Pilgrimage and the Altars of the World

March 6, 2020
Diana Eck
Professor Diana L. Eck. Photo by Harvard University News Office

Diana L. Eck, Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies and director of the Pluralism Project, delivered the following remarks at Morning Prayers in Harvard's Memorial Church on March 6, 2020.

♦♦♦

 

The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said,  ‘For we too are his offspring.’

(Acts 17)

 

Many in this church have taken Pilgrimage as a spiritual theme this year, and as we move through the weeks of Lent that pilgrimage becomes deeper, more deliberate, more personal. In many respects, I have long been a kind of professional pilgrim. I have been fascinated by the many kinds of journeys we undertake along life’s way. We undertake journeys to discover meaning, journeys to make connection. Journeys to the frontier of our experience, what I call outward bound journeys. And journeys to the source, homeward bound journeys to find our roots, our selves. 

In the long years of my work in India, I was an outward bound pilgrim. It began as a 20-year-old student in the sacred city of Banaras, a place so very far away from home, a place crowded with pilgrims, dense with shrines, that brought me back again and again until wrote a book about it. Even then it wouldn’t let me go. From Banaras, over the course of two decades, I travelled tens of thousands of miles in Indiaby train, bus, rickshaw, and on foot—seeking out other places of pilgrimage. These places are called tirthas –crossing places. Those powerful places here on earth that link us to a divine dimension.

Off I went. The shrines of Shiva and Vishnu, Kedarnath and Badrinath in the high Himalayas. Gangotri, the Himalayan source of the river Ganges. Amarakanthaka, the headwaters of the Narmada. Talaikaveri where the Kaveri River rises in the Coorg Hills. The seacoast shrines at Rameshvaram and Kanya Kumari in the far South. The tracks of pilgrims link millions homes and villages to these and countless other places. I wanted to know what these kinds of shrines, temples, altars mean to those who crisscross India to seek them out. What they mean to communities, to local, regional, and national identity. And by the way, what they mean to me.

Of course, the trekking to these sanctuaries, standing on these hilltops, entering into the sancta of ancient temples, changed me as well. I couldn’t just study pilgrimage. I became, yes, a pilgrim myself. I sometimes quipped that I had prayed at more Hindu shrines than any living Methodist. In many ways these were hard journeysexhausting, risky, sometimes scary, mostly joyous. My dog-eared train schedule, the train journey to Katgodam, the mountain bus to Almora, the trail head to Kedarnath, the uncertainty of the pilgrim rest house, or wherever I might end up sleeping. I was truly stepping off the grid into worlds quite unknown to anyone back home. This was the 80s, years before email or cell phone service, and I would send cables home to Dorothy to give her some vague sense of where on earth I might be.

Now, what I found along the way and at journey’s end was consistently surprising. There up at 14,000 feet in the dark interior of a high mountain temple was a simple stone outcropping. There at a hilltop shrine was a tree, wrapped with red threads. There was a water tank collecting the blessed head-waters of a river. These were not monuments built by kings, but earth altars sanctified by the faith of those who turned aside and stood before them. Oh yes, there might be a temple, but very often that was beside the point. Over and over, I thought of St. Paul and what he really meant when he told the Athenians and the rest of us, “Whatever you mean by the one you call God does not live in shrines made by human hands. . .”  The poet saints of South India knew as well, praising that One who is right here where the rivers meet, here where the herons wade, here where the hillock rises, here where the palms sway over the estuary.

Those heady, risky, days as a thirtysomething, fortysomething, days off the grid in the solitude of the trail or the rough and tumble of crowds of pilgrims, those days are most certainly over for me. But what I learned about altars from these Hindu tirthas, I carry gratefully into my life as a seventy something where life is no longer about onward and upward, achieving goals or climbing mountains. The altar may be glorious tree, a weeping willow, right there in the sunshine on Broadway. A single crocus flashing amidst the dry leaves. It is a simple fire circle in the backyard of a dear friend. The full moon rising over Mount Hope Bay. The Canadian Geese flashing their V-formation in the Sky. The table with a candle, a flower, a stone, a shell, a photograph. Here, right here, is our communion at the altars of this world.

These are our tirthas where amidst the onrush of our lives we cross over, perhaps for only a moment, to behold another dimension, a dimension some refer to as the sacred. Is it a crossing heavenward? Inward? To the Real? To the Mystery? It matters not how we put it. The tirthas do not circumscribe the holy, for the one we call God does not dwell in shrines made by human hands. The tirthas are the gateways where the here and the timeless meet.

Let us pray. As we breathe the breath of life this March morning and set forth on the pilgrimage of this day, may we open our eyes to the altars of this very world. May we turn aside now and again from the rush of our days. May we stop to touch the warmth of a friend’s hand, to be touched by the warmth of the sun. May we bow often. May we be filled with gratitude for the abundance of this very life.

And together may we pray, Our Father. . .