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PRACTICAL SPIRITUALITY
AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
Transformations in Religions and Societies

Edited by Ananta Kumar Giri

Practical Spirituality and Human Development
 Ananta Kumar Giri
Editor

Practical Spirituality
and Human
Development
Transformations in Religions and Societies
Editor
Ananta Kumar Giri
Madras Institute of Development Studies
Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India

ISBN 978-981-13-0802-4    ISBN 978-981-13-0803-1 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0803-1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018951119

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
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Cover credit: Ekely

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
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The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-­01/04 Gateway East, Singapore
189721, Singapore
To St. Mother Teresa, His Holiness The 14th Dalai Lama, Mata
Amritanandamayi Devi, and Kailash Satyarthi
 Foreword: On Being Poor in Spirit

My friend Ananta Kumar Giri has asked me to write a Foreword to this

book, Practical Spirituality and Human Development. I am happy to
comply with his request, not least because I find the topic important and
stimulating. I want to start with a meditation, which, although originating
in a Christian context, has in my view a broader cross-cultural and inter-­
religious significance.
The gospel of Matthew offers in chapter 5:3–10 a list of “beatitudes”
or benedictions pronounced by Jesus during his sojourn in Galilee. The
first benediction says: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the king-
dom of heaven.” The benediction is followed by blessings on “those who
mourn,” on “the meek,” on “those who hunger and thirst for righteous-
ness,” on “the pure in heart,” on “the peacemakers,” and those “persecuted
for righteousness’s sake.” But the first blessing goes to the “poor in spirit.”
What does that mean? Interestingly, the gospel of Luke (6:20–23) also
offers a list of benedictions, but the first simply says, “Blessed are the
poor” (beati pauperes). This seems to be straightforward. But what about
the statement in Matthew?
Among the sermons delivered by the German mystic Meister Eckhart,
there is one (Sermon 32) titled: “Beati pauperes spiritu,” “Blessed are the
poor in spirit.” Could we also say here: “poor in spirituality”? Eckhart
leads us on a difficult path. He urges us not treat spirit/spirituality as a
property or possession, as something we have or own in addition to our
material, psychic, or mental possessions. He urges us to let go of all of
that, to enter into a state of dispossession, of utter poverty or emptiness.

vii
viii FOREWORD: ON BEING POOR IN SPIRIT

The sermon first speaks of two kinds of poverty: an outer and an inner
poverty. “The first is an outer poverty, and that is good and very praise-
worthy in those people who willingly take it upon themselves out of love
for our Lord, because he too was poor in this sense while he was on earth.”
The sermon speaks no further of this kind of poverty but turns to the
other, the “inner poverty” which it considers more important. To intro-
duce that kind, Eckhart briefly invokes the testimony of Albertus Magnus.
“Bishop Albert,” he states, “said that a poor person is one who takes no
pleasure in any of the things God has ever created—and that is well said.
However, I will say it still better and take poverty in a higher sense. A poor
man is one who wills nothing, knows nothing, and has nothing.” He then
proceeds to speak of these three kinds of poverty.
Turning to willing nothing, Eckhart recognizes the difficulty of this
notion for many people, especially for people who have “good intentions”
and always want to do “good,” by committing themselves to acts of pen-
ance and good works. Some people go a step further by combining their
willing with God’s willing, saying that “a person must live so as not to
fulfill his own will but strive to fulfill the will of God.” Eckhart acknowl-
edges that such people have made a “good beginning,” because their
intention seems laudable. Basically, however, they still “hold fast to their
own selves which they consider to be great.” Hence, they are “neither
poor nor similar to poor people.” As he sternly adds: “They are considered
great in the eyes of those who don’t know any better. Yet I say they are
asses and they don’t understand anything of God’s truth.”
Pursuing this point, Eckhart indicates clearly what we have to let go or
get rid of: “If someone asks me what that is (a poor person who wills noth-
ing), I answer thus: As long as a person has something of himself which is
his will with which he can will to fulfill the will of God, such a person does
not have the poverty of which we speak. For such a person still has a will
with which he can satisfy the will of God, and that is not true poverty. For
a person to have true poverty, he must be as empty of his created will as he
was [empty] before he was,” Eckhart here makes a distinction between the
ground (or unground) of all Being and the realm of created beings (which
also includes God as a being and object of desire). “Before the creatures
were,” he says, “God was not yet ‘God’; he was rather what He was. As
the creatures came into being and received their created being, God was
no longer ‘God in Himself,’ rather was ‘God’ through and for creatures.”
This means that God after creation cannot be the highest goal of human
desire or willing. Rather, humans must turn to the unground of Being and
 FOREWORD: ON BEING POOR IN SPIRIT
   ix

abandon separate willing. In Eckhart’s stark language: “We pray that we

may be free of ‘God’ [as object],” and a person poor in will must “will and
desire as little as he willed and desired before he was [created].” In this
way, the person who is poor “wills nothing.”
As previously stated, Eckhart’s sermon extends the praise of emptiness
also to knowing and having nothing. With regard to knowing, the sermon
exhorts us to get rid of all pretended knowledge, including knowledge of
ourselves, of so-called eternal ideas, and even of God. A person who is
genuinely poor in spirit, he says, must live as “that he does not even know
that he lives, neither himself nor the ‘truth’ nor ‘God.’ Rather, he must be
so empty of all knowledge that he neither knows nor recognizes nor senses
that ‘God’ lives in him.” Emptiness of knowing here means that a person
“is as empty as he was when he was not yet [created] and allows God to
act as He will.” Once we have emptied ourselves into the groundless
ground, we are robbed not only of our separate willing but also of know-
ing that God acts in the ground. Therefore, it is necessary for the poor
person to desire to know or recognize nothing about his own work or the
work of God. Only in this way can a person obtain poverty of knowing.
Finally, a person poor in willing and knowing also has or possesses
nothing. Non-possession here refers not only to material things but also
and especially to spiritual things or matters of spirit. Eckhart calls this the
supreme poverty, and its meaning is very radical. As he recognizes, there
are people who say that a person should be completely free or empty of all
things so that she/he offers a place for God wherein God can work.
Eckhart goes beyond that, saying: “If a person is empty of all things or
beings, of himself and of God, yet if God can still find a place to work in
him, that person is not poor in the truest sense.” For God does not intend
that person to have a place in himself where God can work; rather, it is
true poverty of spirit when the person is “so empty of God and all His
works, that God—if he wishes to work in the soul—is Himself [and noth-
ing else] the place wherein He will work.” If God finds a person that poor,
then God works His own works and the person “bears God within Himself.
… and thus is a pure God-bearer.” Eckhart’s sermon concludes with some
bold and provocative statements for which he is so well known: “We say
that the person must be so poor that he has no place in himself wherein
God can work. Therefore, I pray that God will make me free of ‘God’
insofar as we take ‘God’ as beginning of all creation” (i.e., of all created
things and hence of all differentiation and separation).
x FOREWORD: ON BEING POOR IN SPIRIT

This is the gist of the sermon “Beati pauperes spiritu.” I had to

abbreviate here and there. But even in its abbreviated form the message of
the sermon is powerful: it is powerful in its indictment of human power,
of a pretended human empowerment: the empowerment by God, by
metaphysical knowledge, by eternal ideas and higher values. To avoid mis-
understanding: the problem here is not God “as such” or eternal ideas and
higher values “as such.” The problem is their use and abuse for all-too-­
human initiatives, their instrumentalization for power-political agendas
when human beings—specifically political elites—claim to be stand-ins for
or “vice-regents” of God on earth. In human history this has happened all
too often, especially in the history of Western imperialism. At the time of
the Spanish conquest of America, the eminent historian Ginés de Sepúlveda
justified the conquest on the basis of both religion and philosophy, saying
that both sanction the rule of “virtue over vice,” of the civilized over the
barbarian. The conquest resulted in the death of some 70 million native
inhabitants by killing, starvation, and disease.
In subsequent history, imperial rule was justified less often by religion
and more in terms of “civilization,” a broad concept including a whole
range of higher values and beliefs. In this context, it is good to remember
some words of Mahatma Gandhi who struggled against the British Empire
all his life. At the time of a visit to England, Gandhi was asked by reporters
what he thought of Western civilization—to which he pithily replied: “It
would be a good idea,” meaning that there was much rhetoric but little or
no substance. The rhetoric of self-congratulation has continued unabated
since Gandhi’s time. Western imperial ambitions have brought higher civi-
lized “values” to many “backward” countries, including Vietnam, Iraq,
and Libya. When, in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo killings, France orga-
nized a big demonstration celebrating the idea of “freedom,” the French
President declared that Paris was once again the center of the world and
the citadel of civilization. In the meantime, the rhetoric has not stopped
gaining momentum and virulence, until of late it culminated in the
celebration of “American Sniper.”
Treated in this fashion, civilization is clearly “full of itself,” full of its
importance, and the superiority of its values, including its “spiritual” values.
Again, the point is not simply to debunk values, including spiritual values.
The point is to abandon the claim of ownership or possession, a claim that
would enable a person (or group of persons) to “know” them fully and to
“will” them by enacting and enforcing them on the rest of the world. The
gospel of Luke lists not only a series of benedictions but also a series of
 FOREWORD: ON BEING POOR IN SPIRIT
   xi

maledictions or warnings: “Woe to you that are full now, for you shall
hunger. Woe to you that are rich, for you have received your reward already
Woe to you when all men [especially the rulers and owners of the world]
speak well of you.” So the gospel does not praise “beati possidentes,” but
“beati pauperes” and “beati esurientes,” “blessed are you that hunger and
thirst.” These blessings, of course, concur entirely with the words of
Mary in her response to Gabriel (Luke 1:51–53): “He has scattered the
proud in the imagination of their hearts; he has put down the mighty
from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree; he has filled the
hungry (esurientes) with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.”
So, the empty and hungry ones are blessed, but the rich—the “owners
of the world”—are dismissed. Mahatma Gandhi once said that one has to
be able to “reduce oneself to zero.” This is also what Buddhist teachers
mean by emptiness or sunyata. This is also what Meister Eckhart meant in
his sermon “Beati pauperes spiritu.” Here one must also recall Luke’s
warnings. How long do the rulers of the earth believe they can own, dom-
inate, and exploit the world without retribution? How long do they think
they can, without retribution, delay or prevent the coming of the promise:
the promise of peace with justice? How long?

University of Notre Dame Fred Dallmayr

Notre Dame, IN, USA
 Preface

Our contemporary moment is characterized by political mobilization of

religious forces often in a violent manner. There is revitalization of religion
which is challenging the secular thesis of decline of religion. But in this
story what is often not realized is the rise of movements of practical
spirituality in our present-day world from different domains and walks of
life—religion, science, and the arts—which strive to transform violence
emerging from lack of communication and respect. Movements of practi-
cal spirituality strive to create relations and landscapes of beauty, dignity,
and dialogues in a world full of ugliness, disrespect, and monological
assertions and annihilations of many kinds. Practical Spirituality and
Human Development presents glimpses of movements of practical spiritu-
ality from multiple traditions and domains of life and the way it contrib-
utes to human development, social transformations, and planetary
realizations. Planetary realizations refer to the way practical spirituality
helps us to realize that we are children of Mother Earth and not lords over
each other and the world. Our book explores how spiritual mobilizations
address the practical challenges of life and society such as poverty, loss of
meaning, and ecological degradation, among others, and how it also trans-
forms the meaning of development from solely preoccupied with eco-
nomic development and political empowerment to visions and practices of
spiritual, ethical, and aesthetic development of self, society, and the world.
This book has been long in the making. It began with a paper, “The
Calling of Practical Spirituality,” which I presented at the International
Seminar on “Science and Religion” organized by Professor Makarand
Paranjape of Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, in February 2006. I am

xiii
xiv PREFACE

grateful to Makarand for his invitation, which provided me an occasion to

meditate about this issue. This subsequently came out in the conference
volume edited by Makarand, Science and Spirituality in Modern India
(Paranjape 2008) and subsequently also formed part of my book,
Knowledge and Human Liberation: Towards Planetary Realizations
(Giri 2013). I have then nurtured a workshop on the theme of practical
spirituality and human development in India and Europe with my essay,
“The Calling of Practical Spirituality,” as an invitation to think further
together about this issue. The book draws upon some presentations in
these workshops and includes many other contributors whom I had the
privilege and blessing to meet in the roads and rivers of life in the last
11 years.
As our book is coming out, I am grateful to all the contributors of this
volume for their kindness and patience. I thank Professor Subash Sharma,
Director, Indus Business Academy, Bangalore, and Late Professor
Hermann Schwengel of Institute of Sociology, University of Freiburg, for
their kind support and hosting of our workshops. I am grateful to Professor
Fred Dallmayr for his engaging Foreword and to Piet Strydom for his
insightful Afterword. I am also grateful to friends in Palgrave Macmillan,
especially Sara Crowley Vigneu and Connie Li for their kind interest and
help. I thank Aswhin V and Manjushree Mishra for helping me in the edit-
ing process.
We are now publishing our original manuscript into two volumes. We
dedicate this first volume to Saint Mother Teresa, His Holiness 14th Dalai
Lama, Mata Amritanandamayi, and Kailash Satyarthi who in their own
ways bring spirituality to transform conditions of our daily living and
wider structures of culture, society, and the world. Saint Mother Teresa
gave a touch of healing love to abandoned people and continues to work
in the lives of many through her immortal prayers, action, and Missionaries
of Charity—an order she founded. Mother Teresa tells us that it is not
possible to just do social service or practical work without being a soul of
prayer as she tells us: “It is not possible to engage in the direct apostolate
without being a soul of prayer.” She also tells us: “All our words will be
useless unless they come from within. […] In the Silence of the heart God
speaks, and we listen. […] I am a little pencil in Gods’ Hand. He does the
writing. He does the movement. I have only to be the pencil.” Sisters of
her Missionaries of Charity now work in many countries in the world pro-
viding love and succor in a world full of cruelty and abandonment.
 PREFACE
   xv

Similarly His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama urges us to practice ­compassion
in our daily lives and be responsible for our own development and
transformation as well as of others. Practical spirituality is not confined
only to doing good deeds but also developing compassionate mind and
heart what the Dalai Lama calls bodhichitta. But development of bodhi-
chitta is not possible only with individual meditation but also collaborative
circles of work, meditation in society. He challenges us to realize the sig-
nificance of developing bodhichitta in our contemporary materialistic
world: “In the materialistic way of life, there is no concept of friendship,
no concept of love just work, twenty-four hours a day, like a machine. So
in modern society, we eventually also become part of the large-moving
machine” (Dalai Lama and Tutu 2016: 127).
Mata Amritanandamayi Devi is a spiritual seeker of our times who also
embodies practical spirituality in her vision, prayers, and manifold works.
She urges all of us to cultivate a relationship of loving embrace and also
build homes and hearts for the people in need. Amma, as she is lovingly
called, has built houses for many homeless people in both normal condi-
tions and conditions of natural disaster such as the 2004 Tsunami that hit
South India, Sri Lanka, and other countries. Kailash Satyarthi has been
bringing his spiritual devotion to creating conditions of love and freedom
for the children of India and the world. He has liberated many bonded
children, but he says that in fact these children have liberated him.
Recognized for his contribution with a Nobel Prize, like Mother Teresa
and His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Satyarthi urges us to realize practi-
cal spirituality in our relationship with crying children of humanity. He
also calls for transformation of politics as he writes: “Politics has to evolve,
politics with compassionate intelligence.” He also tells us: “[…] globalize
compassion through protecting our children, because they are all our chil-
dren” (Satyarthi in Gill 2016: 23).
All of them challenge us to realize new meanings of life in the midst of
challenges of poverty and cruelty. I wish to share here the following poem
of mine, which hopefully reflects the vision and practice of these seekers
and helps us to realize the vision and practice of practical spirituality in
our lives:

I thirst for faith and prayer

Love, Light and Water
Bread, Touch and Soul
An ocean of communication, compassion and communion.
xvi PREFACE

This poem invites us to realize communication, compassion, and com-

munion at the heart of our journey with practical spirituality. To realize
this we can draw inspiration from the following thoughts of Gandhi:

I offer you peace. I offer you love. I offer you friendship. I see your beauty.
I hear your need. I feel your feelings. My wisdom flows from the Highest
Source. I salute that Source in you. Let us work together for unity and love.

We can also draw inspiration from the following thoughts of the philoso-
pher R. Sundara Rajan (1987: 83):

The possibility of finite transcendence is essentially the problem of the pos-

sibility of communication—i.e., communication or dialogue between sub-
jects and a communication or dialogue of human subjects with the world. It
is essentially to note that these two are aspects of a single dialogue, which we
may call the dialogue of transcendence.

Finally we hope this book helps us realize the significance of practical

spirituality and human development in our lives and undertake transfor-
mative meditation and works to create a world of more beauty, dignity,
and dialogues.

Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India Ananta Kumar Giri

Durgapuja, September 25, 2017

References
Dalai Lama and Deshmond Tutu with Douglas Abrams. 2016. The Book of Joy:
Lasting Happiness in a Changing World. London: Penguin Books.
Gill, Kaveri (ed.). 2016. Celebrating His Holiness The Dalai Lama. New Delhi:
Timeless Books.
Giri, Ananta Kumar. 2013. The Calling of Practical Spirituality. In idem, Knowledge
and Human Liberation: Towards Planetary Realizations. London: Anthem
Press.
Paranjape, Makarand (ed.). 2008. Science and Spirituality in Modern India. Delhi:
Anthem Press.
Sunder Rajan, R. 1987. Towards a Critique of Cultural Reason. Delhi: Oxford
University Press.
 Contents

1 Practical Spirituality and Human Development:

An Introduction and an Invitation   1
Ananta Kumar Giri

Part I Practical Spirituality: Understanding New Modes of

Thinking and Transformative Practice  11

2 The Calling of Practical Spirituality  13

Ananta Kumar Giri

3 What It Means to Be Religious?  31

Ashgar Ali Engineer

4 Practical Spirituality: Human Beings Evolving into a Higher

Level of Communion and Ethical Relation with One
Another  35
Janine Joyce

5 Critical Spirituality: Towards a Revitalised Humanity  53

Marcus Bussey

6 Practices of Nontheistic Spirituality  63

Peter Heehs

xvii
xviii Contents

7 The Ashram as a Secular Place: An Understanding of the

Human as a Spiritual Place  81
Jyoti Sahi

8 There Is No Path: And You Are on It—Searching for the

Self in Starting from Zero  97
Hazen Robert Walker

9 Life Is Story: Tales and Journeys in Practical Spirituality

in the Aesthetic Plasma of Story in the Lila 109
Barbara A. Amodio

10 Creative Nonfiction Is Everything: Postmodernism,

Groundlessness, and the Dual Portrait 137
Elizabeth S. Gunn

11 Concrete and Abstract Realities 155

Henk de Weijer

12 Divine Path of Humanity: Co-creating “In the Image

of God” 179
Nina Goncharova

Part II Practical Spirituality and Transformation of Religions

and Societies 187

13 Brahman and Karman: The Theory of Institutional Action

in the Bhagavadgı ̄tā 189
Binod Kumar Agarwala

14 Practical Spirituality: Judaic and Multi-faith Practices

of Transformations 217
Rabbi Pamela Frydman

15 Practical Spirituality and the Desert Fathers 237

Shlomit C. Schuster
 Contents 
   xix

16 Mysticism, Sufism, and Practical Spirituality 257

Muhammad Maroof Shah

17 Quaker Process as Practical Spirituality for the

Anthropocene Age 277
Sara J. Wolcott

18 Paganism as Practical Spirituality 293

Melinda Reidinger

19 Beyond Self to Society and Sustainability: Lesson in

Practical Spirituality from Sikhism 315
Karminder Ghuman and Mohinder Pal Singh

20 Practical Spirituality and the Transformation of Political

Power: The Great Law of Peace and the Influence of
Iroquois Women and Policies on U.S. Women Suffragists 327
Julie Mazzarella Geredien

21 Tolstoy and Practical Spirituality 361

Christian Bartolf

22 Discovering Reality as Old as the Hills Assisted with

Gandhi’s Light: Some Notes on Practical Spirituality
and Human Development 371
Bernard “Bernie” Meyer

23 Building a Peaceful World and the Calling of Practical

Spirituality: Mahatma Gandhi and Albert Schweitzer 385
Predrag Cicovacki

24 Falling Together: Practical Spirituality in an Impractical

World 407
Paul Schwartzentruber
xx Contents

25 Thomas Berry: A New Cosmology and Practical

Spirituality 435
Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim

26 Mysticism, Practical Spirituality, and Hospitality: Walking

and Meditating with Jacques Derrida 445
Nishant Alphonse Irudayadason

27 Afterword: Worlds of Mindful Practices 461

Piet Strydom

Index 477
 Notes on Editor and Contributors

Editor

Ananta Kumar Giri is a professor at the Madras Institute of Development

Studies, Chennai, India. He has taught at and done research in many uni-
versities in India and abroad, including Aalborg University (Denmark),
Maison des sciences de l’homme, Paris (France), the University of Kentucky
(USA), University of Freiburg & Humboldt University (Germany),
Jagiellonian University (Poland) and Jawaharlal Nehru University, New
Delhi. He has an abiding interest in social movements and cultural change,
criticism, creativity and contemporary dialectics of transformation, theories
of self, culture and society, and creative streams in education, philosophy
and literature. Giri has written and edited around two dozen books in Odia
and English, including Global Transformations: Postmodernity and Beyond
(1998); Sameekhya o Purodrusti (Criticism and Vision of the Future; 1999);
Patha Prantara Nrutattwa (Anthropology of the Street Corner; 2000);
Mochi o Darshanika (The Cobbler and the Philosopher; 2009); Sri
Jagannathanka Saha: Khyaya, Khata o Kehetra (With Sri Jagannatha: Loss,
Wound and the Field; 2018); Conversations and Transformations: Toward
a New Ethics of Self and Society (2002); Self-Development and Social
Transformations? The Vision and Practice of Self-Study Mobilization of
Swadhyaya (2008); Mochi o Darshanika (The Cobbler and the Philosopher;
2009); Sociology and Beyond: Windows and Horizons (2012), Knowledge
and Human Liberation: Towards Planetary Realizations (2013); Philosophy
and Anthropology: Border-Crossing and Transformations (co-edited with
John Clammer; 2013); New Horizons of Human Development (editor;

xxi
xxii NOTES ON EDITOR AND CONTRIBUTORS

2015); Pathways of Creative Research: Towards a Festival of Dialogues (edi-

tor; 2017); Cultivating Pathways of Creative Research: New Horizons of
Transformative Practice and Collaborative Imagination (editor; 2017);
Research as Realization: Science, Spirituality and Harmony (editor; 2017);
The Aesthetics of Development: Art, Culture and Social Transformation (co-
editor with John Clammer; 2017); Beyond Sociology (editor; 2018); Social
Theory and Asian Dialogues: Cultivating Planetary Conversations (editor;
2018); Weaving New Hats: Our Half Birthdays (2018); Beyond
Cosmopolitanism: Towards Planetary Transformations (editor; 2018); and
Transformative Harmony (editor; 2018).

Contributors

Binod Kumar Agarwala (born in 1953) is working as Dean, School of

Humanities, North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong, India. He joined as
Professor of Philosophy at North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong, India,
after teaching for more than two decades at Lucknow University, Lucknow.
He began his academic career with a brief stint at Visva-Bharati,
Santiniketan. He graduated with first class honors in Physics from Hans
Raj College, University of Delhi. With M.A. and M. Phil. from University
of Delhi and Ph.D. from Lucknow University, Agarwala is actively engaged
in research in the Critical Philosophy of Kant, political philosophy, philo-
sophical hermeneutics, and understanding of classical Indian texts like the
Bhagavadgı̄tā, the Upaniṣads, two Paramār thasāras by Ā diśeṣa and
Abhinavagupta, respectively, and Bhartṛhari’sVākyapadı̄ya. He has written
scholarly essays in political philosophy, Kant’s Critical Philosophy, and the
philosophy of the Bhagavadgı̄tā in international journals like Journal of
Indian Council of Philosophical Research, Sandhān, and Indian Philosophical
Quarterly and in books edited by eminent scholars.
Barbara A. Amodio is a semi-retired professor, higher education admin-
istrator, field researcher, and published writer in comparative Western and
non-Western philosophy, sacred aesthetics and symbols, intercultural stud-
ies, world diversity, comparative phenomenologies of consciousness, and
philosophy of world religions and spirituality. She writes on Indian, Chinese,
Middle Eastern, Indo-Celtic-Mediterranean and Indo-Asian process phi-
losophy, mathematical mysticism, comparative medical philosophy, and
more. Fluent in several languages, she has researched, traveled, and taught
extensively on several continents. Lifelong learning and Jesuit tradition led
 NOTES ON EDITOR AND CONTRIBUTORS
   xxiii

her to a “philosophical archeology” of the fractured mosaic of a once uni-

fied high spiritual culture wrapping the planet and to commitments to prac-
tical spirituality and personalized teaching. Publicly recognized for 19 years
as a Human Relations Commissioner, she founded International Human
Rights Day and Month. A certified mediator with field experience, she
taught graduate philosophies of conflict resolution emphasizing continent
models and intercultural issues of humanitarian law. She co-founded
Oceaniadigambara.org to support meditation and compassionate work.
Amodio has taught continuously and joyfully since her years as a teaching
fellow at Fordham University. She researches and publishes yearly, with
great interest in authentic spirituality, sacred aesthetics, and meditation at
sacred sites in the Temple of Nature, often in the highest Himalayan peaks.
Christian Bartolf (born 1960) is an educational and political scientist
from Berlin and (since November 1993) the president of the society for
peace education: Gandhi Information Center, Research and Education for
Nonviolence. From 1991 to 2010 he counselled more than 20.000 war
resisters, from 2008 to 2018 he has curated eighteen exhibitions on
Nonviolence (Erasmus, La Boétie, Thoreau on Civil Disobedience,
Thoreau Bicentennial, Ruskin, Tolstoy, Doukhobors, Gandhi, Tagore,
King, Kraus, Tucholsky, Ossietzky, Borchert, Schweitzer, Monuments
against War, Poems and Paintings against War, Lyrics and Photographs
against War), and from 1993 to 2018 he has organized the international
“Manifesto against conscription and the military system”.
Marcus Bussey is Senior Lecturer in History and Futures at the University
of the Sunshine Coast, Australia. He is a futurist and researcher with the
Arts Research in the Creative Humanity’s Centre and also a member of the
university’s Sustainability Research Centre. He works on cultural processes
that energiz social transformation. He uses futures thinking to challenge
the dominant beliefs and assumptions that constrain human responses to
rapid cultural, social, and technological change. Bussey has co-authored
with Professor Richard Slaughter Futures Thinking for Social Foresight
(2005). He has also co-edited two books with Sohail Inayatullah and Ivana
Milojević—Neohumanist Educational Futures (2006) and Alternative
Educational Futures (2008). In addition, he has edited Tantric Women
Tell their Stories (2007) and written a book of poetry Clare and Francis
(2012). Bussey has held fellowships at Nanyang Technical University,
Singapore, and Tamkang University, Taiwan. He is the Discipline Head of
History and Program Leader in Futures Studies at his university. Bussey is
xxiv NOTES ON EDITOR AND CONTRIBUTORS

on the editorial boards for the Journal of Futures Studies, Foresight, On the
Horizon, and Social Alternatives.
For more information on Marcus: http://www.usc.edu.au/explore/
structure/faculty-of-arts-business-and-law/staff/dr-marcus-bussey.
Predrag Cicovacki was born in 1960, in Belgrade, Serbia, where he
obtained his B.A. in Philosophy. After receiving his Ph.D. in Philosophy at
the University of Rochester, since 1991 he has been teaching philosophy
at the College of the Holy Cross. He is the author and/or editor of 17
books. His current research is in the philosophy of love and nonviolence.
Fred Dallmayr is Packey J. Dee Professor Emeritus in Philosophy and
Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, USA. He holds a Doctor
of Law from the University of Munich and a Ph.D. from Duke University,
USA. He has been a visiting professor at Hamburg University and at New
School for Social Research, a Fellow at Nuffield College in Oxford. During
1990–1991 he was in India on a Fulbright Research Grant. He is the past
President of the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy (SACP).
He has served Co-Chair of the World Public Forum “Dialogue of
Civilizations” in Vienna. He has written some 35 books and over 200
articles in professional journals. Among his recent books are Being in the
World: Dialogue and Cosmopolis (2013), Freedom and Solidarity (2015),
and Democracy to Come: Politics as Relational Praxis (2017).
Ashgar Ali Engineer was a creative and transformational scholar of reli-
gion and society who had also struggled for religious reform in his own
Muslim community of birth, the Bohras. He had written extensively and
deeply on religion, communalism, and social transformations. He was one
of the pioneers of liberation theology in Islam. He is the author of many
important books on Islam and is noted for his deeply moving autobiogra-
phy—A Living Harmony. He was the founder of Center for Study of
Society and Secularism in Mumbai.
Rabbi Pamela Frydman is a religious and spiritual leader in the Jewish
community and a writer and social justice activist. She holds a Bachelor
of Arts from Tel Aviv University, Israel, in Linguistics and Psychology.
She was ordained as a rabbi through P’nai Or Religious Fellowship (pres-
ently called the ALEPH Ordination Program), and later she served on
the Rabbinic Cabinet for academic oversight. She served as Founding
Rabbi of Or Shalom Jewish Community in San Francisco, California;
Interim Rabbi of Congregation P’nai Tikvah in Las Vegas, Nevada; and
 NOTES ON EDITOR AND CONTRIBUTORS
   xxv

Guest Rabbis of the Aquarian Minyan of Berkeley, California and Ad Olam

of Eugene Oregon. She heads the Beyond Genocide Campaign raising
consciousness about the plight of Yezidis facing genocide in Iraq and
Syria, which earned a Global Citizen Award from the United Nations
Association, East Bay Chapter in 2016. She serves as Chair of Rabbis for
Religious Freedom and Equality in Israel, and she previously co-chaired
Rabbis for Women of the Wall. She is the author of Calling on God, Sacred
Jewish Teachings for Seekers of All Faiths. She is writing a book on the
Holocaust that includes the dramatic telling of true stories of victims and
survivors. While a rabbinic student, she created a religious education
model based on self-­motivation and love of learning that continues in the
synagogue she helped to found.
Julie Mazzarella Geredien is an artist and educator living in Annapolis,
Maryland, who since 2013 has been engaged in independent research,
writing, and curriculum development. She has organized and initiated a
template for World Citizen Learning Groups and taught an original full-­
year course through the Peer Learning Partnership at Anne Arundel
Community College, called The Axial Moment: An Integrated Approach to
Human Transformation through Education. She has written two book-
length pieces: Toward a Cosmopolitan World Social Body: A Treatise on
Harmony (to be published in 2018 by Cambridge Scholars Publishing)
and Practical Spirituality and the Transformation of Power: How the Great
Law of Peace and Iroquoian Culture Awakened Social and Spiritual Vision
in Early American Suffragettes. She hopes the content from this second
work may eventually become creative material for an education-based
work of musical theater that includes children and that can advance under-
standing for justice and peace.
Karminder Ghuman is an associate professor and Area Chair—Marketing
& Entrepreneurship at LM Thapar School of Management, Thapar
University, Dera Bassi campus, India. He is heading the Centre for Indian
Management and also leading the Venture Lab—Thapar, an incubation
center of Thapar University. With 19 years of professional experience, he
is a trainer and consultant and has conducted numerous assignments with
government and private sector organizations. Ghuman has written two
books titled Rural Marketing (2007) and Management: Concept, Practice
and Cases (2010). He has also edited a book titled Indian Management.
xxvi NOTES ON EDITOR AND CONTRIBUTORS

Nina Goncharova was born in Russia and is an educator, visionary,

poet, artist, and author. From 1996 to 2006, she was coordinator of
Education for Life Movement creating teams of masters of conscious evo-
lution all over Russia. For 20 years, she traveled the world to make “New
Path of Humanity” keynote speeches, presentations, and create a plane-
tary team of the transition into a new world. She is the author of the book
Rainbow Earth: Vision from the Future with 39 visionaries and creators of
a new path of humanity. Poet, artist, and visionary, she presented visions
and actions through Theatre of New Time art programs in Russia, the
USA, Greece, India, Great Britain, Brazil, France, and Taiwan. A member
of cultural and peace movements, she is the co-initiator of the “Earth is
Our Common Home” project, awarded in 2010 by the S.E.R. Foundation
in Switzerland. She has also initiated the New Earth cultural expeditions
in Siberia.
John Grim is a senior lecturer and research scholar teaching in the joint
M.A. program in Religion and Ecology at Yale University School of
Forestry and Environmental Studies and Yale Divinity School. He is co-
founder and co-director of the Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale
with his wife, Mary Evelyn Tucker. With Tucker, Grim directed a ten-
conference series and book project at Harvard on “World Religions and
Ecology.” Grim is the author of The Shaman: Patterns of Religious Healing
Among the Ojibway Indians (1983). Grim edited Indigenous Traditions
and Ecology: The Interbeing of Cosmology and Community (2001). He is
also the co-author with Tucker of Ecology and Religion (2014). He has
also edited the following volumes with Mary Evelyn Tucker: Worldviews
and Ecology (1994), Religion and Ecology: Can the Climate Change?
(2001), Thomas Berry: Selected Writings on the Earth Community (2014),
and Living Cosmology: Christian Responses to Journey of the Universe
(2016); and with Willis Jenkins the Routledge Handbook of Religion and
Ecology (2016). Grim is the co-­executive producer of the Emmy award-
winning film Journey of the Universe. He is the President of the American
Teilhard Association.
Elizabeth S. Gunn is Associate Professor of World Languages and
International Studies at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland,
USA. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill in Romance Languages and Literatures (2004). Her publications
 NOTES ON EDITOR AND CONTRIBUTORS
   xxvii

center on citizenship, sexual subjectivity, and nation building. Additionally,

she has led students abroad to Salamanca, Spain, and Oaxaca, Mexico.
Peter Heehs is an independent scholar. Born and educated in the USA,
he is now based in Pondicherry, India. He is the author or editor of 11
books, most recently Writing the Self: Diaries, Memoirs, and the History of
the Self (2013). His articles have been published in journals such as History
and Theory and Modern Asian Studies, and in magazines such as History
Today and Art India.
Nishant Alphonse Irudayadason is Professor of Philosophy and Ethics
in Jnana-Deepa Vidyapeeth (JDV), Pune, India. Besides many papers pre-
sented in national and internal conferences, he has written several
researched essays in English and French in reputed journals in both India
and abroad. Some of his well-known authored and edited books include
Penserun monde par-delà les frontières (2010), Musings and Meanings
(2016), and Philosophizing the Body (2016). He was formerly the director
of doctoral program in JDV and the director of JDV Centre for Applied
Ethics. Besides being the review editor of the Jnandeepa journal, he is also
a member of the review panel for the Indian Journal of Medical Sciences
and BAOJ Palliative Medicine journal. He is a regular contributor to con-
temporary political analysis in the Light of Truth, a bimonthly published
from Kochi, Kerala.
Janine Joyce has been building her reputation as a researcher and scholar,
specializing in spirituality, peaceful transformation, indigenous principles
of community building, and the efficacy of related complementary thera-
pies such as yoga therapy and meditation in health and lifestyle manage-
ment. Scholarly publications include articles in journals such as Preventive
Medicine, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Journal of Conflict
Transformation and Security, Interface: A Journal For and About Social
Movement, PEACE RESEARCH: The Canadian Journal of Peace and
Conflict Studies, and American Journal for Health Promotion and a text
book on Yogic Peace Education. She holds a Ph.D. from the National
Center for Peace and Conflict Studies/Bioethics Department at University
of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. Notable achievements include a
Commonwealth Scholarship for Postgraduate study in Yoga Therapy and
Stress Management, which allowed her to study at Rashtriya Sanskrit
Vidyapeetha, Tirupati, India (2012–2013). A Peace builder Fellowship
xxviii NOTES ON EDITOR AND CONTRIBUTORS

(2014), Monterey University, took her to Myanmar to research stories on

water conflict and climate change. Joyce’s academic and scholarly reputa-
tions are grounded on 30 years of practical experience as a social worker
and trauma therapist working with children, families, and adults. She
offers consultancy specializing in the development of emotional resilience
and self-regulation, yoga therapy, wellness, and community building.
Bernard “Bernie” Meyer began his justice and peace career as a Catholic
priest in Cleveland, Ohio, USA, during the 1960s. A 1967–1968 Urban
Ministry Program, which addressed racism, war, and poverty, anchored his
life mission. He was arrested challenging the church in 1969 and later
arrested in Washington, D.C. for protesting Dow Chemical Company’s
supporting the Vietnam War with napalm and Agent Orange/dioxin. He
began resisting nuclear weapons in 1974 and has been arrested numerous
times for his actions. Since 1995 after 30 years of work on social advocacy
and social services, Meyer has focused on the study of human motivations
for violence and of methods in nonviolence. From 2002 he has portrayed
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and has come to be known as “American
Gandhi” due to his portrayals in India. He has portrayed Gandhi by invita-
tion in India during 17 trips since 2005. During the summer of 2007,
Meyer walked from Faslane, Scotland, to London, England, with “Toward
a nuclear Free World,” as Gandhi. In December 2007 he received an
Individual Lifetime Achievement in Human Rights award for “Outstanding
Achievements” from the Thurston Council on Cultural Diversity &
Human Rights. He is now addressing climate change by educating, fast-
ing, and acting and is resisting nuclear weapons. His books include:
The American Gandhi: My Truth Seeking with Humanity at the
Crossroads. Mahatma Gandhi, Universal Citizen, www.oly-wa.us/
berniemeyer, www.theamericangandhi.blogspot.com.
Melinda Reidinger majored in Art History and Literary Studies and
additionally studied several modern languages, at Williams College in
Williamstown, MA, USA. After graduation, she taught English in Prague
and then in rural Taiwan. She did her doctoral studies in Anthropology at
the University of Virginia and wrote a dissertation on Czech country
homes and cottages and the ways people undertake to live in nature.
Besides this chapter on Neopaganism and her presentations on Czech
country/city topics, she has written an article on the social history of the
dark European honeybee. Her other current research interests are in the
 NOTES ON EDITOR AND CONTRIBUTORS
   xxix

areas of landscape history in Bohemia and the mythopoetics of how we

understand damage to the landscapes that sustain us.
Reidinger teaches social sciences at Anglo-American University in
Prague. She has taught introduction to sociology, environmental anthro-
pology, and subcultures and developed additional courses on food &
culture and history of occultism.
Like too many anthropologists, she has “gone native.” She lives in a
200-year-old log cabin where by day she grows all kinds of delicious things
in the garden, keeps bees, practices yoga, and chases after three children
and a rambunctious wolf dog. At night she plays the piano, translates, and
makes artisan jewelry.
Jyoti Sahi studied under the artist Sudhir Khastigir of the Santiniketan
tradition. He further studied at the Camberwell School of Art and Craft,
London (1959–1963). On returning to India, he taught art in Delhi, and
at the Blue Mountains School in the Nilgiris, which was based on the ideas
of Krishnamurthy. He then went to Kurisumala Ashram in Kerala, to work
with the architect Laurie Baker in 1967, and later to Shantivanam Ashram
near Trichy, where the monk Bede Griffiths married Jane and Jyoti in 1970.
He came to Bangalore and settled in a village called Silvepura in 1972,
where Jane started an alternative school inspired by Tagore, and Gandhi’s
Basic Schools, in 1975. Sahi opened an Art Ashram in 1984, and later
taught at the Srishti School of Art and Design from 1997. He is a practic-
ing artist and designer who has also written many articles, and three books,
from his experience in the field of arts and crafts in the Indian context.
Shlomit C. Schuster was an Israeli philosopher and philosophical coun-
selor who was considered a pioneer in the field of philosophical counsel-
ing, into which she brought insights and inspirations from Spinoza,
Jean-Paul Sartre, Martin Buber and many others together. Her first book,
Philosophy Practice: An Alternative to Counseling and Psychotherapy
(1999), is considered a source of learning and used for teaching philoso-
phy. Her second book, The Philosopher’s Autobiography: A Qualitative
Study (2003), is also an important contribution to the field. She was an
editorial board member of the Journal of Radical Psychology, International
Journal for Philosophical Practice and Journal of Humanities Therapy.
Paul Schwartzentruber is an independent writer and researcher with
primary interests in intercultural and inter-religious dialogues. He has
recently returned to Canada and lives in Halifax. Prior to that, he lived for
xxx NOTES ON EDITOR AND CONTRIBUTORS

four years in the Middle East studying Arabic culture and music. Research
on (Zen and Theravada) Buddhism also took him during that time to
India, China, and Sri Lanka. Prior to that (2007–2012), he spent five
years in India working as a volunteer with the Gandhian land rights orga-
nization, Ekta Parishad, as well as for the International Gandhian Institute
for Nonviolence and Peace in Madurai. During this time, he traveled exten-
sively in India, doing advocacy work, documentation, editing, website
development, coordinating volunteers, and writing. He also wrote many
scholarly articles on Gandhi and nonviolence for Ahimsa/Nonviolence, a
journal of the International Gandhian Institute for Nonviolence and Peace
(IGINP), and regularly edits the English version of the journal. Recent
writings include a lengthy study of the Canadian political philosopher
George Grant and Gandhi as well as another study of the American pacifist
and Gandhian, Richard B. Gregg (published in India).
Schwartzentruber holds a B.A. in English and Classics from University
of Toronto and an M.A., in Theology and a Ph.D. (All but Dissertation)
from St. Michael’s College. He was a lecturer in the Graduate School of
Theology at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota, USA
(1985–1990). He also worked as the Executive Director of the Marguerite
Centre, a Retreat and Educational Centre in the Ottawa Valley (1997–2007).
Muhammad Maroof Shah is an author and a columnist based in
Srinagar, India. Born in 1978 in Kashmir, he completed his doctoral work,
The Problem of Nihilism and Absurdist Impasse in (Post)Modern Literature:
A Metaphysical Appraisal of Samuel Beckett and Albert Camus, in 2012.
He has authored three books: Problem of Evil in Muslim Philosophy: A Case
Study of Iqbal, Muslim Modernism and the Problem of Modern Science, and
Perennial Philosophy in the Postmodern World: Enigma of Osho. He has
been contributing columns on diverse issues of culture and Kashmir.
Mohinder Pal Singh postgraduate from Punjabi University, Patiala, he
is the general secretary of the political party Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar).
A former lecturer, he is an agriculturist and a political activist. He is an
eminent authority on Sikh spiritual matters and possesses a deep under-
standing of Sikh scriptures.
Piet Strydom originally an émigré from the apartheid regime, is since
2011 a retired member of the School of Sociology and Philosophy,
University College Cork, Ireland. He is an associate editor of the European
Journal of Social Theory. Besides many articles, some well noted, in jour-
 NOTES ON EDITOR AND CONTRIBUTORS
   xxxi

nals, anthologies, and encyclopedias, major publications include

Contemporary Critical Theory and Methodology (2011); New Horizons of
Critical Theory: Collective Learning and Triple Contingency (2009); Risk,
Environment, and Society (2002); and Discourse and Knowledge (2000).
He edited Philosophies of Social Science (2003, with Gerard Delanty) as well
as special issues of the European Journal of Social Theory and the Irish
Journal of Sociology.
Mary Evelyn Tucker is a senior lecturer and research scholar at Yale
University where she has appointments in the School of Forestry and
Environmental Studies, as well as the Divinity School and the Department
of Religious Studies. She teaches in the joint M.A. program in Religion
and Ecology and directs the Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale with
her husband John Grim, a fellow contributor to this volume.
Her special area of study is Asian religions. She received her Ph.D. from
Columbia University in Japanese Confucianism. Since 1997 she has been
a research associate at the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at
Harvard. Her Confucian publications include: Moral and Spiritual
Cultivation in Japanese Neo-Confucianism and The Philosophy of Qi (2007).
With Tu Weiming, she edited two volumes on Confucian Spirituality
(2003, 2004). Her concern for the growing environmental crisis, espe-
cially in Asia, led her to organize with John Grim a series of ten confer-
ences on World Religions and Ecology at the Center for the Study of
World Religions at Harvard (1995–1998). Together, they are series edi-
tors for the ten volumes from the conferences distributed by Harvard
University Press. In this series, she co-edited Buddhism and Ecology (1997),
Confucianism and Ecology (1998), and Hinduism and Ecology (2000).
After the conference series, she and Grim founded the Forum on
Religion and Ecology at a culminating conference at the United Nations
in 1998. They now direct the Forum at Yale where they also teach Religion
and Ecology. To help shape this new interdisciplinary field, they edited
Worldviews and Ecology (1994) and a Daedalus volume titled Religion and
Ecology: Can the Climate Change? (2001). Tucker also wrote Worldly
Wonder: Religions Enter Their Ecological Phase (2003). Together, they
completed a new overview of the field titled Ecology and Religion (2014).
Tucker, Grim, and Willis Jenkins co-edited the Routledge Handbook on
Religion and Ecology (2016).
xxxii Notes on Editor and Contributors

Hazen Robert Walker is a writer, photographer, and filmmaker. His

novel Starting from Zero and his book of short stories, The Siege of Paradise,
are available at Amazon in both paperback and Kindle formats.
Henk de Weijer retired as a designer of construction and coherence in
architectural buildings. Between 2002 and 2011, he shared his passion for
architecture with his students and fellow teachers at the Academy of
Architecture in Amsterdam, and later as an external expert at exam designs
of students in architecture at the Amsterdam University of Applied
Sciences. Students, working on their Master’s design, could and did ask his
advice, and in 2017 he was member of a Master’s graduation committee.
After his first talk on particles of consciousness—microvita—in 2008, he
wrote essays for Gurukula Newsletter, Bulletin on Microvita Research and
Integrated Medicine (BOMRIM), Gandhi Marg, and Crimson Dawn.
Because of the subject of microvita, he was asked to lecture at Centre for
Neohumanist Studies (CNS), Sweden, as well as at Academic institutes in
India and Venezuela. At various European Conferences on Consciousness,
he participated as concurrent lecturer on microvita.
He is a faculty member of Global Association of Neohumanist Educators
(GANE), fellow of Society for Microvita Research and Integrated Medicine
(SMRIM), and member of the editorial board of BOMRIM. In August
2015 and December 2016, he was the guest editor of BOMRIM.
Sara J. Wolcott, M.Div., practices eco-theology through healing, art-
ing, teaching, coaching, and creating integrated, innovative approaches to
challenges in the Anthropocene Age. She obtained her Master’s of Divinity
from Union Theological Seminary in New York City and her M.A. in
Sustainable Development at the Institute of Development Studies,
UK. Born and raised in the Quaker tradition, she is a member of Strawberry
Creek Meeting in California and is a board member of the Quaker Institute
for the Future.
 List of Figures

Fig. 11.1 The Wheel of Creation 170

Fig. 19.1 Model of Sikh philosophy 319

xxxiii
 CHAPTER 1

Practical Spirituality and Human

Development: An Introduction
and an Invitation

Ananta Kumar Giri

Our contemporary moment witnesses fundamental transformations in the

fields of self, society, culture, religion, politics, and spirituality. While in
each of the world religions there is a growing fundamentalism, terror, and
violence, in the same space there is also the vision and practice of practical,
creative, and transformative spirituality which strives to cultivate and cre-
ate relations and landscapes of beauty, dignity, and dialogues in self, cul-
tures, societies, religions, and the world. As Charles Taylor helps us
understand this: “[…] A powerful constitutive strand of modern Western
spirituality is involved in an affirmation of life. It is perhaps evident in the
contemporary concern to preserve life, to bring prosperity, to reduce suf-
fering worldwide, which I believe without precedent in history” (Taylor
2011: 18).1 And as Jim Wallis who has done much in the field of practical
spiritual service writes: “Two of the most powerful forces in the world
right now are service and spirituality. The growing influence of both is
evident almost everywhere, and together they provide the most potent
combination for changing our communities. Service and spirituality are

A. K. Giri (*)
Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India

© The Author(s) 2018 1

A. K. Giri (ed.), Practical Spirituality and Human Development,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0803-1_1
2 A. K. GIRI

growing streams of energy, which, as they begin to flow together could

create a mighty river of action” (Wallis 2000: xxxiv). Practical Spirituality
and Human Development deals with the vision and work of service, spiri-
tuality, and movements for self-development and social transformations. It
deals with movements of affirmative, creative, and critical spirituality in
self, culture, histories, and societies.
The first part of the book, “Practical Spirituality: New Modes of
Thinking and Transformative Practice,” deals with practical spirituality as
a broad genre of envisioning and practice. Chapter 2 by Giri outlines the
vision and pathways of practical spirituality where practical spirituality
involves the transformation of science and religion, new initiatives in arts
and rethinking outmoded authoritarian conceptions of God and spiritual
transformation of democracy and democratic transformation of spiritual-
ity. Giri’s chapter is followed by Chap. 3 by Ashgar Ali Engineer, “What It
Means to Be Religious?,” where Engineer, a great seeker and fighter for
freedom and dignity in Islam, urges us to realize that to be religious is to
practice humility, compassion, truthfulness, and a spirit of fighting for
amelioration of suffering. To be religious also means to fight against the
forces of establishment in religion and politics which create conditions of
self and social suffering. Chapter 4 by Janine Joyce, “Practical Spirituality:
Human Beings Evolving into a Higher Level of Communion and Ethical
Relation with One Another,” presents us wide-ranging perspectives about
practical spirituality. For Joyce, practical spirituality involves a consider-
ation of the other taking us out of our egoistic preoccupation. Marcus
Bussey in Chap. 5, “Critical Spirituality: Towards a Revitalised Humanity,”
tells us how spirituality is a thrival engagement with dance and transforma-
tion of life and not only a logic of survival or reproduction. Bussey’s
­chapter is followed by Peter Heehs’ chapter (Chap. 6) on non-theistic
spirituality in which Heehs argues how spirituality has been different from
religious spirituality or belief in God. Chapter 7 of Jyoti Sahi, “The Ashram
as a Secular Place: An Understanding of the Human as a Spiritual Place,”
tells us how Ashrams like those set up by Gandhi are places of secular spiri-
tuality and provide spaces for spiritual fellowship to address the challenges
of our world.
The subsequent three chapters in Part I help us realize the link between
creative narratives and practical spirituality. In Chap. 8, “There Is No Path
and You Are on It,” Hazen Robert Walker presents us glimpses from his
novel Starting from Zero which explores in fiction a subject more com-
monly treated in non-fiction—the individual quest for self-knowledge and
 PRACTICAL SPIRITUALITY AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT… 3

self-understanding—what Gurdjieff called “being consciousness.” It is the

story of one man’s search for a path and for the shaman/wisdom teacher
who might help him find it. While at heart a psychological study, the novel
also examines the social conditions that influence or impinge upon our
collective psyche—for inevitably, the search for greater individual con-
sciousness is a search for the consciousness of the whole. In the subse-
quent chapter (Chap. 9), “Life Is Story: Tales and Journeys in Practical
Spirituality in the Aesthetic Plasma of Story in the Lila,” Barbara
A. Amodio tells us about the importance of story in life and how practical
spirituality is connected to creative storytelling. In Chap. 10 on creative
non-fiction, “Postmodernism, Groundlessness, and the Dual Portrait,”
Elizabeth S. Gunn tells us how creative non-fiction presents the de-­
centered “dual portrait” of characters and social processes which, like
meditative practices, “illuminate[s] the darkness of ignorance … we’re
also able to see how we could be open and relax.” Gunn finds resonance
between de-centering in the creation and functioning of dual portraits and
de-centering in postmodernism which de-centers master narratives of
modernity and practical spirituality which de-centers master narratives of
religion and religious practices.
The last two chapters in Part I present us a glimpse of the architecture
of the universe in which human spirituality is located. In Chap. 11,
“Concrete and Abstract Realities,” Henk de Weijer invites us to realize
the significance of the dynamic play of consciousness and energy for the
realization of practical spirituality in our vision and practice. Nina
Goncharova in Chap. 12, “Divine Path of Humanity: Co-creating ‘In the
Image of God,’” tells us her own passionate journey of walking with the
call of the path of humanity as a family. She invites us to join in the co-
creation of this divine path in the image of God.
With this, we come to Part II of our book, “Practical Spirituality and
Transformation of Religion and Societies,” which presents us different
perspectives on the work of practical spirituality in the transformation of
religions and societies from different traditions. This begins with Chap. 13
by Binod Kumar Agarwala, “Brahman and Karman: The Theory of
Institutional Action in the Bhagavadgı̄tā,” in which Agarwala tells us how
the Bhagavadgı̄tā presents us vision and practices of practical spirituality as
spiritual action which is confined not only at the individual realm but also
permeates institutions. This is followed by Chap. 14 by Pamela Frydman,
“Practical Spirituality: Judaic and Multi-faith Practices of Transformations,”
in which Frydman tells us about the vision and practice of practical spiri-
4 A. K. GIRI

tuality from Judaism and other contemporary initiatives such as that of

Swami Chidananda Saraswati from Rishikesh, India, who is using spiritual
resources to create a clean environment. Frydman also tells us about
United Religions Initiative founded in San Francisco which is working
toward inter-religious dialogues and multi-faith harmony in communities
and countries around the world. Practical spirituality here becomes mani-
fold action and imagination of taking care of the self, other, and the world,
and Frydman tells us about its root in Judaism: “In Judaism, caring for our
planet and its inhabitants is considered part of helping to make the world
a better place, which is called in Hebrew tikkun olam. Tikkun means
repair. Olam means world or universe. Every act, word, consideration and
accommodation that helps make the world a better place is a form of tik-
kun olam.”
Frydman’s chapter is followed by Shlomit C. Schuster’s chapter
(Chap. 15), “Practical Spirituality and the Desert Fathers,” in which Schuster
presents us the vision, life, and histories of desert fathers and how they
followed paths of practical spirituality. Schluster tells us how, in addition to
Christ, the Desert Fathers were inspired by the ascetic lifestyle of Jewish
prophets such as “Elijah, Elisha, and John the Baptist in their quest for
sanctity and solitude.” The practical wisdom of the Desert Fathers is
mostly expressed in short stories or in aphorisms. Some of the Desert
Fathers like John Cassian (360–435) introduced Eastern monasticism to
the Western world. Schuster tells us that spirituality of the Desert Fathers
has a continuing influence on different spiritual practices today. Chapter 16
by Muhammad Maroof Shah is on the affirmative spirituality of the Sufis.
Shah tells us how Sufis follow a path of inclusivism against totalizing nar-
ratives of exclusion and annihilation. Shah’s chapter is followed by Sara
Wolcott’s chapter (Chap. 17), “Quaker Process as Practical Spirituality for
the Anthropocene Age.” Quakers for centuries have been creating a spiri-
tuality of peace and communal discernment where participants come to
discernment about issues at hand. “Communal discernment is a key ele-
ment of practical spirituality” which, emerging from and at work in the
Quaker mode of spiritual seeking, has a universal significance. Wolcott also
tells us how Quakers are now applying their spiritual ways to confront the
challenge of climate change.
Wolcott’s chapter on the Quakers is followed by Melinda Reidinger’s
chapter (Chap. 18) on paganism who in her chapter, “Paganism as Practical
Spirituality,” tells us: “The majority of Pagans’ belief systems are rooted in
Pantheism, the credo that deity is imminent in Nature, or ‘Nature is my
 PRACTICAL SPIRITUALITY AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT… 5

god,’ with the words deity or god signifying ‘objects of deepest rever-
ence.’” For Reidinger, “Learning to perceive the magic within oneself and
one’s surroundings creates the habit of living in moments in grace:
moments when one is really paying attention, time enjoyed in the con-
scious presence of what we may believe to be most sacred.” Chapter 19 by
Karminder Ghuman and Mohinder Pal Singh on Sikhism, “Beyond Self to
Society and Sustainability: Lesson in Practical Spirituality from Sikhism,”
tells us about visions and pathways of practical spirituality from Sikhism
which work for the creation and cultivation of socially positive enlightened
souls and society. It tell us about the epochal journey of Guru Nanak from
1500 to 1524 which includes traveling to Mecca and Benares as an aspect
of practical spirituality. In our present-day world we also need to under-
take such travels for realization of practical spirituality which can create a
new hermeneutics of self, culture, and society where we move from self to
other, cultures to cultures, and create a multi-topial hermeneutics where
we walk and meditate across multiple topoi, terrains, and landscapes of our
world (Giri 2016).2 In Chap. 20, “Practical Spirituality and the
Transformation of Political Power: The Great Law of Peace and the
Influence of Iroquois Women and Policies on Early US Women Suffragists,”
Julie M. Geredien tells us how practical spirituality is concerned with social
liberation and transformation of political power. She tells us about the
early Woman Suffrage Movement in the USA led by women such as
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage who strove for not only
women’s rights but also the establishment of a new social and political
order. They drew inspiration from the Great Law Peace among the
Iroquois promulgated hundreds of years ago. As Geredien writes:

Gage and Stanton were relating to the Great Law of Peace about 800 years
after its inception and obviously never met Deganawidah, or heard him
speak. But they recognized the poverty of their own social condition and the
relative wealth of the Iroquoian women, whose culture and rights to partici-
pation in government and to authority in the home protected their dignity
and agency. Gage and Stanton knew they needed to address the injustice of
inequality and structural violence in U.S. society and could recognize the
immense transformative socio-spiritual potential of Iroquoians’ guiding
visions of law and justice.

Geredien’s chapter is followed by Chap. 21, “Tolstoy and Practical

Spirituality,” in which Christian Bartolf tells us how Tolstoy charts path-
6 A. K. GIRI

ways of practical spirituality through his works like “My Confession”

(1879), “My Religion” (1884), and “Kingdom of God is Within You.”
Tolstoy gave active support to the non-violent movement of the
Doukhobors. According to Bartolf, “Tolstoy’s active support of the
Doukhobors, alongside that of the Quaker’s and famous intellectuals like
Peter Kropotkin, led to the inevitable foundation of a new spiritual reli-
gion which Tolstoy had already exposed in his work The Gospel In Brief
first published in German language (‘Kurze Darlegung des Evangeliums,’
Leipzig 1892) which was banned and never published in Russia during his
lifetime.”3 This work influenced many including the philosopher
Wittgenstein who in it found the core messages of “Renunciation, libera-
tion from passions and voluntary simplicity in order to serve the spirit
which is in every human being—and which makes all men ‘sons of God.’”
This influenced Wittgenstein who after his father’s death gave away the
immense fortune he inherited. Wittgenstein was concerned with transfor-
mation of suffering in his philosophy and this may have been influenced by
Tolstoy’s vision and practice of practical spirituality.4
This engagement with practical spirituality and Tolstoy is followed by
Chap. 22 by Bernie Meyer on practical spirituality and Gandhi. Tolstoy
had influenced Gandhi, among others, and Bernie Meyer tells us about his
own experience with practical spirituality, inspired as it is by Gandhi,
Martin Luther King, Jr., and Ivan Illich.5 Meyer was ordained as a Catholic
priest and he worked in the inner city Ohio in the USA. He joined Clergy
Intern Program spending time on the streets and in institutional situations
“experiencing the way ordinary urban people live, cope, and survive.” As
Meyer tells us: “We often did this anonymously so that we would know
what it was really like.” During the 1960s, Meyer worked with the
American civil rights movements and was influenced by Ivan Illich’s cri-
tique of the clergymen being separated from the people. He spent a year
at Illich’s center in Cuernavaca in Mexico and after return founded the
Cleveland Catholic Peace Movement. Meyer then chose to marry and he
took it as a kind of civil disobedience on his part for which he was excom-
municated from the church but he continued his work after this as a lay
worker. He has also been playing the role of Gandhi in the USA and India,
receiving the name American Gandhi.
It is fitting that Meyer’s chapter is followed by Predrag Cicovacki’s
engaging chapter (Chap. 23) on building a peaceful world where he pres-
ents us pathways of practical spirituality from Mahatma Gandhi and Albert
Schweitzer. This is followed by Paul Schwartzentruber’s chapter (Chap. 24),
 PRACTICAL SPIRITUALITY AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT… 7

“Falling Together: Practical Spirituality in an Impractical World,” in

which Schwartzentruber tells us how “practical spirituality is the dynamic
which holds the religious view of the whole in a creative tension with the
all-too-human view of momentary and precarious self-awareness.”
Chapter 25 by Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim, “Thomas Berry: A
New Cosmology and Practical Spirituality,” presents us the vision, life,
and spiritual cosmology of Thomas Berry. This is followed by an engage-
ment with Jacques Derrida by Nishant Alphonse Irudayadason who in
Chap. 26, “Mysticism, Practical Spirituality, and Hospitality,” helps us
walk and meditate with Derrida and draw lessons for creative pathways
of practical spirituality especially his meditations on mysticism and hos-
pitality. In his insightful Afterword to this volume, Piet Strydom urges
us to realize the worlds of mindful practices that the vision and move-
ments of practical spirituality creates. Strydom makes creative bridges
between critical thinking and spiritual quest which is inspiring and I
hope this as well as our volume would inspire transformative thinking,
action and meditation in seeking souls, groups, spiritual cooperatives
and movements around the world.

Notes
1. For Taylor, “This affirmation originally was a Christian-inspired move. It
exalted practical agape […]” (Taylor 2011: 18). Bishop Desmond Tutu
helps us understand this: “[…] Christianity is not a religion of virtue.
Christianity is a religion of grace. Can we help as Church to transform our
societies so that they are more people-friendly, more gentle, more caring,
more compassionate, more sharing?” (Tutu 1994: 102). Asking such ques-
tions brings religions in rebellions against the constraints of domination. As
Unger challenges us to realize:
The religion of the future would rebel against these constraints […] It
would respond to the problem of belittlement, the diminishment of our
share in the attributes of divinity. Its commanding aim would be the
enhancement of life, not of power, and of power only insofar as power
serves life. Life for everyone, as a condition of life for everyone. It
would amount to a revolution in the religious history of humanity.
(Unger: 8–9)
8 A. K. GIRI

2. Multi-topial hermeneutics builds upon the seminal work of Raimundo

Panikkar on diatopical hermeneutics which the eminent social theorist
Boaventura de Sousa Santos presents us thus:
The aim of diatopical hermeneutics is to maximize the awareness of the
reciprocal incompleteness of cultures by engaging in a dialogue, as it
were, with one foot in one culture and the other in another—hence its
diatopical character. Diatopical hermeneutics is an exercise in reciprocity
among cultures that consists in transforming the premises of
­argumentation in a given culture into intelligible and credible arguments
in another. (2014: 92)
Santos here talks about putting one’s feet in cultures which resonates with
my idea of footwork, footwork in landscapes of self, culture, and society as
part of creative research (cf. Giri 2012). Hermeneutics does not mean only
the reading of texts and cultures as texts but also foot-walking with texts and
cultures as foot walks and footworks resonating with what Heidegger calls a
hermeneutics of facticity (cf. Mehta 2004). It also means walking and medi-
tating with cultures and texts as foot-working meditation while, as Thoreau
(1947) would suggest, we walk like camels and ruminate while walking.
This transforms hermeneutics itself into a manifold act of democratic and
spiritual transformation which involves related processes of root works,
route walks, root meditations, route meditations, memory work, and cul-
tural work. Practical spirituality as a multi-topial hermeneutics involves a
new trigonometry of creativity involving movements and meditations with
Travel, Truth, and Translation which is explored in my following poem:

Three T and More

Travel, Truth and Translation
Travelling with Truth
Translating Truth in Travel
In Between the Relative and the Relational
Absolute and Approximate
Translating While Travelling
Self, Culture and Divine
Beyond the Annihilating Tyranny of the Singular
A New Trinity of Prayer
A New Multiple of Sadhana and Surrender.

3. Bill Schardt and David Large tell us:

[…] Gospel in Brief […] comes from the period of his religious and moral
writings between 1879 and 1902. It is a fusion of the four Gospels, the
purpose of which is to seek an answer to the problem of how we should
 PRACTICAL SPIRITUALITY AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT… 9

live. It is both philosophical and practical, rather than theological and

spiritual, in its intention.
4. As Schardt and Lange tell us:
[…] he started reading the Gospel in Brief on September 1st 1914 and
subsequently carried it with him at all times, memorizing passages of it
by heart. He became known to his comrades as the man with the gospels,
constantly recommending the book to anyone who was troubled.
Wittgenstein himself said that the book essentially kept him alive.
5. Though it is important to remember as Bhikhu Parekh (2015) argues that
though Gandhi was influenced by Tolstoy his experiments with non-­violence
and spirituality were uniquely his own.

References
Giri, Ananta Kumar. 2016. “With and Beyond Epistemologies from the South:
Ontological Epistemology of Participation, Multi-topial Hermeneutics and the
Contemporary Challenges of Planetary Realizations.” Paper.
Giri, Ananta Kumar. 2012. Sociology and Beyond: Windows and Horizons. Jaipur:
Rawat Publications.
Mehta, J.L. 2004 [1990]. “Life-Worlds, Sacrality and Interpretive Thinking.” In
idem, Philosophy and Religion: Essays in Interpretation, pp. 236–253. Delhi:
Indian Council of Philosophical Research.
Parekh, Bhikhu. 2015. Debating India: Essays on Indian Political Discourse. Delhi:
Oxford University Press.
Santos, Boaventura de Sousa. 2014. Epistemologies from the South: Justice Against
Epistemicide. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.
Schrade, Bill and David Large. “Wittgenstein, Tolstoy and the Gospel in Brief.”
The Philosopher LXXXXIX Accessed from the web.
Taylor, Charles. 2011. “Irish Murdoch and Moral Philosophy,” pp. 3–23. In idem,
Dilemmas and Connections: Selected Essays, Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. Press.
Thoreau, Henry David. 1947. “Walking.” In Portable Thoreau. New York: Viking.
Tutu, Desmond. 1994. “Towards Koinonia in Faith, Life and Witness,”
pp. 93–102. In On the Way To Fuller Koinonia. Geneva: Word Council of
Churches, Faith and Order Paper No. 166.
Wallis, Jim. 2000. Faith Works: Leaves from the Life of an Activist Preacher.
New York: Random House.
 PART I

Practical Spirituality: Understanding

New Modes of Thinking and
Transformative Practice
 CHAPTER 2

The Calling of Practical Spirituality

Ananta Kumar Giri

Introduction and Invitation

Practical spirituality is a multi-dimensional movement of transformation and
quest for beauty, dignity and dialogues in self, culture and society. Practical
spirituality also involves transformation of religion, science, politics, self and
society. Practical spirituality seeks to transform religion in the direction of
creative practice, everyday life, and struggle for justice and dignity. Practice
here is not just practice in the conventional sense, for example, in traditions
of American pragmatism (cf. Aboulafia and Kemp 2002) or anthropological
conception of practice as offered by Clifford Geertz (1973), Pierre Bourdieu
(1971), and Jurgen Habermas (1971). These conceptions suffer from an
entrenched dualism such as theory and practice and immanence and tran-
scendence and work with a notion of subject which is predominantly
“techno-practitioner”1 and cut off from its inescapable and integral links

This chapter is a revised version of a paper first presented at the International

Seminar, “Science and Religion in Modern India,” New Delhi, February 2006
and subsequently presented in seminars and workshops in India and Europe and
some versions of it have come out in Giri (2013) and Paranjape (2008).

A. K. Giri (*)
Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India

© The Author(s) 2018 13

A. K. Giri (ed.), Practical Spirituality and Human Development,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0803-1_2
14 A. K. GIRI

with transcendence. But practice in practical spirituality is simultaneously

immanent and transcendent2 and the actor here is simultaneously a “techno-
practitioner” and “transcendentally real self.” Practical spirituality embod-
ies immanent transcendence, as for example in music3 or in the experience
of transcendence in our various moments of everyday life—love, medita-
tions, scientific engagements, and other activities of life and in society (cf.
Bhaskar 2002).
Practical spirituality emphasizes experience and realization—self, God,
and world—in and through practice but at the same time nurtures the
humility not to reduce these only to practice. In its emphasis upon experi-
ence and realization practical spirituality has close kinship with the spirit of
science which embodies, in the words of Albert Einstein, a holy spirit of
inquiry. In its emphasis upon practice, practical spirituality stresses that
without taking part in practice we cannot realize truth—religious or oth-
erwise. Practical spirituality involves manifold experiments with Truth as
well as truths where truth is not a thing but a landscape of meaning, expe-
rience, and co-realization.
Practical spirituality also emphasizes on transformative practice, which
leads to self-transformation, cultural transformation, and world transfor-
mation. For example, poverty, inequality, and oppression have been chal-
lenges of humanity for long and here practical spirituality has generated
varieties of transformative movements in its struggle against oppression
and domination. There are movements of practical spirituality from differ-
ent religions of the world as well as from traditions of emancipatory strug-
gles such as revolt against slavery, workers’ movements, women’s
movements, ecological movements, and varieties of other transformative
struggles in discourse, society, and history. Liberation theology in Islam,
Buddhism, and Christianity is a recent example of practical spirituality.4 In
Indian traditions practical spirituality has manifested itself in the
Upanishads, the vision and practice of seekers such as Buddha, Bhakti
movements, Swami Vivekananda’s vision of practical Vedanta, Sri
Aurobindo’s strivings for Life Divine, and Gandhi’s experiments with
Truth and struggles for liberation.5 Movements such as the Bhakti move-
ment have involved struggles against caste and gender domination with
new songs of self and social liberation. They have also embodied efforts to
go beyond denominational concepts of truth and religion. They have
involved not only struggles for justice but also embodied border-crossing
dialogues. We see this, for example, in the Sant tradition of India, which
like Sufism and Sikhism is a product of a transformative dialogue between
 THE CALLING OF PRACTICAL SPIRITUALITY 15

Hinduism and Islam (Das 1982; Uberoi 1996). Thus practical spirituality
involves both struggles for dignity and new initiatives in transformative
dialogues across borders.

Pathways of Practical Spirituality

In fact, practical spirituality involves both practical struggles for a better
world and practical discourses for spiritual realization and regeneration
going beyond denominational fixation—not only in terms of boundaries
among religions but also in terms of boundaries between science and reli-
gion, material and spiritual.6 Practical spirituality urges us to realize that
through undertaking concrete activities to ameliorate suffering we can
realize God. From the Christian tradition, theologian Johannes B. Metz
(1981) urges us to realize that the Christian goal of unity of faith or what
is called ecumenicism cannot be solved at the level of doctrines alone. It
can only be solved by undertaking concrete activities in addressing practi-
cal problems of life and society with the “Son of Man.”
Habitat for Humanity is a movement from within contemporary
Christianity which tries to worship God by building houses with and for
people. It is built on the foundations of “Economics of Jesus” and
“Theology of the Hammer” (Giri 2002). We see a similar emphasis upon
devotional labour and sharing in Swadhyaya, a socio-spiritual movement
in contemporary India which can be looked at as an instance of practical
spirituality from within contemporary Hinduism (Giri 2008). Both
Habitat and Swadhyaya despite their limitations to always hold up their
own ideals urge us to be more dialogical compared to their fundamentalist
counterparts in Christianity and Hinduism. But the dialogical dimension
of practical spirituality is multi-dimensional: it embodies dialogue not only
between religions but also between religion and science and also between
the material and the transcendental. Swami Vivekananda has captured a
bit of this sensibility in his vision of practical Vedanta which has both a
dimension of struggle for justice and hinting towards dialogue (see
Rolland 1954).7 Practical spirituality, for Swami Vivekananda (1991: 354),
urges us to realize that “the highest idea of morality and unselfishness goes
hand in hand with the highest idea of metaphysical conception.” This
highest conception pertains to the realization that man himself is God:
“You are that Impersonal Being: that God for whom you have been
searching all over the time is yourself—yourself not in the personal sense
but in the impersonal” (Vivekananda 1991: 332). The task of practical
16 A. K. GIRI

spirituality begins with this realization but does not end there: its objective
is to transform the world. The same Swami Vivekananda thus challenges:
“The watchword of all well-being of all moral good is not ‘I’ but ‘thou.’
Who cares whether there is a heaven or a hell, who cares if there is an
unchangeable or not? Here is the world and it is full of misery. Go out into
it as Buddha did, and struggle to lessen it or die in the attempt”
(Vivekananda 1991: 353). What practical spirituality stresses is that the
knowledge that one is Divine, that one is part of a Universal Being, facili-
tates this mode of relationship with the world. This knowledge is however
not for the acquisition of power over the other; rather it is to worship her
as God. In the words of Vivekananda: “Human knowledge is not antago-
nistic to human well-being. On the contrary, it is knowledge alone that
will save us in every department of life, in knowledge as worship”
(Vivekananda 1991: 353).
Practical spirituality emphasizes upon continued practice, not only on
euphoric moments of realization, enthusiasm, and miraculous experience.
As Robert Wuthnow tells us drawing on his work with the spiritual quest
of the artists: “Many artists speak of their work as a form of meditation.
For some the sheer rhythm of the daily routine brings them closer to the
essence of their being. Writing all morning or practicing for the next musi-
cal performance requires mental and emotional toughness […] For spiri-
tual dabbers the insight that these artists provide is that persistence and
hard work may still be the best way to attain spiritual growth” (Wuthnow
2001: 10). For Wuthnow:

It is only a slight exaggeration to say that the artists have increasingly

become the spiritual leaders of our time. Artists are sometimes among the
few who take time to reflect on the deeper meaning of life and to search for
ways to express both the turmoil of their search and the tentative insights
they have gained. They usually have more questions than answers, yet their
work celebrates wholeness and coherence as well as bewilderness and mys-
tery. (2001: 266)

Practical spirituality accepts the brokenness of the world and does not
want to assert any totalizing unity or totalitarian absorption.8 At the same
time, practical spirituality is a striving for wholeness in the midst of our
inescapable brokenness and fragmentation of this world. This wholeness is
emergent as it is manifested in the work of the artists. Artists strive to paint
landscapes of emergent wholeness in the midst of fragmentation and
Another random document with
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VALLANKUMOUKSELLINE
KRÄÄTÄRI.

Oottako kuullu mistä Säntin pappa on kotoosi?

No siäl on ny tapahtunu kaksinkertaane erehrys.

Siäll'on yks leskiakka vanhoolla päivillänsä ostanu yhreltä

isännältä ittellensä tuvan likiltä vaivaastalua. Ja siinä tuvas asuu
turkinpunaane kräätäri, jok’ei tiänny kaupasta mitää, eikä tuntenu
sitä uutta mökin omistajaakaa.

Eikä se mumma liioon tuntenu koko kräätäriä. Tiäsi vaan, jotta

mökis jokin asuu.

Sitte se leskimumma tuumas jotta:

— Oliskahan se isäntä, jolta mä mökin ostin, pettäny mua. Jos

seinähirret olsivakki kovaa lahot?

Ja sitä se mumma funteeras niin kauan, jotta viimmeen ettii

kuustuumaasen rautanaulan ja lähti iltahämyys koittelemhan uuren
mökkinsä seiniä.
 Se turkinpunaane kräätäri, jok’on kovasti ajatellu paljo asioota
ennenku siitä äkkijyrkkä tuli, tuumas nykkin parastaikaa sitä
menettelytapapropleemia n’otta s’oli aiva kipparas pöytänsä päällä
klasinviäres ja justhi luuras klasia vasthan yhren kapitalistin uuren
housunpultun läpitte jotta:

— Tulikaha tua sauma ny suara — —

Kun se samas näki sen vanhan koukkuleuka akan tulovan suuri

rautanaula käres aiva ku lahtari pistinhyäkkäykses suaraa kräätärin
mökille.

— Siunakkohon! — kalpeni kräätäri n’otta se tuli aiva valkooseksi.

Pöksyt putos käsistä ja sakset pöyrältä.

— Nyt ne lahtarit hyäkkää — kiljaasi kräätäri, pyärtyy ja putos

pöyrältä. Mutta sen otti lonkkahan niin kipiää, jotta se heti virkos.

— Akka, akka, prässirauta tänne! — karjuu kräätäri. Ny ne

hyäkkää.

Akka toi takanporosta prässirauran n’otta tuhka pöläji ja kaffipannu

kaatuu silmällensä porohon.

Kräätäri hairas prässirauran, nosti sen korkialle, hyppäs oven

ethen ja rupes veisaamahan kualinvirttä jotta:

»Tää on viimmeenen taisto,

rintamaan ny yhtykää — —»

— Kuuleksä akka! Rintamaan ny yhtykää — — tuu tuu säki,

kuuleksä.
 Silloon vasta kräätärin akkaki käsitti. Se pani esti vasthan jotta::

— M’oon sosiaalitemokraatti, enkä kannata aseellista esiintymistä

——
Ja rupes itkiä köllöttamhan.

Mutta kräätäri oli hirmunne. Se haukkuu silmänräpsährökses

akkansa yhteesen rintaman ja tyavaen asian petturiksi, kavaltajaksi,
lakonrikkuriksi. Sanoo Noskeksiki.

Ja kun ei mikää näyttäny auttavan niin karjaasi jotta:

— Tuukko peijakas rintamahan, elikkä mä mollaan tällä

prässirauralla!

Mikäs siinä auttoo. Akan piti ottaa isoot sakset kouraha ja asettua
ovenpiälehen.

Ja kauan aikaa ne orotti sitä hyäkkäystä ovesta. Niin kauan, jotta

kräätärin piti jo vaihtaa prässirautaa toisehe käthe.

Mutta mitää ei tullu. Kuuluu vain ympäri mökkiä piäntä kropinaa.

Ja aina vähän päästä kolahti seinähä.

Kräätäri meni luuraamaha klasista viimmeen ja näki sen akan

kiärtävän tupaa suuri rautanaula käres. Ja aina vähän päästä se
tuikkas seinän rakohon ja jotaki motaji itteksensä.

— Mikä herranähköhön tua on? Ja mitä se teköö, noituuko se —

siunas kräätärin akka, joka niinku kaikki tiätäävät, on kovasti utelias
ihminen.
 Kräätäri pani prässirauran pois ja rupes funteeraamahan ja taas
luuras.

— S’oon hullu! — sanoo kräätäri. — Vaivaastaloosta karaannu.

Ja silloo kräätärin sisu nousi. Se sanoo akallensakki jotta:

— Siinä ny näjet tämän porvarillisen yhteeskunnan kuinka se

hoitaa asiootansa, jotta hullukki pääsöö vaivaastaloosta karkuhan.
— Mutta mä otanki tuan ämmän kiinni ja viän esimiähelle, niin
saavat maksaa kiinniottajaasta 25 mk. Ja se on porvarien pussista
pois!

Kräätäri lähti pihalle, kiärti toisen kautta mökin taa, hiipii akan
seljän taa ja sitte tormootti sen kimppuhu. Hairas takaapäi ympärinsä
ja puserti lujaa.

— Ähä akka! — kiljaasi. — Nyt lährethän vaivaastaloolle!

Akka krääkääsi niin lujaa ku taisi, potkii ja huitoo n’otta n’oli heti
kumos ja pyäriivät ja huutivat. Mutta kräätäri piti vallankumouksen
koko ankaruurella akasta kiinni, ähkyy ja puserti, eikä päästäny irti,
vaikka aiva oli kynnenalustat kuallehella verellä.

Ja te tiärättä, jotta ku kräätäri oikee saa haverretuksi miähestä

kiinni, niin huiskun! Ei siinä auta!

Ja niin lähti tämäki kräätäri kuljethon akkaa vaivaastaloolle, hikos,

ähkyy, puhkuu ja manas ku lappalaane ainaku se akka sai
potkaastuksi sitä kintuulle.

Mutta menthin siinä! Menthin ojahankin monta kertaa, mutta aina

se kräätäri sai traihatuksi akan ojasta maantiälle. Musteloomia,
kuhmuja ja naarmuja saivat molemmat ja kerran ne kaatuuvat niin
pahoon, jotta kräätäriltä meni aiva klanssi nenänpäästå pois.

Niin toi kräätäri sen akan esimiähen pihalle asti. Mutta siinä loppuu
voimat. Kräätärin piti ruveta huuthon apua.

Esimiäs tormaski pihalle jotta:

— Mikä kauhia täälä — —

Ja kräätäri seliitti jotta:

— Täs on yks hullujen huanehesta karaannu akka, joka meinas

mun tappaa.

Esimiäs kattoo sitä akkaa oikee tarkasti. Ja se hämmästyy.

— Tämähän on se leski, jok’on ostanu kräätärin torpan — sanoo

esimiäs.

— Tua peijakkahan hullu — huuti se akka. — Kun mä menin

koittohon mökin seiniä — — —

Ja samas se akka mojahutti sitä kräätäriä niin vastapläsiä ja

sylkääsiki jotta aiva ympärinsä.

Ja siin’oli totiset paikat ja tylpät keskustelut ennenkö kotia

lährettihin esimiähen pihalta.

Oikeuthen viälä mennähän ja tohturia on käytetty. Muttei tohturi

tahro löytää siitä akasta mitään vikaa, josta passaas oikee
päällekantaa. —

Ja kräätäri on kovasti krätyyne ja häjyllä päällä.

PLUMPÄRI 50 VUATTA.

Oottako kuullu mikä skantaali ny on tapahtunu?

Herra Plumpärill'oli syntymäpäivä eileen ja siitä tuli suuri skantaali.

Hra Plumpäri täytti nyt sen viirennenkymmenennen ajastaikansa

eileen ja se meni aiva plöröksi!

Hra Plumpäri oli salaases miälesnänsä ajatellu, jotta tänä

merkillisenä päivänä tahtoovat kunnan arvovaltaaset kansalaaset
soituun ja lauluun, kukkaasin, lähetystöön, atressin, tilikrammiin,
kultakelloon ja hopialusikoon osoottaa yhteeseen, jakamattoman ja
vilpittömän kunniootuksensa hra Plumpärille hänen suurista
ansioostansa kansan ja yhteeskunnan hyväksi.

Ja juhlapuheeta pirethän ja kehuthan ja ylistethän ja toivotethan

pitkää ikää ja monia teräksisen tarmon ja tyän vuasia hra Plumpärille
viälä ereskinpäin.

Ja kaupunginvaltuusto tuloo niis suuris silkkipytyys lähetystönä hra

Plumpärin kotia ja puheenjohtaja rykii ja puhuu koko kaupungin
pualesta ja sanoo, jotta hra Plumpäri on ollu suureksi siunaukseksi
yhteeskunnalle syntymästänsä asti. Sitte se kääntyy niiren toisten
silkkipyttyjen pualehen aiva pleikinä ja huutaa jotta:

— Hurrathan ny oikee lujaa tälle Plumpärille.

Ja sitte ne hurraa ku pasuunasta ja nostaavat niitä silkkipyttyjä.

Ja sitte pitää hra Plumpärin vastata ja kiittää ja pitää puheen.

Ja siitä puheen pirost'ei tuu mitää! Sen hra Plumpäri tiäsi heti
ajattelemata. Mutta puhet pitää pitää sen tiäsi hra Plumpäri kans.

Sen pitää pitää, vaikka sen tuhat olis!

Ja se oli kamala paikka.

Hra Plumpäri ähkyy ja kulki kamarisnansa ku karhu. Repii tukkaa

päästänsä ja aina vähän päästä kattoo suurehe nurkkapeilihi. Ja
taas kulki ja ähkyy ja hikos ympärinsä. Ja istuu välis ja taas lähti
kiärtämhän. Ja ku frouva Plumpäri tuli kamarihi ja sanoo jottta:

— Voi voi rakas pualisoni, ruaka jähtyy —

Niin hra Plumpäri kattoo niin pitkää ja rumasti frouvansa päälle,

jotta se häipyy ku hiljaane haamu kamarista, meni ruakasalihi ja itki.

Mutta hra Plumpäri se kulki.

Ja ku kolmen tiiman päästä ovehe knoputethin ja frouva hiljaa

kysyy avaamen reijästä jotta:

— Ekkö sä rakas ukkoseni jo tuu syämähän?

 Niin hra Plumpäri, joka ny oli tullu toiselta pualelta päätä aiva
harmaaksi ja toiselta pualelta kaljuksi, hyäkkäs ovhen, potkii ja huuti
aiva oikohonsa jotta:

— Menkää — — —

Se huuti niin kauhian rumasti frouvallensa, jotta se pyärtyy heti ja

kaatuu ku kapu oven taa.

Ja siitä tuli sellaane meteli, jotta heti soitethin tohturia ja se tuliki

kohta. Ja virvootti sen frouvan ja oli kovana hra Plumpärille ku se
tualla lailla frouvallensa huutaa, jotta se pyärtyy. Hra Plumpäri pillahti
silloo itkuhu ja seliitti tohturille kuinka s'oon hermostunu kun se nyt
täyttää 50 vuatta ja sen pitää pitää puheen. Eikä siitä tuu mitää!

Niin hra tohturi sanoo jotta:

— Hra Plumpärin ei pirä olla tyhmä ja päätänsä vaivata

sellaasella, jost'ei kerran mitää tuu. Kaikki suuret yhteeskunnan
hyväntekijät, jokka teköövät yhteeselle kansalle ja isänmaalle sen
hyvän tyän, jotta aikanansa täyttäävät ikävuatensa ja kestittöövät
ystäviänsä ruaalla ja juamalla, tilaavat puheensa joltakin köyhältä
maisterilta, jok'ei ikänä täytä 50 vuatta, ja puhua prätistäävät sen
sitte. Omanansa tiätysti, kun s'oon kerran ostettu 20 markalla.

Ja kun hra Plumpäri sen kuuli niin se tuli niin kovasti ilooseksi,
jotta se hairas tohturia kaulasta ja maksoo 100 mk liikaa ja haastoo
sen tohturin kans syntymäpäivällensä.

Ja frouvaansa se klappas ja taputteli ja otti ja oikee pussaski,

n'otta frouva oikee hämmästyy kun ei s'oo pussannu pitkähä aikhan.
Siit'on ny ainaki 7 vuatta sitte.
 Mutta hra Plumpäri sanoo jotta:

— Mistä mä ne kaikki herraan konstit tietääsin, kun mä ny ensi

kerran julkisesti täytän.

Ja hra Plumpäri tilas puheen ja frouva leipoo ja pesthin ja

tryykättihin ja hra Plumpäri, joka kovasti kannattaa kialtolakia, tilas 2
pullua konjakkia, 2 pullua viiniä, pualiskan munkkia ja yhren heelan
vanhaa punssia ja osti kaikista komjimman sikaarilooran, joka
maksoo yli 300 markkaa.

Kaikki oli valmista.

Toffelit paikoolla.

Eikä tahtonu tulla unta olleskaa. Vasta tuas kolomen aikana hra
Plumpäri pääsi unehen, mutta s'oli kovasti rauhatoonta ja aiva se
kiakkas ja väänteli ittiänsä.

Molemmat korvat olivat aina höröllä, jotta koska rupiaa kuulumhan

laulua.

Kuuren aikana kuuluu jotakin kropinaa ja hra Plumpäri poukahti

pysthyn ja toffelit jalkoohi ja se puhet yäpöyrältä käthen ja sitte
housuuhi ja kaprokki päälle ja aukaashon ovia.

Pimiäs porstuas se tormootti piian päälle, joka krääkkäsi kauhiasti

ja rupes siunaamahan.

Ja kauan aikaa sai hra Plumpäri tuumata, ennenkö se käsitti, jotta

piika päästi sotamiähen uloos.
 Hra Plumpäri lähti takaasi sänkykamarihi, johna frouv'oli jo täyres
pukees, Hra Plumpäri sanoo vain jotta:

— Ei viälä. S'oli vain Hiltan aliupseeri.

Ja meni sitte karteekin raosta luuraamahan, eikö jo lauluseuraa

näjy.
Frouva meni valmistamhan kaffipöytää ja seliitti samalla
siveellisyyttä
Hiltalle.

Ja hra Plumpäri luuras karteekin takaa kello yhreksähän asti.

Eikä ketää tullu! Eikä mitää kuulunu!

— Mitä täm' on? — kyseli hra Plumpäri itteltänsä ja frouvalta.

— Täm'on skantaali — huuti frouva kello 10 aamulla ja pyärtyy.

— Kiittämättömyys on maailman palkka — huokaasi hra Plumpäri.

— Enkös mä oo täyttäny 50 vuotta niinku muukki?
YHTIÖKOKOUS.

Oottako kuullu kuinka tätä nykyä yhtiökokouksia pirethän?

Nythän on niin kova raha-aika, jott'ei auta muu ku koroottaa

osakepääomaa. Ja se on tyäläs yritys ja kamala paikka, kun rahaa ei
oo ja kaikki on sitä miältä jotta korootethan!

Niimpä yhres pitäjäs täälä Etelä-Pohjanmaalla oli kans täs hiljan

isännät ja pomomiähet kokoopunehet koroottamhan pääomaa.

Puheenjohtaja seliitti niinku asia on jotta:

— Tämä meirän yhtiö on erinomaasen tukevalla pohjalla ja taas

tulvana vuanna jaethan voittua niinku meijerilitviikis — — —

Ja isäntiä kovasti nauratti.

— Mutta ny on kova raha-aika — jatkoo puheenjohtaja.

— Niin on kovasti — — —

— Ja yhtiö tarvittis 300.000 mk maksuuhi, eikä tiärä mistä

saataas, kun rahat on kaikki — puheli puheenjohtaja.
 S'olis ollu murheellinen paikka, jos ei joukos olsi ollu yhtä viisasta
miästä. Se ehrootti jotta:

— Otethan pankista laihna ja korootethan osakepääomaa! Niinhän

sitä pruukathan.

— Kannatethan! — kuuluu yksimiälisesti.

— Onko se päätös? — kysyy puheenjohtaja.

— Joo.

— Ja uuret osakkehet jaetahan tasan?

— Kannatethan vilkkahasti! —

— Ja osakemaksut kootahan heti sisälle.

— Kannatethan! Kannatethan!

— Se on siis kokouksen päätös — sanoo puheenjohtaja ja

knapahutti taitavaa plyijypännällä pöytähän.

— Ja ny sitte päätethän siitä laihnanotosta pankista.

Taas nousi se viisas miäs ylhä ja sanoo:

— No sehän on jo päätetty asia. Mitäs siitä enää puhuthan.

Johtokunta kirjoottaa velkakirjan pankkihin ja nostaa rahat. Sitähän
varte se johtokunta onkin.

— Joo joo — sanoo puheenjohtaja — mutta m'oomma

johtokunnan miähet jo niin paljo takaamas tätä puulaakia, jotta
meirän nimellä ei enää nouse. Ja ny on raha pankis lujas. Sanothin
jotta pitää olla ainakin parikymmentä yhtiön osakasta takaamas.

Tuvas ruvettihin kovasti rykimähän.

— Niin että kyllä mä ehrootan, jotta tuata muukkin yhtiön

osakkahat kirjoottavat ittensä takausmiähiksi kun puulaaki on
yhteene.

Yks hairas kellonsa jotta:

— Voi ny sentähre ku kello on pian 7.

Ja sille tuli kiirus kotia, kun sen piti lähtiä emäntää kyyttihin
asemalle.

Toiset vaipuuvat niin syvihin tuuminkiihi, jotta n'ei kuullehet enää

mitää, vaikka puheenjohtaja monehen kertahan sanoo.

Ja muut tulivat niin levottomiksi, kun kauan oli jo istuttu, jotta

nousivat ylhä ja sanoovat jotta:

— Pitää vähä pistääpyä pihalla. Mä tuun kohta. — — —

Ja niin niitä rupes isäntiä kovasti puhistamhan jotta puheenjohtaja

viimmeen sanoo jotta:

— Eikhän oo paras tällätä sankoo oviloukkoho.

Mutta meni ne.

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