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On my new book Blue Poppies: Why and How

“Choices are not only an expression of our freedom of will. Making choices is the way we form ourselves, the way we develop. By making choices, we create our views, dreams, and visions. We reinvent ourselves with each single choice we make.” (p.84)

Soon after Blue Poppies was published I received a questionnaire from the publisher that included a question about the main message of the book. In fact, I did not want to have the main message. Why did I then write this book?


My world is built upon the fundamental value of diversity—ethnic, religious, racial, cultural, etc.—and I see the need for understanding diversity in spiritual development too. There may be different messages in my book, and I hope that each one of you will find a message on a different page, in a different story. I wanted to write a book about my experience in the Himalaya in a way that will make you share that experience rather than just read about it. Thus, I did not want to offer any pre-digested message or anything that might sound like instruction. Instead, I offer images that could open a door to the world I describe, so that you can enter this world on your own and recreate it to match your personal search, your own ways of a spiritual or any other kind of development.


One of my main goals with this book was to de-mystify the concept of spirituality. This concept has been adopted by today’s society and many of you may know it intimately. Nevertheless, there is still a cloud of misunderstandings around this word. Spirituality, as I try to discuss it in Blue Poppies, belongs to daily life; it is part of a natural, human development—intellectual and psychological—it is not simply an attribute to some kind of privileged sages. Spiritual development, as I have learned in the Himalaya, is a development based on an ongoing awareness of the ways we choose to live— in other words, it is the development of mindful living.


So, if all that is true – then why do we need the Himalaya, the Vedas, or the teachers. Can we do without them?

I want to emphasize that there are many different paths to spiritual development. There are also many different spiritual communities, both in the and elsewhere in the world, which I did not write about in Blue Poppies. And, yes, we certainly could do without any of them. The question is … how?


My vantage point is that of someone who has studied, taught, and researched the development of human thought and the connections and commonalities between different times, cultures, and religions (this has been the main topic of my literary research, of my philosophy classes, and of my classes on cultural studies). For many years my students have been asking me: Why study Plato? Why read Kant? There is a number of answers to those questions! In my personal view, good spiritual teachers are as useful and as necessary in the world as piano teachers, language teachers, or tax accountants—we just frequently do not see it this way. One reason for missing this point is that many cults, sects, and religious movements have done a lot of damage to the notion of spirituality and, thus, basically to civilization. I have been very fortunate to have been taught by teachers who were helpful, constructive, practical, and loving, and I have lived in spiritual communities that care deeply about society, equality, poverty, education, or the environment. I believe that choosing a teacher, as any other choice we make, requires mindfulness. I have not idealized India and I have not closed my eyes to the many of the issues Indian society has. But, as I say in the beginning of the book, “India is like the human mind: It has so many layers. … And on some of India’s many, many levels of existence, as I say toward the end of the book, there are hidden spiritual depth, wisdom, purity, and innocence….” And it is in our power to select from the vast pool of ideas and beliefs that every culture, every religion, and every scripture have, only those ideas and beliefs that touch us personally and that make us feel that we are on the path to something good, positive, compassionate, and constructive.

In the history of both ancient and modern India, there has been a lot of blood sheds. Nevertheless, after 25 years of focusing on comparative religion and teaching religious philosophy in some of my classes, I realize that at heart the Hindu scriptures and the schools of thought based on them that developed over the centuries strongly promote open-mindedness, mindfulness, peace and tolerance—all things that we need to focus on in today’s world. I deeply believe that in the Himalaya, there are treasure troves of human thought – ancient and modern – that ought to be preserved and studied, for the sake of our search for a mindful living, but also for the sake of our civilization.




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