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Sarah Masters reviews the documentary

Trip to Awareness: A Jain Pilgrimage to India

Revered Jainist monk Gurudey Shri Chitrubhano leads eighteen young Americans to India in this documentary to explore the magnificent architecture and carvings in ancient Jain temples and to receive a deeper understanding of Jain philosophy.

The film’s journey includes a ritual climb up Mount Palitana to stunning views of the 700 temples at its peak, which are among the seven wonders of India.

According to Gurudey, to achieve enlightenment one must conquer the enemies within through meditation, revere all living things and commit to non-violence. The approximately six million current followers of Jainism strive to follow the cardinal religious principles of non-violence, tolerance of a multiplicity of views and non-possessiveness. Those principles are as relevant today as in the 1970s, when Elda Hartley and her crew were among the first Westerners to film these Jainist temples.

Though Jainism came into being around the same time as Buddhism, some 2,500 years ago, Jain monks were not allowed to travel and the movement remained more localized. Chaplains will find this “do-it-yourself” religion relevant to the culture of independence in our American society. As the monks say: “Follow certain precepts of non-violence, reverence for life and meditation, and you can find your own enlightenment in your own way and in your own time.”

Running Time: 29 Minutes
Director: Elda Hartley

If you are interested in purchasing this film, you can do so at www.hartleyfoundation.org. Just click on “Hartley Classics” on the homepage for more information. The cost of the film series is $19.95 for a VHS.

Sarah Masters is the Managing Director of the Hartley Film Foundation, a non-profit foundation dedicated to cultivation, support, production and distribution of the best documentaries and audio meditations on world religions, spirituality, ethics and well-being.

Book Review

Rabbi Dr. David J. Zucker reviews

Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
and
Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

Essayist and novelist Anne Lamott is a committed Christian woman, living in California, with a history of impermanent relationships and drug addiction; she is a recovering alcoholic. She is 50-something, politically fairly liberal, and a single mother. Given that description, one might wonder what she can say to someone who is a committed Jew, living in the Rocky Mountain West, a chaplain and rabbi, without a history of substance abuse and alcoholism, is 60-something, less liberal politically, married with children, and a grandfather. The answer is that she can say a great deal.

Anne Lamott’s recent books, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith (1999) and Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith (2005) look at life with its challenges and frustrations, its pain and suffering, its many messy moments filled with clutter, and she can turn the mundane into gems of light. Her writing is insightful, incisive, and filled with wonderfully effective self-deprecating humor. A warning to the reader: her writing is subversive. There are many lessons beneath the actual text.

In the earlier book, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith, with surprising candor and great wit, she writes of much of her troubled history, and her spiritual search. Yet even within those pages, sometimes filled with angst, her humor shines through. In a chapter dealing with a cancer scare she explains that she finally got herself to write a note to God on a scrap of paper. It said, “I am a little anxious. Help me remember that you are with me even now. I am going to take my sticky fingers off the control panel until I hear from you.” (180) In another section she speaks to all of us – including many of those with whom we as chaplains interact every day – who are way past 30-something. She writes, “I am trying to accept that I am actually m-m-m-m-m-middle-aged. And even though I am a feminist and even though I am religious, I secretly believe . . . that I am my skin, my hair, and worst of all, those triangles of fat that pooch at the top of my thighs. In other words, I am my packaging. Even though both feminism and Christianity have taught me that I am my spirit, my heart . . . I know you have bigger fish to fry, I said to God, but I need a little help with this stupidity.” (172)

In Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith we learn that her son Sam is now a teenager, and so she offers this advice about childrearing: “Breathe, Pray, Be Kind, Stop Grabbing.” (94) A wonderful storyteller, in the chapter titled “Holy of Holies 101” Lamott relates a Hasidic tale of a “rabbi who always told his people that if they studied the Torah, it would put Scripture on their hearts. One of them asked, 'Why on our hearts, not in them?’ The rabbi answered, ‘Only God can put Scripture inside. But reading the sacred text can put it on your hearts, and then when your hearts break, the holy words will fall inside.’” (73)

Lamott explains that, as I suspect for many, she tries “to listen for God’s voice inside me, but my sense of discernment tends to be ever so muddled.” (21)

In the earlier book, she wrote, “God: I wish you could have some permanence, a guarantee or two, the unconditional love we all long for. ‘It would be such a skin off your nose?’ I demand of God. I never get an answer. But in the meantime I have learned that most of the time, all you have is the moment, and the imperfect love of people.” (168) She returns to this theme in the latter volume when she relates a meeting with the founder of the “Church of 80% Sincerity.” There, “everyone has come to understand that unconditional love is a reality, but with a shelf life of about eight to ten seconds. Instead of beating yourself up because you feel it only fleetingly, you should savor those moments when it appears . . . ‘We might say to our beloved, “Honey, I’ve been having these feelings of unconditional love for you for the last eight to ten seconds.” Or “Darling, I’ll love you to till the very end of dinner.”’” (110)

For chaplains who know something about stress, suffering, and the need for emotional absolution, she reminds us that “families are definitely the training ground for forgiveness. At some point you pardon the people in your family for being stuck together in all their weirdness, and when you can do that, you learn to pardon anyone. Even yourself, eventually” (Traveling Mercies, 219-220).

These books are quick reading, pungent, thoughtful, and while she frames her thoughts within a Christian experience, generally with very little effort the reader or the chaplain-reader can universalize their message and apply it to one’s own life. If you do not yet know her writings, they probably will become part of the materials that address your reading in the area of personal spirituality.

Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith (New York: Pantheon/Random House, 1999), 275 pp.; Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith (New York: Riverhead/Penguin 2005) 320 pp.

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