Postcard From The Holy Mountain
I am immersed in the beautiful madness of India.
I am in Tiruvannamalai, India, at the foot of the holy mountain, Arunachala, supposedly the physical manifestation of Lord Shiva. Tonight is the full moon so as many as 2 million Indians will come here to walk barefoot around the base of the mountain, a distance of 8 1/2 miles.
That’s why they have come here. Why have I come here? As ever, the answer is complicated. At the simplest level, to escape the brutality of the English winter. More particularly, I have come to try and escape a way of thinking that has been drilled into me since I was born - the rational, analytical, time-conscious, ever-calculating Western habit of mind.
The Western mind is extremely useful for practical purposes - for discovering how the physical world works. It has given us the computer I write on as well as countless other marvels. And yet, this effective, narrow, materialist, view of the world, for all its advantages seems to leave us hollow.
