Continuing from the previous episode, I go into more detail about the conversation I had with the Catholic deacon in Switzerland. I also describe my encounters with religions in India and Japan, and I discuss how my views of religion evolved as I encountered these experiences.

Hello everyone and welcome to the second episode of Baggage Allowance. In the previous episode, I stayed the night at a Catholic Church as I was making my way through Switzerland. In the first half of this episode, I will describe the conversation I had with the deacon who hosted me. This conversation served as the bases for my understanding of not just Catholicism, or Christianity, but religion in general. The second half of this episode will describe how this understanding helped me observe the various forms religion could take as I visited Roman temples, modern India, and modern Japan. So, let’s begin.

By the time I woke up and got dressed, the deacon had bread, cheese, a cup of tea, some tomatoes, and olives all laid out for breakfast. After a catholic prayer which I respectfully went along with, we started eating, and I thanked him again and again for letting me stay. He assured me that it was not a problem, and explained that he would often host pilgrims on their way to Vatican. As a quick side note, years later on a separate trip, I would encounter pilgrims like the ones he described. They would walk from church to church from their hometowns in France and Germany to the Vatican, using modern transport only when absolutely necessary. It sort of reminded me of the Canterbury Tales. For them, the journey, not the destination, was the religious experience. Anyhow, back to the subject.

As he was describing to me these pilgrims, he commented that he hosts fewer of them every passing year. Using this as an opening, I asked whether it bothered him that society is becoming less religious. He dodged the question, and several of my follow ups, but then spilled a very interesting fact. Congregations have been shrinking, true, but the clergy has been shrinking even faster. Fewer and fewer people want to become priests, nuns, and bishops. He himself only became a deacon, because it is one of the few positions in the Catholic Church available to married men. He expressed hope that the new Pope (referring to Pope Francis) would do something to relax these rules. Interesting, but if the Catholic Church is having an HR problem, have they considered allowing women into some of these positions. To this comment the deacon reminded me that the Catholic Church is an international organization and not just a European one. While many members of the clergy (especially those from Europe) are perfectly fine with gay marriage, female priests, or married clergy, it would cause an uproar from more conservative clergy hailing from Africa. And this is important. Demographic changes are shrinking or holding steady the Catholic population in Europe. The most growth the Catholic Church saw in their membership was in Africa. They can not afford a political fight that jeopardizes public perception in the region. On the other hand though, the Catholic Church can not abandon Europe completely, so the leadership in the Catholic Church have been forced into an awkward balancing act of having to appear simultaneously conservative and reformist. I once read an article about Pope Francis slipping up on a question on gay marriage. Upon learning all this, I am not so sure if it was slip up. Perhaps, the Catholic Church wanted to see how receptive their followers would be on gay marriage. Or perhaps it was meant more as a wink and node to their moderates. I don’t know, and I did not ask deacon what he thought of that particular incident.

Instead, I had a different agenda. You see, I come from a moderately religious family. My parents pray before every meal and before bed, and as a child I was sent to Sunday school. However, as far back as I can remember, I got into regular arguments with teachers and other students in these classes. Once, after a particularly bitter argument, I quit my religion, and my parents didn’t stop me. These events were still fresh in mind when I met the deacon in this story, and I was looking for a fight. Unlike his counterparts at my Sunday school though, he was more artful in his replies, and I was unable to corner him, much to my irritation. In hindsight, I was being a jerk and he was being extremely patient with me. To put an end to my barrage of questions, the deacon finally said “Religion is culture institutionalized. As cultures change, so do their religion.” Upon hearing this I thought I “won” the argument, because I forced him to remove God and morality from his vocabulary, but in hindsight he was merely stating an obvious truth. Culture is a collection of values and traditions, and for the faithful, those values and traditions include God and their sense of morality. Saying culture changes over time does nothing to deny that.

“Culture institutionalized” however is I think the most succinct way I ever heard someone describe religion, and it conveys the power religious institutions have on society. With enough support, religious leaders, through their institutions, can alter the beliefs and traditions of a large group of people—though as the deacon pointed out, there are limits. It took me over a year after meeting him to finally lose my animosity towards religion and come to this understanding. This was just the beginning, because I then traveled to India and witnessed religion like I never had before.

Maintaining my style, I stayed with local families as I traveled through India. This gave me the chance to observe their religious practices at home. Each family I met had their own unique combination of deities decorating their home and family shrine. When I ask them to describe their deities, they shared myths and legends that often contradicted with a version of the story I heard just a day or two prior. On the subject of morality, each family had their own moral code. Some were vegetarian, others not. Each had their own interpretation of religious scripture. Some said women are equal to men, others laughed at the suggestion, and others argued that scripture placed women above men as they are the mother of the next generation. Some meditated in an empty room, others held elaborate daily rituals in the family shrine. Some visited temples daily, others weekly, and some even less frequently. And speaking of temples, unlike the Catholic Church and most other Christian denominations, each temple is private and independent, and operates its own prayer and festival schedule. People did not seem tied to any particular temple or deity. They freely entered any temple, even if the deity of that temple was not part of their shrine at home. And each temple had their own version of common rituals, though they do share some commonalities:

When visiting a temple, I begin by leaving my shoes at the entrance and enter the main grounds. Inside, I buy fruit, flowers, and other offerings from the merchants who set up shop inside the temple. I then work my way clockwise from shrine to shrine. Some people perform penance in front of each shrine, standing on one leg, spinning around 3 times, ringing bells, taking a bow, knelling down, laying down face down with the top of your head facing the deity. Nothing is standardized, and I hurry along as quickly as possible copying the simplest rituals from those around me. When I enter the main shrine, I hand my offerings to the priest who places it in the altar while saying something in Sanskrit. The flowers stay on the shrine, which is overflowing with flowers of every color, on the deity, on the floor, on trays, everywhere. As I exit the main shrine, the priest returns the food offerings and presents a tray containing at most the following: holy ash, some black sticky substance, a red die, a yellow die, and a tin of holy water with a flower floating in it. I say at most because some temples omit some of the powders. When presented with the tray I begin by taking the holy water. Depending on the temple you either take it yourself using a spoon to collect water in your hand and then drink from said hand, or you hold out your hand and the priest will pour the water onto your hand for you. Do not drink from the spoon directly. As for the assortment of powders, I touch these powders with my index finger one at a time, touching my forehead and neck to rub the powders onto myself.

While I found the variety of traditions fascinating, it did clash with my understanding of what religion is. I had only recently come around to the idea that religion is culture institutionalized, but I don’t really know how this squares with Hinduism. There is no organization the equivalent of the Catholic Church for Hindus. Outside of India, the most visible Hindu presence I saw was the Hare Krishna movement. I saw their members marching on the streets of Berlin and Tokyo, and came across temples commissioned by the organization in the United States, the UK, and in the Caribbean. However, in India, while many knew of the Hare Krishna movement, they were by no means a powerful presence. I came to learn that organizations like that come and go all the time. They are extremely popular while the founder is alive, but tend to shrink and slowly disappear after he or she dies.

I began to wonder whether the religions that pre-dated Christianity and Islam operated the same way Hinduism does today. Back when I was in Italy, I visited the ruins of Roman temples. The information boards kept making references to cults. Not cults in the modern sense of the word, but rather groups of zealous followers of a particular roman god. These cults were often behind the construction and maintenance of these temples. I had trouble visualizing that at the time, but after visiting India I have a better idea what it could have looked like.

I also began to wonder whether this type of decentralized religion is making a comeback. In the United States, many churches are now non-denominational, and many of these operate on a bring your own beliefs and keep it to yourself philosophy. Each pastor sets the church’s own schedule and decides what sermons to recite, which he selects based on the pulse of the local community. In this way, even decentralized religion is culture institutionalized. This more or less describe how temples in India work. And without naming names, there are religious movements in the United States that burst into the scene, gain lots of followers, acquire real estate, only to disappear again a few decades later. That seems to be pattern in India as well. Maybe things are not as different as they initially appeared.

Now, India is home to many religions: Hindus, Muslims, Jains, Sikhs, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Christians: they all exist in significant numbers. However, I stayed almost exclusively with Hindus. This was partly due to the fact I was traveling through Southern India, which is predominately Hindu. I did however meet a few Catholics along the way. One such Catholic was one of my taxi drivers, and he was the most fascinating sight. He wore a rosary necklace and performed the typical Catholic prayer before eating. However, before starting up his car, he performed a prayer to an idol of Ganesha sitting on his dashboard. He ended his prayer by performing the sign of cross. With so many religions having a presence in the country, individuals are mixing rituals and beliefs from multiple faiths. I saw images of the Buddha in the homes of many Hindu. Some would even quote Buddhist philosophy, but I am not sure their interpretation would be acceptable to a practicing Buddhist. The lines between religions here are blurred, and I soon learned India is not the only place with this sort of religious pluralism.

Years after my trip to India, I traveled to Japan, and witnessed a similar mixing of rituals from three religions: Shintoism, Buddhism, and Christianity. The iconic tori gate originated from Shinto tradition, though I found it marking the entrances to the shrines, temples, and monasteries of all faiths. Another common practice in the Shinto faith is to keep deities behind a curtain or a wood shutter. People would pray to the deity without even seeing it. This was replicated in some Buddhist temples, which kept a similar curtain or box with the Buddha (or sometimes nothing at all) behind it. There were many other exchanges between Buddhism and Shintoism, though I wasn’t really able trace the origin of these practices. For example, I would consider Zen gardens a trademark of Buddhism in Japan. These are not just gardens, but rather living paintings full of symbolism, making references to well known Buddhist fables. A gardener I spoke to in Kyoto, who was gracious enough to give me a behind the scenes tour, showed me how different arrangements of rocks could depict water, land, and animals. For example, a large rock followed by 2 or 3 smaller rocks of similar size in single file represents a tiger with her cubs. Tigers don’t exist in Japan, and knowledge of this animal comes only from Buddhist scripture. With regards to plants, a common sight is seeing a lush green or flowery tree on one side of the garden and a more barky tree on the other. As the seasons change, the trees switch roles, with the lush tree becoming barky and the barky tree becoming lush. This is typically accomplished by selecting one tree that looses its leaves in fall (thus being green in summer and bare in winter), and another tree that flowers in winter and never looses its leaves. This is meant to symbolize the aging or the cycle of life and death. These are all very Buddhist concepts, however, you don’t find gardens like these in other Buddhist countries. The idea must have come from the local Japanese practices, and you can see hints of that when visiting Shinto shrines, which have intricate gardens and koi ponds. However today, many of these shrines also offer a place to meditate or contain full Zen gardens, complete with Buddhist symbolism. I wondered how they would have looked like before Buddhist influence, and had a chance to see it when visiting a Shinto shrine near Mt. Fuji.

Some of the oldest and best preserved shrines in Japan, are around Mt. Fuji. Visiting these shrines helped me visualize Shinto shrines before the arrival of Buddhism, though this is not entirely accurate. The two religions existed together almost from the beginning of Japanese history, but the shrines around Mt. Fuji have comparatively less Buddhist influence. While at Mt. Fuji, I also had the chance to speak a length with my host about Japanese history, religion, and culture. I will revisit this conversation in more detail in the next episode, but for now I will focus on what he had to say about religion in Japan. “You are born in a Shinto shrine, married in a church, and die in a Buddhist monastery.” For this reason, he explained, most Japanese people say they are not religious. Some will go as far as to say they don’t believe in God, but despite this they will still pray in Shinto shrines, take Christian wedding vows, and seek Buddhist salvation. I heard this expression from other Japanese people as well, so this is not just the opinion of my host.

My host was also well versed in Shinto mythology, and shared many myths about the goddess of Mt. Fuji. I was most amused by a legend that she tore up any mountain that became taller that her and threw their pieces around, forming the mountain ranges surrounding Mt. Fuji. Another myth, claimed that the goddess was the mother of the Japanese imperial line. He explained that Japanese emperors attempted multiple times to standardize Shinto beliefs into a single kanon, with themselves as a deity. Some people still see the emperor as a semi-mythical figure, though during my stay in the country, I couldn’t find someone who matched his description. I didn’t come across a wedding either, so I can’t comment on the “married in a church” part of the expression either. I was, however, able to visit a Buddhist monastery in Osaka.

I began by joining a group meditation session. Personally, I find group meditation, especially in the Untied States, to be a bit cheesy, and I typically don’t seek them out. However, this was highly recommended by one of my hosts, so I went and I am glad I did. The monk began by poking me until I had good posture. He then used a video that he made to demonstrate how we should focus on our breathing. This video had English subtitles for me to follow along with. After the introduction, the meditation session began. While I meditated, the monk used a singing bowl to create a drone. If I started daydreaming or thinking about anything other than my breath, the sound would within seconds interrupt my thought, allowing me to focus once more on my breath. This was the first, and as of today, the only time I ever felt my mind so rested. I was so blissfully empty headed after an hour that I forgot both my jacket and backpack in the monastery and had to go back for them on two separate rounds. On my second trip back, I met a trainee at the monastery who spoke fluent English. I asked him what role do monasteries like this one serve in Japanese society. He explained that Japan as a country is in cultural transition, having to constantly choose between Western and traditional habits since the times of the Meiji restoration. In a way, Japan is having a collective identity crisis, a subject I will explore another time. The trainee felt that monasteries like this one can help people navigate the modern world. The group mediation session I was at for example is very popular with IT workers in the city. He also believed that monasteries serve a role in helping people overcome tragedy and death. He specifically noted how monasteries across Japan were looked to after the 2011 tsunami for spiritual guidance.

Religion is complicated. I have come a long ways since my teenage years when I held religion in contempt. I no longer consider myself an agnostic, though I don’t affiliate myself strongly with any one faith. Religion is culture institutionalized; even atheism is the institutionalized culture of those who don’t believe in god, and I don’t subscribe wholesale to beliefs and traditions of any one culture. And I am okay with that. That is one of the benefits of being well traveled.

That’s all for now. Next time, I will return to some of the topics I discussed with my host at Mt. Fuji, such as the role of the Japanese military during the Meiji restoration, and how this conversation sent me back to Europe to revisit some topics I may previously have overlooked.

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