In2-MeC

IBSA (ISKCON Bhaktivedanta Sadhana Asrama), Govardhana, India
23 January 2004

Chicken Soup (and frogs' legs, snails, and martinis) for the Soul

The reader may be aware that there's a New Age sort of book published not long ago with the title Chicken Soup for the Soul. Since then a string of sequels was put out by the same author. Well, here I'm not writing about that book. The review you're about to read in today's journal is about a book that was published in magazine form in the late 1950's and then in book form in 1961. Though nearly fifty years old, the book is remarkably New Age-y in a folksy American way. It even has something to say about the spiritual significance of chicken soup.

But if it's the religious life you want, you ought to know right now that you're missing out on every single [expletive deleted] religious action that's going on around this house. You don't even have sense enough to drink when somebody brings you a cup of consecrated chicken soup--which is the only kind of chicken soup [Mother] ever brings to anybody around this madhouse. . . How in hell are you going to recognize a legitimate holy man when you see one if you don't even know a cup of consecrated chicken soup when it's right in front of your nose?

The name of the book is Franny and Zooey. The author is J. D. Salinger, whose Catcher in the Rye I wrote about last summer in this journal. Somewhere, years ago, HH Satsvarupa dasa Gosvami discussed Franny and Zooey, but what I have to say does not refer to his remarks.

The title characters, Franny (for Francis) and Zooey (for Zachary) are sister and brother in a large New York family called Glass. The Glass family figures prominently in Salinger's fiction; in 1948, for instance, he published a short story, "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," in which Seymour Glass, Franny and Zooey's eldest brother, plays in the sea with a little girl and then goes back to his beachfront hotel to shoot himself in the head.

Anyway, for a book published nearly fifty years ago, the central theme of Franny and Zooey is quite interesting--yes, interesting even for Hare Krsna devotees. The Franny part of the book saw print in 1955 in The New Yorker magazine; thus ten years before Srila Prabhupada arrived in New York, people in that city were reading about Francis Glass, a modern American college girl who committed herself to chant the Jesus Prayer constantly. (For more about the Jesus Prayer, see In2-MeC of 24 December 2003. ) Franny's inspiration was a little book called The Way of a Pilgrim. Quite a number of Hare Krsna devotees have read this book too. If you've read it, you know it's about a Russian peasant who walks from holy place to holy place around Russia of the 1800s, taking only bread, salt and water for nourishment, while constantly chanting "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me. "

The chanting of the Jesus Prayer is a practice most known in Eastern Orthodox Christianity, although Catholicism has a place for it too. The practice has its root in a New Testament injunction, "Pray without ceasing. " It is expounded upon in The Philokalia, a collection of quotations from early Fathers of the Church. Sample:

Those who meditate unceasingly upon this glorious and holy name in the depths of their hearts can sometimes see the light of their own intellect. For when the mind is closely concentrated upon this name, then we grow fully conscious that the name is burning up all the filth which covers the surface of the soul; for it is written: Our God is a consuming fire (Deut. 4:24). Then the Lord awakens in the soul a great love for His glory; for when the intellect with fervour of heart maintains persistently its remembrance of the precious name, then that name implants in us a constant love for its goodness, since there is nothing now that stands in the way.

The practice of chanting the Jesus Prayer is to be taken up under the instruction of a spiritual master. In The Way of a Pilgrim, the peasant begins his chanting with the blessings of a starets, an elderly religious teacher. Franny, speaking in a restaurant to her boyfriend Lane, explains:

. . . the starets tells the pilgrim that if you keep saying that prayer over and over again--you only have to just do it with your lips at first--then eventually what happens, the prayer becomes self-active. Something happens after a while. I don't know what, but something happens, and the words get synchronized with the person's heartbeats, and then you're actually praying without ceasing. Which has a really tremendous, mystical effct on your whole outlook. I mean that's the whole point of it, more or less. I mean you do it to purify your whole outlook and get an absolutely new conception of what everything's about.

A bit later Franny says:

I just think it's a terribly peculiar coincidence that you keep running into that kind of advice--I mean all these really advanced and absolutely unbogus religious persons that keep telling you if you repeat the name of God incessantly, something happens. Even in India. In India, they tell you to meditate on the 'Om,' which means the same thing, really, and the exact same result is supposed to happen.

It seems that Franny has reached a crisis in her life, much as Holden Caulfield came to a breaking point in Catcher in the Rye. But whereas Holden ends up in an institution for the psychologically disturbed, Franny takes up chanting the Jesus Prayer. About her frustrations with life around her, she says:

Everything everybody does is so--I don't know--not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and--sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you're conforming just as much as everybody else, only in a different way.

Lane is concerned. Not just by Fanny's babbling about how empty life is, nor that she's taken up the Jesus Prayer--but she's pale and moody. She has a headache and no appetite. She even faints in the middle of the restaurant. Later, when they're alone, he suggests her troubles are because they haven't had sex for a month. Which may be a hidden joke by Salinger, since--though it is never stated openly--some of Franny's symptoms indicate that she is pregnant. It's been said, "Motherhood is the cause of all the world's problems. " If Franny is becoming a mother, then it was sex with Lane that put her in that condition. Yet lusty Lane thinks having sex with him again will pull her out of her condition.

At lunch in the restaurant Franny drinks a martini. She orders a chicken sandwich but has no appetite to even take a bite. Lane has a martini too, and while she's preaching to him about the Jesus Prayer, he tucks into frogs' legs, snails, and salad.

I've read The Way of a Pilgrim, and I remember that the pilgrim was firm in his diet of renunciation--bread and water only. He even refused fish offered him by a pious Christian family. People my age remember when Catholics didn't eat meat on Fridays; but fish was a bona fide substitute. Yet even fish was too worldly for this pilgrim committed to unceasing prayer. Salinger doesn't develop this line of thought at all. Another thing is, he has all his characters smoking like chimneys from the novel's beginning to its end.

In "Zooey," the second part of the book, Franny's at home. Her slightly older brother Zooey comes to counsel her at the urgings of their mother Bessie. Franny won't eat. She took only two spoonfuls of Bessie's chicken soup for the soul. Her lips are constantly moving in prayer.

It's this talk Zooey has with Franny that I find annoying. From what I've read about him, Salinger was a home-made Buddhist, as were other 1950's American authors and poets like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder. Kerouac etc. were Beats, but Salinger didn't hang out with them; he was a recluse. Anyway, Zooey means to undermine Franny's new-found dedication to the Jesus Prayer, and there is a voidistic thrust to his arguments.

As a matter of simple logic, there's no difference at all, that I can see, between the man who's greedy for material treasure--or even intellectual treasure--and the man who's greedy for spiritual treasure. . . it seems to me that ninety per cent of all the world-hating saints in history were just as acquisitive and unattractive, basically, as the rest of us are.

Now, in the next quotation Salinger, through the mouth of Zooey, seems to be dabbling in that paradoxical line of thought found in Zen Buddhism: that the material world, when seen rightly without ego, is perfect.

. . . there are nice things in the world--and I mean nice things. We're all such morons to get so sidetracked. Always, always, always referring every [expletive deleted] thing right back to our lousy little egos.

In one of his hit songs of the 'sixties, pop star Donovan sang a line from Zen Buddhist philosophy: "First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is. " Which means before enlightenment one sees a mountain as everybody else sees it. Then at the moment of satori (the Zen state of peak insight), the mountain fades into nothingness. After satori, the mountain is seen once again--but not as the unenlightened egoist sees it. It has become, to use Zooey's words, a really nice thing of the world.

All right. At this point Pandit Quibblebrain might pipe up, "But devotees also see the material world differently in Krsna consciousness. Srila Prabhodananda Sarasvati writes, visvam purna-sukhayate, 'the whole world becomes bliss' for a devotee who's been blessed by Mahaprabhu's mercy. "

Yeah, but chicken soup? Consecrated chicken soup? Murgi-rasam prasad?

Franny wants to renounce. She was an aspiring actress, but now she's quit her college theater. What's more, she's decided to quit college altogether. She realizes she doesn't love Lane. Her mind is following the Russian pilgrim, and it seems her body will soon follow too. Zooey wants her to drink Bessie's consecrated chicken soup, get back into theater, continue her studies, get on with her life as it was. It comes down to this:

You can say the Jesus Prayer from now till doomsday, but if you don't realize that the only thing that counts in the religious life is detachment, I don't see how you'll ever move an inch. Detachment. . . and only detachment. Desirelessness. 'Cessation from all hankerings. ' It's this business of desiring, if you want to know the [expletive deleted] truth, that makes an actor in the first place. Why're you making me tell you things you already know? Somewhere along the line--in one damn incarnation or another, if you like--you not only had a hankering to be an actor or an actress but to be a good one. You're stuck with it now. You can't just walk out on the results of your own hankerings. Cause and effect. . . cause and effect. The only thing you can do now, the only religious thing you can do, is act. Act for God, if you want to--be God's actress, if you want to.

Pandit Quibblebrain is all excited. He's bursting to point out that similarly, Bhagavad-gita teaches us to be detached and engage our karma in the service of the Lord.

Indeed, Salinger has Zooey read the Bhagavad-gita to prepare himself for his onslaught on Franny's resolve to renounce everything and just chant.

You have the right to work, but for the work's sake only. You have no right to the fruits of work. Desire for the fruits of work must never be your motive in working. Never give way to laziness, either. Perform every action with your heart fixed on the Supreme Lord. . .

Still, there's a difference between what this passage of the Gita instructs and what Zooey says to Franny. The Gita emphasizes acting in devotion to the Supreme Lord. Zooey tells Franny that the main thing that counts is detachment and only detachment. "If she wants to" she can act for God. If she wants to. The main thing is to not act for herself and thus become one of those world-hating, unattractive saints greedy for spiritual treasure.

Zooey's final argument so annoys me I shall not quote it. I'll just give a summary. He urges her to act (in both senses of general activity and acting on stage), and to act well, not merely apathetically, by imagining a sickly fat lady out in the audience who is depending up Franny to lift her out of her depression. "Be funny for the Fat Lady. " It turns out that everybody in the world is that fat lady. In the end the fat lady is God. "And don't you know--listen to me, now--don't you know who that Fat Lady really is?" Zooey asks Franny urgently. ". . . It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself. . . "

Work is worship. The poor man in the street, the sickly fat lady sitting at home next to her radio, are God. God means a whole world full of poor daridra-narayanas in need of consecrated chicken soup.

Not this rascaldom, daridra-narayana. Just like one rascal has manufactured this daridra-narayana. The poor man has become Narayana, and the goat Narayana is killed for their feeding. Not this kind of sadhu. Suhrdam sarva-bhutanam. A sadhu will not allow any kind of killing. See in the Christian religion, it is first injunction is "Thou shalt not kill. " If you want to become religious. . . They are simply killing, and still, they are claiming "Christian. "

Shall I say more? I don't think it's worth it. Though I did like reading about self-activated chanting of the Lord's holy name, which is really our goal, isn't it?

Sketches of a Devotee's Pre-Krsna Conscious Life in India

Back in the late 1980's I tape-recorded a series of interesting stories told me by an Indian devotee, whom I shall not name to protect his privacy. These stories relate his life as a young man from a South Indian smarta brahmin family, and trace how he gradually turned away from material life to Krsna consciousness. What you will read below begins in the holy town of Haridwar.

A pretty town of temples and lodges clustered where the Ganges surges out of the hill country into the plains, Haridwar draws swarms of Hindu and Sikh pilgrims from all over India who attend the sunset ceremony at Har Ki Pairi, a sacred spot on the west bank. Votive lamps are set afloat in the river, sometimes so many that for half an hour it seems the Akashganga (Celestial Ganges) has descended from heaven to earth, bringing all the stars down with it.

After the ceremony, the Har Ki Pairi bankside and the footbridge that crosses from it to the other side teem with beggars, thieves, lodge agents, dealmakers, charlatans, pimps--and the herd that is fleeced by them. As a sadhu cynically told me, "Those who have washed off their sins by bathing in the holy waters are rushing out of the Ganges to commit new sins, and those who have not yet washed off their sins are rushing to get themselves good and dirty before bathing. "

Dressed as a holy man, I had no difficulty in getting an evening meal once the ceremony had ended. I simply stood on the footbridge waiting for some moneyed soul to come along who was looking to get relieved of some sin by feeding a sadhu. The standard fare was milk, puris and halvah, served up at any number of food stalls nearby. I found it wasn't very hard to convince my patrons that I was a budding Godman. Some were desperate, ready to believe anything that might help them turn their lives around.

In Haridwar I saw the truth of Sai Baba's prophecy that he and I would meet again, and that I myself would 'become God. ' It happened when a patron took me to a gathering of Sai Baba followers. I did all the moves I'd learned at Shanti Niketana, I sang Chitta Chora and other songs, and my mystic tube played magic upon their minds. There were murmers through the crowd: "Baba has come!" Afterwards a man came to me with tears streaming down his face. "I was not fortunate enough to go to Puttaparthi, but seeing you I feel that Puttaparthi has come to me. " I told him that I really had nothing to do with that place.

"Yes you do, Swamiji, because you are a mahatma, an all-pervading soul. You are linked to everywhere, including Puttaparthi. You are in Baba, and Baba is in you. Be honest with us, Swamiji. You are God. Why hide it?"

As at Shanti Niketana, I vacillated between upright idealism and willfull deception in my dealings with such people, who seemed to be everywhere in Haridwar. My conscience reminded me that when I was in the TVS accounting department I could have swindled huge sums away, but it was against my principles. Why should I become a cheater after having taken to spiritual life? The wicked side of my mind nagged, 'These people want to be defrauded. If they don't come to me, they'll go to someone else. All I want is my maintenance, not their riches. If I can help them by increasing their faith in something, let me. There's no harm. They are suffering. "

A lady schoolmistress of about fifty years of age let me use a schoolroom for the week I stayed in Haridwar. Thinking her pious and intelligent, I confided in her about my dilemma. "I left TVS only two months ago. I am just a beginner in spiritual life, but sometimes I get visions in my mind. People take this as a sign of my divinity. But the fact is I have no control over these visions. All I have done as a sadhu is stayed for a few weeks in Rishikesh. I don't even have a guru. I'm just a fool. "

But she argued, "Shivananda, Bhagat Singh, Aurobindo and so many others were the same way. They were ordinary men who stumbled into being God. You just have to flow along with the divine current wherever it takes you, like a lamp in the Ganges, and you will end up as God. "

I tried to see some sense in her advice. But after a few days I discovered she was having a secret love affair with a Haridwar guru. Without a further word to her I vacated the room and went to Daksha Mahadeva temple at Kankal, four kilometers away. There I met with Anandamayi Ma, the famous yogini. At the time I saw her, she was ill and bedridden, being attended by her young female disciples.

Some sixty years old, her hair worn long and loose, Anandamayi Ma was dressed in flowing saffron and sat upon a saffron-draped bedstead. Though in poor health, she was still receiving guests in the afternoon. I entered with a foreign couple from Europe. After speaking with her briefly, they left; she then turned to me and said, "Anand ho (let there be bliss). Are you happy?"

"No," I admitted.

"Everywhere there is happiness, so why are you are not happy?"

I said, "You may have happiness, mataji, but has not come my way. "

She told the young servant girl to go out and make up a plate of lunch for me. "The thing is," she continued, "you're trying for things that are not necessary. You've gone here and there, searching, searching. But ananda is right there in the heart. "

"Look, mother," I said, "I started out with tantra. That caused the whole trouble--visions and mental disturbances. Then I got bewildered by a South Indian siddha-yogi, Brahmendra Sarasvati, who is not even in this world any longer yet could exert a powerful influence over my mind. Then I went to Aurobindo. "

She broke in, chuckling. "Then you went mad. You left your job, you went to Tirupati, you've even gone up to Neelkanth Mahadev. And you'll go on like this for a long time. You are attracted to siddhis, powers. In your previous lifetimes you developed siddhis, but now you've only a little power, psychic power, left. You should kick this nonsense away. Then you'll find your real path to ananda. "

"Ma, please remove my wrongheaded ideas of spiritual life. Take me off this wrong path, put me on the right one. I need guidance. "

She sighed. "You say that to every yogi you meet. Guidance. . . I never guided anyone. People follow me, but I'm not leading them. They just know that they should follow. But you are looking for someone to lead you, to convince you--and to save you. All I can tell you is, you are saved through purity. If you forget that and just use up your time looking for someone who is powerful, who'll just touch you on the head and remove your all your troubles so that you won't have to do anything to save yourself, you'll be cheated again and again. But you know this already. People come to you for blessings, and you know they are foolish. So don't come to me for that. Anyway, what you've been seeing up here is just meant to make you disgusted. Saaf nahi he--so many of these people, leaders and followers alike, they are not clean. Austerity and cleanliness clears the way to ananda. So kindly go down now and take your lunch. "

I went back to Haridwar. While bathing in the Ganges I saw a baba in water over his nose. He was doing a technique called akamashana-japa. Bubbles rose to the surface from his mouth as he chanted his mantra, but he did not raise his nose above the water for air. This went on for half an hour.

When he came out of the water, I asked, "Swamiji, what mantra do you chant?"

"Mantra and guru should be kept secret," he said as he dried himself with a gamcha.

"But sadhus should teach others, isn't that so? I want to learn how to do akamashana-japa also. "

He looked at me and shook his head. "How many different things do you want to do? Now you chant Vishnu-sahashra nama, you do trotak, and you think by adding more you'll get more. But more of what are you trying to get? Your goal is not even known to you. "

"Babaji Maharaja, what I need is a guru. Why don't you become my guru? You seem to know me through and through. "

"This is another problem you have. You think that because I or someone else can see a few things about you that we must be your gurus. You are attracted to the unreal. You should give all this up and concentrate on the truth. The real mantra is Bhagavad-gita, if you can understand and follow it. "

"But I can't be satisfied with only that. "

"Hah! So you think I am satisfied standing underwater chanting my mantra? If I was satisfied, I wouldn't be doing this. "

The mystic tube in my head buzzed and flickered. I suddenly blurted, "Swamiji, you are chanting the Maha-mrtyunjaya mantra. "

"See?" he said. "Now you are doing it to me. So what is so wonderful about peering into someone's mind?"

"I just came from Anandamayi Ma. You're just telling me the same things she did. "

He grinned for the first time. "We're all on the same frequency around here. Our minds interchange on a platform above the gross senses, like radio communication. Some are more powerful, so they generate signals, like radio transmitters. The rest of us are receivers. We all share the same messages. But the messages we send and receive are not ours. That comes from higher up. You, you're just a small fry bouncing between us. You wander around, get an experience here, an intuition there, but that is the limit of your participation in our network. Garbled signals fading in and out of your head--that's all you can pick up. You're not meant to play this game. You should get out of it while you can. Otherwise you'll just lose your mind to some higher power and become his speaker. Behind eveyone you see up here, no matter how great they are, there is someone greater from whom he gets his power, and he's being manipulated by that power. "

"So how I will ever see the truth, with all this going on?"

"Well, I'm just telling you that this is what goes on up here. Be very careful whom you choose to follow. Remember, the world is full of fools, and fools follow fools. A foolish guru will be popular--he has a whole world of fools for disciples. And a sage will have disciples who are sages, because only sages will follow him. But real sages are hard to find. "

I touched his feet and he blessed me. Then he went on his way.

I returned to Rishikesh. I went to the Shrinivas Mandir, a branch of the Tirupathi temple. Next to it stands the Andra Ashram where prasad is served to pilgrims. There I saw a shaven- headed sadhu with twelve Shri Vaishnava tilak marks on his body. Most sadhus in Rishikesh have beards and long hair, and if they wear tilak at all, they wear the three lines of Shiva.

He was a South Indian, so we started talking in Tamil. I told him, "I am really disappointed that Rishikesh has turned out to be such a useless place for spiritual life. I expected to find great sadhus, but mostly all I've seen is commercialism. If I do meet a real yogi, he won't share anything. "

He said, "You haven't missed much. Even if the strict yogis took you on as their disciple, all they could teach you is, 'The truth is yourself. '"

"What do you mean?"

"You'll find different standards of practice among different yogis, but their philosophy is all the same: 'everybody is God, and you must just realize yourself to become God-realized. ' To overturn that idea, Shri Ramanujacharya came. He started alone, opposed by everyone, because at that time the whole of India believed that man himself is God. Even Ramanuja's own brother, Govinda, was just the type yogi you'll find up here, thinking he himself has become Shiva. But Ramanuja brought Govinda and many others to the right path. He taught what the Alwars taught long before. The Alwars were the greatest of yogis. They had real power, not just cheap magic, but their conclusion was kandu konden narayana yennum namam: 'Finally I've found that the name of Narayan (Vishnu) is the ultimate Truth. ' They pursued yoga to its furthest limit and found that without bhakti, devotion to God, there is no way to be satisfied with the self alone. You are also not satisfied with yourself. That's why you are looking for someone to devote yourself to, to serve, to take shelter of. "

I had to admit that on that count, he was right. I had always felt distant from the Shri Vaishnava doctrine before. It seemed so restrictive to me. But today I listened for three hours to this sadhu, and much of what he said I could now appreciate. The Vaishnavas truly had insights into the deep needs of the soul.

I asked him, "But why are you up here? The Shri Vaishnavas stay in the south. I've not met any sadhus who follow your line in Rishikesh or Haridwar. "

"I came here for seclusion. I don't associate with the yogis. I just stay here in the Andhra Ashram. I study Ramanuja's books and I worship Krishna with offering of Ganges water. Sometimes I give lectures here. "

Then I asked about something that had always disturbed me about the Vaishnavas. "Why do you have to criticize others? There are many paths. I think people have to find their own way to the truth. If every teacher criticized the other teachers and said 'only my way is right,' I think people would become disheartened and would just give up the search. "

"But this is not criticism," he said. "You admit you've become confused by meeting so many teachers. I am telling you why you are confused. Even they tell you that to make progress you must stick to one path. But you can't find the path. That is what Ramanuja came to show. The path is service to Lord Vishnu, who dwells in your heart with you, the soul. Even they tell you that ananda is in the heart. But they don't point out the way to get that ananda. They just leave you thinking that there is no way to the truth, that the truth is just you. And you're confused. You don't know what to do. "

I left wondering why, if this Vaishnava sadhu had the ultimate knowledge, he had isolated himself. It seemed to me that true accomplishment in spiritual knowledge would give one the strength of conviction to go anywhere and discuss philosophy with anyone. But he had cut himself off even from his fellow Vaishnavas.

<< Back