If, on the other hand, it is one of those days when you wonder how you are going to get through it, you ask for help: “Thee do we ask for aid.” Swallow your pride and admit that we all need help at times.
Truth to tell, by then the prayer has done it for me. Its remaining three assertions basically recapitulate what has gone before and round it off. “Guide us on the straight path, the path of those on whom thou hast poured forth thy grace; not the path of those who have incurred thy wrath and gone astray.”
BENEKE How long have you been saying the Muslim prayers—the same prayer, five times a day?
SMITH About twenty-five years. Bodily movements accompany the words, but if circumstances don't permit them—say you are in a shopping line or on a freeway when the hour of prayer arrives—you may say the prayer silently to yourself. The prescribed times for prayer—on awakening, at noon, mid-afternoon, sunset, and on retiring—frame the day nicely. Five times a day, distractions are suspended, and one's attention is drawn to the infinite.
BENEKE After the prayer you turn to yoga.
SMITH Hatha yoga centers me; it gets me into my body somewhat. Ambu, my yoga teacher in South India, would occasionally hold a pose for two hours. I hold the poses for about twenty seconds, a fair measure of the distance between our attainments.
What does hatha yoga do for me? I don't want to claim too much. In the eight steps of Patanjali's “raja yoga”—the way to God through psychophysical exercises—hatha yoga, which works with body postures, is the third step in the program that integrates body, mind, spirit. If you undertake that program seriously, you don't do hatha yoga, the body movements, unless you are also working on the minimal moral precepts that the first two preceding steps prescribe. And the eighty-four postures of hatha yoga lead to the lotus position, where you sit, legs folded, with each foot upturned on its opposing thigh. In that position, you proceed to the remaining five steps, where you work with breathing and meditation. That's raja yoga in its full sweep. I've done it along the way, but it's not my primary path, and now I can't say that hatha yoga does more than counter somewhat the stiffness that comes with age.
BENEKE And why do you follow this by reading the Bible?
SMITH That's more complicated. For over fifty years I've read a passage from one of the world's sacred texts before breakfast. I'm not the first person in history to undertake the spiritual quest, and it's only sensible to draw on the experiences of those who have preceded me. The Bhagavad Gita, the Tao Te Ching, the Koran, the Bible, and the like are data banks of what they learned, so I apprentice myself to them. They are my guides on the path.
So much for the general practice. Now, to why I'm currently reading the Bible? To answer that I have to review my odyssey briefly. My parents were Methodist missionaries in China, so I had a Protestant upbringing, and I was fortunate: it proved to be positive. It “took,” so to speak. I find that many of my students look to me like wounded Christians, or wounded Jews, in that what came through to them was dogmatism—we have the truth and everybody else is going to hell—and moralism—don't do this, that, and the other. What came through to me from my religious upbringing was quite different: we are in good hands, and in gratitude for that fact it would be good if we bore one another's burdens.
China was a part of my childhood and youth, and since then I have spent about a decade immersing myself sequentially in the thought and practice of Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and the Native American traditions. That pretty much covers the bases except for Judaism, which came to me through a daughter who married a Conservative Jew and converted to his faith. My ongoing involvement (with my wife) in their kosher family means a lot to me. We have a grandson named Isaiah.
During the middle decades of my life it would have been more accurate to consider me a Vedantist, a Zennist, or whatever I was then immersed in, than as a Christian, but I never severed my Christian connections. In the last year or two, though, I've developed an interest in reconnecting with my Christian roots; there's a saying, I believe, that “the child is father of the man.” In any case it feels like coming full circle. I have been approaching Christianity this time as if it were a foreign religion like the others I encountered, which in many ways traditional Christianity is in our modern, secular age. This calls for bringing to it the same openness and empathy I tried to direct to the other religions I have studied. Approaching it this way strips away many stereotypes. I'm finding that in its depths, St. Augustine, Dionysius, Meister Eckhart—not the third-grade Christianity one hears from most pulpits—this new (to me) Christianity is more interesting than that of my childhood.
