What’s a Good Baul Doing in a Place Like This?
Palm Sunday, 2025
Here I am at the Casa, a Catholic Retreat Center in Scottsdale, Arizona, to spend Holy Week, from Palm Sunday until Easter, in a Catholic spiritual center run by Franciscan priests. Here I am, a practitioner of over forty years in a Baul/Hindu guru tradition, attending daily Mass, receiving communion and speaking the words of a liturgy that has been in mind and heart since early childhood. I know well when to kneel, how to genuflect, when to bow my head. And I also know how to fall into the depths of silence in between the actions. I love the songs, simple and a bit romantic as they often are. I want to bow down, before a cross, before another person, before a breathtaking tree …
Standing on the outdoor patio in front of the huge, brightly painted Our Lady of Guadalupe shrine to the Blessed Mother Mary, our palm fronds are raised as Father Vincent blesses them, throwing holy water into the air in every direction. Around him, women dressed in red and black lead us in song to a rhythm of drums, and soon the whole assemblage is rocking out. “Gonna put one foot in front of the other and move on out…” again and again, and they dance.
The choir behind them is strong, and the choirmaster at the microphone invokes a powerful response. Ecstatic voices surround me, echoing from far back on the grassy lawn, as over five hundred standing pilgrims crowd up for a closer look. A huge wooden cross, maybe twenty feet tall, dominates the space at the foot of the Guadalupe shrine, and it takes one woman and seven men to hoist it and process through the crowds to the outdoor altar where the Palm Sunday service will soon begin.
Shocked into silence and surprised, I feel my heart opened wide, and my solar plexus vibrating. Ah, yes, bodily prayer…a prayer with no need of words. This prayer cannot be explained, except for the sheer wonder of being immersed in something grander, something other. And the sight of that cross…! It is also terrifying. And, to know that all this praise and these shouts of hallelujah will be so short-lived! We, the same people who today proclaim our joyful welcome to the king, the messiah, will deny, condemn and crucify him (and her), a week later. I am one of that mob.
What mystery! What a metaphor for the condition of unconsciousness: I rejoice when things look good; I blame and shame and run away when they get bad…and on and on.
As we gather at the altar for the mass, the choir sings out “our trust is in Jesus.” (Yeah, right). But have any of us really understood this cross, this man or woman “Jesus,” or this message? Certainly, we can give vocal consent to such idea—“love thy neighbor as thyself”— and just as quickly co-opt the dharma to sell a “two-for-one” deal on a package of toothpaste. Like so many of those around me, I too have bought into the delusions of the false prophets who claim to speak in the Holy Name.
Lord have mercy!
And yet, even as nails will be forcibly driven into hands and feet in the days ahead, Jesus will pray: “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” This is the compassion of the bodhisattva. The compassion to which I, as the devotee, am called.
Holy Thursday—the Last Supper
The great church is full, with as many as 1200 persons. A group of local actors reads the story of the Last Supper and encourage all who wish to approach the altar, where many stations have been arranged for a ritual enactment of the “washing of the feet.” As Jesus did for the disciples on the night before his death, we wash the feet of one another, and more threatening still, allow our own feet to be washed.
I was reticent at first about this ritual. Actually, my thoughts were wrapped up in judging good and bad. But when others in my row stood and entered the aisle, I was among them—my body said yes! Sure, I didn’t want to be left out of the fun, and sure the ego was involved in some way, but…what the heck! So, I knelt at the feet of a young Hispanic woman and gently poured water on her blue-polished toes. I then took a clean towel and dried her feet, with devotion. She was a complete stranger and yet the action was familiar; in fact, it felt sacramental.
When our exchange was complete, she stood up and hugged me without a word. Then she left the seat and I took it, whereupon another woman, an elder, washed my feet.
Embarrassed? Shy? Certainly. But more…all bordering on a vulnerability and intimacy that is rarely ever experienced with a stranger. The power of the moment was contained until I returned to my bench. Then my body began to shake, and I wept profoundly. Surprisingly, there was no shame even as I covered my face with my hands and allowed myself the exquisite and blissful sense of a body in prayer.
Truth is, I was washing the feet of a stranger, but I was indeed washing the feet of my beloved husband, Jere, who had left his body in August of 2019. His precious feet, ugly toenails and all! Touching his feet, touching God’s feet…all the same. In that moment we were together, he and I, and the mysterious beloved, enveloped in grief and grace.
Kindly, the young man sitting next to me in the church pew reached over and placed his hand on my arm, asking, “Are you okay?” I assured him that I was okay, and I thanked him, even as my body continued to shake with the emotion of the moment. I was fortunate to remember to let the emotion have full rein. Soon, I looked up at the crowds who were still lining the aisles awaiting their turn to participate. Old men, children, young well-dressed women, a young man holding a baby in his arms. I am moved with compassion to witness their valiant attempts to express the love that has been revealed to them…the love that they are.
Why Am I Here?
What has moved me to celebrate this rare opportunity? I celebrate being immersed in an ocean of devotion and watching the faces and bodies of those who find their community, their sangha, and their sanctuary among these hundreds of others.
Today, being Easter Sunday, volunteers have set up 3000 chairs outside around a massive awning-covered altar; this, in preparation for the three ritual masses that will take place this morning. Imagine…if these chairs are filled (which I hear they will be) there might be up to 9,000 people gathered in prayer and praise in commemoration of a shared mystery of faith. The energy of devotion generated in this gathering is tremendous.
With a heart filled, compassion arises again. I see this as beautiful, as a type of “translational” spirituality, as Ken Wilbur named it. A form of worship that “translates” the chaos of existence into some sort of order, perhaps, to quell the human heart. But it is enough to touch, if only for a few hours, the lives of these fellow pilgrims. I imagine I can see on their faces that their souls are comforted. Their anxious minds are quieted, if briefly. I want this for them, just as I want it for myself.
It is good, right and just for me to connect to the bhakti roots of another tradition; to have the heart opened without judgment, as it has been throughout this week. My years of practice “in a place like this”—and as a Western Baul—has mostly been an immersion in the rasa of devotion. This experience of my Christian roots is a most gracious adjunct to the “Only God” universality that my Mahaguru, Yogi Ramsuratkumar, lived. I have been blessed to weep and to sing, to bow and to take the feet of another into my hands. When tears arise, they purify the mind. When silence descends, it expands the body. To live in gratitude, with no illusory boundaries . . .ah, just this.
Regina Sara Ryan
July 2025