Ideas - Buying Buddha, Selling Rumi

Episode Date: July 30, 2024

Living in modern society is hard and so people often turn to the "mystical marketplace" where Westerners consume Eastern traditions to find some kind of healing balm for the ailments of modernity. *This episode won a Wilbur Award for broadcast excellence on spiritual issues and themes. It originally aired on Jan. 27, 2021.

My name is Graham Isidor. I have a progressive eye disease called keratoconus. Unmaying I'm losing my vision has been hard, but explaining it to other people has been harder. Lately, I've been trying to talk about it. Short Sighted is an attempt to explain what vision loss feels like by exploring how it sounds. By sharing my story, we get into all the things you don't see

about hidden disabilities. Short Sighted, from CBC's Personally, available now. This is a CBC Podcast. You want to go away for a year? Do you know what I felt when I woke up this morning, Delia? Nothing. No passion, no spark, no faith, no heat, absolutely nothing. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayed. And it just, it terrifies me. I mean, Jesus, this is like worse than death to me,

the idea that this is the person that I'm going to be from now on. The modern West can be a hard place to live in. The constant drive to be successful, to have more and to be more. They fall in love in their 20s, they get married, they do the granite countertop, white picket fence thing in their 30s, and somewhere in there they realize, this is not for me anymore. It's left many of us aching for something deeper, something more meaningful. The drive toward ever greater technological progress, toward greater acquisition, toward greater inequality, it's left many of us aching for a connection to some kind of deeper meaning, a deeper purpose.

I'm going to Italy, and then I'm going to David's Guru's ashram in India, and I'm going to end the year in Bali. Wildly successful books like Eat, Pray, Love chronicle that yearning, holding out the promise of contentment through accessing ancient wisdoms. That's harder to argue with. The beaches are nice, but why? Because Ketut told me I would. The guy with no teeth. That promise is often built around products and places that guarantee a shortcut to enlightenment.

When you're desperate in your life and some guy who, yes, looks a little like Yoda hands you a prophecy, you have to respond. Do you need a Xanax? Always. One of the things you see with the Orientalist marketplace or the mystical marketplace that's attached to the Orient are these kinds of dumbing down of the traditions. In this episode, I speak with Sophia Rose Arjana, a professor of religious studies at Western Kentucky University. Her book is called Buying Buddha, Selling Rumi, Orientalism and the Mystical Marketplace. We're calling this episode Buying Buddha, Selling Rumi. I am ready. Wonderful. Thank you so much for doing this. We might as well get right into it.

Why are you passionate about this topic? Well, this topic actually first came up in a graduate school class many years ago. And in one of the courses, we read this book by Charles Taylor, which is called A Secular Age. And Charles Taylor is this wonderful philosopher. And one of the things that that book kind of tries to get people to think about are the differences between pre-modernity and modernity. Charles Taylor is a Canadian philosopher and professor emeritus at McGill

University. He gave a series of talks in 1991 for the CBC Massey Lectures called The Malaise of Modernity. Human beings in the modern West don't feel themselves anymore to be parts of a larger order, a larger order of nature, a larger order of hierarchical society that very often in the old days was linked to the order of nature, that they understand themselves to be primarily individuals with rights, stand over against these orders, even think of the societies they live in as made by their own choices and will. That's something of what I mean by modern individualism. And you can see that for lots of us, there's something very positive about that.

But at the same time, it's produced a lot of worry and anxiety because people have, some people have seen the development of individualism, the fading of the older horizons, moral horizons, as making our lives, well, in various ways, perhaps less heroic or flatter and narrower. heroic or flatter and narrower? One of the things he says is that in modernity, there's a loss of enchantments. So in pre-modernity, we kind of have this strong belief, at least in what we call the West, in things like angels and devils and demons and monsters and all this kind of enchanted stuff. And then in modernity, partially because of the Enlightenment and the Reformation, we don't have that as much. And so one of the kind of questions that that class left me with is

what kinds of pathways do we have for enchantment? And clearly one of the questions this book is trying to ask is, where are people going for enchantment? And one of the answers is they're trying to ask is, you know, where are people going for enchantments? And one of the answers is they're going to these kinds of Eastern traditions, because they aren't finding that enchantment to some degree. I mean, I think that some perhaps evangelical Christians find it if they're in these very kind of spiritual Christian traditions, but for the most part, people are looking in these other spaces. And the East offers these kinds of, you know, kind of exoticized pathways for enchantment.

So if we use the term Orientalism to describe a little bit of what you're talking about, we often sort of associate the idea of Orientalism with, you know, more dangerous or suspicious representations, kind of like the diabolical sultan or the marauding warrior, the sexually predatory sheikh. But there's also what you call the softer side of Orientalism, which is the focus of this book. What are the kinds of representations that you're talking about there? Right. Well, that's a great question.

Well, first, you know, Orientalism kind of classically is considered the discourses through which colonial administrators and artists and scholars construct and define the orient right and so we can kind of begin with that and then um there is kind of this harder and softer orientalism as you point out and my first book is actually about that hard Orientalism. And that book is, is a book titled Muslims in the Western imagination. It's about actually imaginary Muslim monsters. These are kind of like these characters that we see for, you know, over 1000 years that are created, right by the Western western imagination that would be an example of

um a kind of hard orientalism and then in terms of softer orientalism it's these things attached to the ideas of wisdom and knowledge and truth and kind of you know mysticism um that are attached to the orient and these have also been part of orientalism, right? So the Orientalism looks is has always been looked at, since at least, you know, the age of classical Orientalism with the British Orientalist that we would, you know, immediately think about, like Edward Lane, as a place where people will find the truth, right, or where there's a lot of energy, or where there's a lot of knowledge, or, you know, where these wisdom traditions come from. And that's really what I mean by the softer Orientalism. In terms of some of those ideas,

you know, we see one of the things I look at in my book are these kinds of, kind of like stock characters that we see when Westerners or Europeans or North Americans are writing about the East, writing about the Orient, and they're like the kind of mysterious, knowledgeable monk, right, that's Buddhist, or the guru that's Hindu, or the kind of Sufi master. And there are these kinds of characters that are, you know, predominantly male characters, right, that are the holders of the tradition. Even though you call it a softer form of Orientalism, is there something more sinister about this kind of Orientalism that is more familiar, cousin? Yeah, I mean, I mean, I think one of the things I tried to talk about in the

book is, you know, what does it mean when you take from another culture's or another tradition's religious beliefs. And you kind of take what you want. And so there is an element of colonialism here that's really harmful. And one of the things you see with the Orientalist marketplace or the mystical marketplace that's attached to the Orient are these kinds of kind of like dumbing down of the traditions. So, you know, that in real mysticism, it's really hard work, right? This is something that in some traditions, you're not supposed to even start until you're middle aged, because you're, you're basically looked at as not mature enough to even embark on the path to mysticism until you're a certain age. And it takes years and years and years of work with, you know, reading and, you know, oftentimes physical work as well as religious work and as well with studying right and usually you study with a master well that has been kind of scratched in in these kind of forms of mysticism that i talk about in the book and replaced with things like you know order this dipak chopra cd with madonna and other celebrities

reciting rumi and poor english translation. And this will kind of get you there, right? And so it's all, you know, attached, obviously, to capitalism. But there's also this element of kind of a quick fix, like this is a quick way to fix your life. In my hallucination, I saw my beloved's flower garden. In my vertigo, in my dizziness, in my drunken haze, whirling and dancing like a spinning wheel, I saw myself as the source of existence. I was there in the beginning, and I was the spirit of love. Now I am sober. There is only the hangover.

There is only the hangover. One of the theorists that I use a little bit in the book is a philosopher named Zygmunt Bauman, and he writes about this thing that he calls liquid modernity. I can't think of any period in human history when people were really certain what to do and had no surprises and no unexpected developments which took them unprepared and frightened because of that. What is novel is not uncertainty.

What is novel is realization that uncertainty is here to stay. And because it will stay with us, we are challenged with a task which I think is unprecedented. Not that it was not obligatory, necessary before, but because people were not aware that they have to face this task, now they are. And the task is to develop an art, develop an art of living permanently with uncertainty. To put it very simply, it means living in a combination of ignorance and impotence. a combination of ignorance and impotence. One of the things about liquid modernity is this idea that these things are not satisfactory, right? And so people will continue to kind of purchase these therapies and these kind of health regimens and these

different things, but they'll go from one to the next, to the next, to the next, because they're unsatisfactory. And in a way that makes sense, right, but in a way that also explains the success of the marketplace, because if product A isn't satisfactory, then people can just go to product B, product C, product D. Now, this mystical marketplace that you talk about, let's just be clear from the start, you're not saying, you're not talking about the commodification of religion itself, that that is new. We see that, of course, everywhere from the Vatican to Mecca to other places. You're talking about, as you say, mysticism incorporated. What is that exactly? Going way back in the Christian tradition, we have pilgrims badges and coins and

all these things, right? You know know so that is absolutely as you as you rightly say part of the history but what mysticism incorporated is is really this vast kind of set of markets that exploits different traditions um and makes money off of them and that's something kind of more more you know, something more expansive and quite different than what we're talking about when we talk historically about just commodification, which has always been part of things. I mean, Mecca, for example, has always been a place of commerce, right? So it's just that now if people go on Hajj, you know, the products might be different and the products they buy might be made in different places whereas in the past perhaps they were made in that region or in that city now you know you

might be buying some of those products that are produced somewhere in asia or maybe somewhere else right and so there is this kind of expansiveness to mysticism incorporated. And it's also doesn't just exist in North America and Europe. This is something that we find also in other parts of the world. So it's really a kind of global phenomenon. But the other difference is that these products that are part of mysticism incorporated are being made for people who say that they're practicing mysticism or spirituality and are not being religious? What's the impact of that? So I mean, there's this whole kind of group of literature, of academic literature on these people that we call the nuns, which is N-O-N-E-S, not N-U-N-S. And these are people that kind of make this claim, I'm spiritual, not religious.

these are people that kind of make this claim, I'm spiritual, not religious. Right. And so one of the things about this claim that's really interesting in terms of mysticism incorporated is that what they're doing is actually some kind of religion, but it's somebody else's religion. And it's somebody else's version of that religion, but they feel uncomfortable. There's a level of discomfort with claiming that they're religious. Now, some of this has to do with the kind of distrust of authority, which we see in some ways related to the Reformation. But also, there is this whole period where when the East becomes super popular, kind of in recent history, right? If you look at the North American case, there's all of these scandals with, with different gurus and different spiritual leaders. And we see this in, in all these different traditions, but kind of the most famous scandals are probably the ones

in Hinduism and Buddhism, right? And that also creates a distrust of authority. And so this whole kind of idea that you don't need somebody to help you on the spiritual path, and you can buy what you need to buy to get there, that is part of this. It's really powerful. And that's really what a lot of the book explores is what, you know, what are these products? So these, these kinds of beliefs, or these beliefs that your your book sort of focuses on Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, they have their own understanding of mysticism, but you're talking about something specific in the context of Orientalism. Can you can you tell us how you define mysticism in this

specific context? Right. Well, the kind of classical way to define mysticism is something like the spiritual apprehension of the divine or union with God. And one of the things about these definitions is that they're very much situated in kind of notions of religion that are situated in Protestant Christianity. So when we try to kind of define mysticism, one of the issues that we have is that mysticism is a category of knowledge, much like religion or definitions of religion that is situated in a particular history and worldview and language, right? There's some real, some so-called religious traditions that don't even have a word for religion, right? Or word for religion doesn't really translate to how Western academics would define it. And so that's really the, that's kind of the,

the first thing I would say about it. And the second thing I would say is that in my book, one of the things I talk about is that things like mysticism and spirituality are almost impossible to define because what they're trying to do is to kind of delineate an experience which is undefinable. It's something that cannot really adequately be expressed in kind of concrete words a lot of the time. So when you're actually looking at academic work, I'll just say in the field of religious studies, because that's the field that I'm mostly situated in. And you look at, okay, so somebody wrote this book on, you know, Sufis in South East Asia. So, you know, what are they actually writing about? Well, when they, when they, when scholars write those books, they're very, very careful to kind of situate their work

in terms of these are the particular rituals that these people practice. And these are the particular accoutrements that they use, right? And this is the person who leads this particular religious community. And they tend to kind of stay away from these notions of this is what the mystical experience is like, right? That's not something that scholars generally feel comfortable with. And I think that's one way to kind of, you know, understand it is that there's, generally feel comfortable with. And I think that's one way to kind of, you know, understand

it is that there's there always has been this problem in the field of religious studies of how things are defined. And the fact that these definitions, they really are situated in arch, you know, the Western tradition, right? They don't really necessarily apply to these other traditions. necessarily apply to these other traditions. Now, the idea of mysticism to some degree is something that's invented in response to what was the experience of Orientalists in places like India. And they would kind of look around and, you know, look at what people are doing and they would be like, well, wow, that really doesn't look like when I go to church. Right. And so this is part of what we have as well is there's a notion in religious studies of correct religion. So the, you know, this whole idea of correct religion, obviously, that is something that is tied to the history of Christianity. The correct religion is Protestant

Christianity. The incorrect version of Christianity is Catholicism. This is something that comes out of the Reformation. And then we see this kind of placed upon the study of other religions. Now, this is something that the great religious scholar out of Chicago, J.C. Smith, wrote about extensively was this issue and spent his life, you know, kind of trying to get scholars to be more self-reflective and it's definitely something we see when we're talking about mysticism and we're talking about these traditions you know from the orient or from the east because the tendency

has been for scholars to say okay well this is the correct version of Islam. And to some degree, I think a lot of Islamic scholars still have this issue. So for example, you know, Sunni Muslims are kind of looked at as the correct Protestants, Muslims and Shia are kind of looked at as like Catholics, because they have saints, you know, supposedly more pilgrimages, you know, so there's these, there's these kinds of lingering issues, right, in religious studies. And one of the things that I think is important is that there is, you know, both those views in religious studies, but also those views are often held by the general public. Now, you also include under this umbrella of mysticism incorporated, people who who might actually identify as religious, but still engage in this kind of commodification of faith.

You call them past-trepreneurs, or in the case of Muslims, imampreneurs. What exactly are they up to? Yeah, that's a great question. So these are kind of the Joel Osteen's of the world, you know, who are very successful in commodifying their own religion, but also tapping into these ideas about mysticism and about kind of, you know, the search for truth and the, you know, personal growth. I don't know who would say, you know, that you're not supposed to, you know, leave your children better than you were before. And plus Oprah, prospering, it's not just, you know,

material things. It's peace in your mind and health in your body and things like that. And so there's, you know, a belief that you're supposed to suffer more and be poor and to show your humility. I just, I don't see the Bible that way. I see that God came to, you know, Jesus died that we might live an abundant life and to be a blessing to others. I can't be a big blessing to people if I'm poor and broke and depressed and I don't feel good about myself. So in terms of Christianity, one of the things I touched upon a little bit is that you see this with the past entrepreneurs and you see, you know, if you look at their product lineup, and so I just did this with Osteen because he's, he's like really easy to do this with, right? You can see that there's all these kind of like almost new agey products, you know, and words and, you know, parts of sentences

and images that you see kind of like this, this tote bag, which says a better tomorrow or whatever, you know, so you see that quite a bit. And then you see it to some extent, with these imam preneurs, who you find in, you know, different, different parts of the world, I would say they're even more powerful abroad. But one of the things you see with them, as well as this kind of tapping into this idea of spirituality, so probably in the North American context, you know, you see this a bit with Hamza Yusuf, right? And so like, he's this, he's this kind of, you know, like American born, very, very popular with with a lot of Muslims, popular white convert, American Muslim leader, he co founded this North American Islamic college called Saytuna. And you see this a bit with some of his work. He's also a

really wonderful scholar, but you definitely kind of see that language. And part of that is, you know, that they're appealing to people who are very familiar with this, with the language of kind of new age and mysticism and personal growth. At the other end of all of this, there's something else that you describe, you know, that the mystical landscape is infused with. It's something you call a muddled Orientalism. What do you mean by that? This has always been something that I've noticed in terms of Orientalism, which is there's a kind of confusion when people are looking at or creating these images of orientalism so one of the places you see this is in film and there's examples in cinema where there's almost like a phantasmagoric kind of throwing together

or cohabitation of all these images from all these different traditions from the east and it's there's a sloppiness to this right and one of the places you see it in the mystical marketplace is in quoting Rumi or quoting the Buddha, quotes that are made up, quotes that are mixed up, quotes that are like a quote that maybe the Buddha said, but it's attached to Rumi or another, you know, kind of so-called, you know, Sufi. And you see the reverse is true. And so that is what I mean by muddled Orientalism. So today we're doing the Guinness Book of World Record for the largest goat yoga class. Well, we are setting the record, but Guinness, they have a standard, so we have to be more than 250 people. And we are expecting to have about 350 people with 80 goats. Specially trained yoga goats. The only ones in the whole world. Goat yoga has completely taken off.

It's just unbelievable. We're just so thankful. It's so much fun. It's the best day of your life. You get to interact with goats and do yoga while they're jumping all over you. Where else do you get to do that? There's also, because in the mystical marketplace and animisticism incorporated, you see kind of this dumbing down simplified version of some of these traditions. There's often not a great degree of care about the specifics. And that is something that eventually kind of blurs into this line of,

you know, having products that may be offensive, like a skateboard with a picture of the Buddha on it. And so that's, these are some of the ways that we kind of see it performs in the marketplace. You're listening to Ideas on CBC Radio 1 in Canada, across North America on Sirius XM, in Australia on ABC Radio National, and around the world at cbc.ca slash ideas. You can also hear Ideas on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nala Ayyad. Hey there, I'm Kathleen Goldtar and I have a confession to make. I am Nala Ayyad. Hey there, I'm Kathleen Goltar, and I have a confession to make. I am a true crime fanatic. I devour books and films and most of all, true crime podcasts.

But sometimes I just want to know more. I want to go deeper. And that's where my podcast, Crime Story, comes in. Every week, I go behind the scenes with the creators of the best in true crime. I chat with the host of Scamanda, Teacher's Pet, Bone Valley, the list goes on. For the insider scoop, find Crime Story in your podcast app. My heart is burning with love. All can see this flame. can see this flame my heart is pulsing with passion like waves on an ocean my friends have become strangers and I'm surrounded by enemies but I'm free as the wind no longer hurt by those who reproach me.

I'm at home, wherever I am, and in the room of lovers, I can see with closed eyes the beauty that dances. Behind the veils, intoxicated with love, I too dance the rhythm of this moving world. I have lost my senses in my world of loveless. I love this taking the time with the day

because I want by the time we finish today's Super Soul Sunny that people have specific things that they can do to begin a spiritual practice. And you say it's everything from looking at what you have for breakfast to looking at the person you're living with, your spouse. Absolutely. It's all of that. It's everything. I mean, our relationships, I mean, first and foremost, our relationship to ourself is, you know, we honor that. And so just beginning with that, just taking the time to allow yourself to approach the day with a sense of ease is the

beginning of a spiritual practice. Absolutely. Yeah. How does Oprah fit into this picture of muddled Orientalism? Yeah, so Oprah's really interesting. I mean, I grew up on Oprah because my grandmother loved Oprah Winfrey, and she was from the Chicago area, and she would get up every morning, four in the morning and watch the replay of Oprah. So I grew up kind of on, and my grandmother was, by the way, not religious at all. And, but I grew up on kind of the religion of Oprah. Right. Um, so one of the things about Oprah, that's really interesting is she very much, you know, part of her personal spirituality is,

is, is, you know, all of these traditions. And so I have, um, in kind of using them in her life and it's quite interesting. And so I have a quote in my book about, about that and about her. There was a great interview with her a couple years ago, where she kind of talks about what she does every morning. And it's like, listen to part of a Rumi CD and then go out and meditate and then do something else that's like more situated in Christianity. And so she's very much somebody that kind of combines all of these things. And then in terms of her, you know, her kind of business model, one of the things that she she does, you know, try to get people to think about is, you know, what are the pathways to kind of help you in your life to become kind of

self actualized. And, you know, one of the things I say in my book that, you know, I hope that people get is that, I mean, everybody I know wants enchantment, right? I mean, we all want to have joy and peace and kind of a sense of calm and satisfaction in our lives. And so I consider myself, you know, a pretty critical scholar. However, pretty much every time that my family goes to Indonesia, because my husband's from there and so we have a home there and we go there you know quite often before covid we went quite often you know we go to bali there is a kind of an attraction that bali has and the last time i went i was doing field work and we didn't go actually go to Bali on the last trip. And it was like, wow, something kind of felt missing from this.

Right. So I also want to say that, you know, the search for enchantment is not something that's just a few people want. I think that people want that that piece. They want to find those places in their lives that restore them. You know, whether it's those places are a practice of those places are actual places on a map. Right. And so that's something I say at the end of the book, because I didn't want people to come away from the book, feeling like I'm being too critical. How do you how do you get there without corrupting or stealing or erasing other religious traditions? What drives the need for the mystical marketplace in the larger sense? You know, you say it's fundamentally a problem of modernity. You know, you're right,

that mysticism and spirituality are the way people living in modernity do religion. What do you mean? So a couple things there. I think one of the things, you know, we're all conscripted into modernity, right? So we all have to live in modernity we don't have a choice like everybody has to live in modernity pretty much there's a very few exceptions and so the kind of question is like how do we do that um you know what are the ways that we find relief and what are the ways that we can kind of negotiate modernity so for some people part of that negotiation is this kind of modern mysticism, modern spirituality, and they don't feel comfortable

in claiming a religious identity. You know, sometimes it's because they had kind of a rough upbringing in a religious tradition, like a church that was very stringent or a mosque that was very stringent. And there's a number of reasons behind, you know, why this is, stringent and there's a number of reasons behind you know why this is but people there's a lot of people that don't feel comfortable with the with the label of religion and i think that some of that has to do with you know religion being viewed as

being authoritarian um and there being a way to control people. And so the mystical marketplace or the religious religious marketplace provides kind of these freer ways of, of being an engaged, being religious and engaging with religious traditions without, without being constricted by what, what these same people would call traditional religion. But I think in terms of the, the kind of need for enchantment, some of that has to do with the way that people do religion now as opposed to the way they did it in pre-modernity. So the way they did it before modernity was quite different. Religion was such a powerful part of people's lives all the time. Now, that's true for some people, but think about how people like actually do religion.

They go to a religious place and they do it on a certain day of the week. Right. Um, and that's quite different than having like a saints calendar that you use that's guides what you do all the time. Right. That's quite a different thing. Now, of course there are people that still do those things and maybe they don't need enchantment quite as much because maybe they're getting it in their lives. I need someone to talk to, you know, someone who's a good teacher, someone who can answer all my questions, someone who can switch the light on again. Who am I? Robin McKeese! Pardon me?

Robin McKeese! We must have knowledge of the self. Now, parts of the body are not the self. Parts of the body put together are not the self. Only the self is the self. You see how simple it is? Is this also just kind of about connection? I mean, people just wanting to be in a community?

Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think that it also is lonely. And there's all this kind of stuff now out there, literature out there about how technology makes us more lonely and more depressed. And I wonder, you know, for all the kind of cachet of the phrase social media, I just wonder, like, how good it is actually for socializing, right? And, you know, we kind of see this where people are become feel more isolated, and then they they worry constantly about their like image on Facebook or the image on Instagram, right? That kind of thing. So yeah, I would I would say

that's right. And also, I would, I would say that's right. And also, I would imagine, you know, beyond the problems that the modern world presents, you know, we do have a lot more choice than we used to. We're a lot wealthier than we used to. You say that, you know, the conversation about mysticism and spirituality can't be separated from a conversation about capitalism. Could you, could you talk about the influence of that on on this constant searching for meaning and for enchantment, as you say? Well, I mean, one of the ways I can kind of answer that is go back to Charles Taylor, and look at what he says. And one of the things that he talks about, and then I thought I thought about a lot ever since I read that book, which was many years ago when I read it the first time, is this idea that in modernity we have a lot more choice. to the motives that I've been talking about for soft relativism. That is the notion that a properly liberal society ought to leave people to pursue their own plan of life

without interference and without even making judgments as a society about that plan of life and simply erect a society which facilitates equally everyone's pursuit of their plan of life, erect a society which facilitates equally everyone's pursuit of their plan of life, defends their rights and their freedom to devise it and carry it out on their own, prevents others from interfering with them, but doesn't in any way involve society as a whole espousing some view of the good life. This kind of, you might say, neutral or procedural liberalism has also become a very powerful force in modern society, a very persuasive definition of what liberal society is about.

And it too, by its attempt, as it were, to sideline discussions of the good life in the public sphere, has tended to make us relatively inarticulate in our public discussions of what is really valuable and important in human life. So, you know, pre-modernity and in the middle ages, if you were religious, you were part of a religious community, I think, or part of a religious belief system. And there wasn't like, I mean, there might have been some choice about what you were believing, but pretty much people were, you know, doing what the religious authorities expected of them, I think to some degree.

Now, what you have in modernity, it's not just a choice of whether you're going to be religious or not, but how are you going to be religious, right? So are you going to be religious by going to a mosque? are you going to be religious by going to a mosque? Are you going to be religious by going to a church? Or are you going to be religious by doing yoga kind of religiously, right? You know, and so it's not just a choice of whether you're going to be religious, but how you are going to be religious and how you're going to articulate that identity,

right? And so I think those are some of the ways that we can think about it. I want to go back for a minute to the idea of sort of practicing modern mysticism, which often kind of erases these religious traditions on which they rely. You say that dabbling in other people's religion can cause real damage. Can you address what kind of damage? Well, I think that kind of going back to a little bit to what we talked about earlier with this, is that, you know, when you're dabbling, you're not really taking the religion seriously. And you're probably not doing things like if one was to convert to Judaism, which you know,

you can do in the reform tradition, for example, like that's was to convert to Judaism, which, you know, you can do in the reform tradition, for example, like that's a lot of work to become Jewish, you know, and you have to, you know, study with a rabbi and you have to learn all this stuff and you have to, you know, at some point kind of pass some kind of, I mean, maybe not like a real test, but kind of a test. And then you have to kind of go through a process of officially becoming Jewish, right? Well, that's quite different than going on Amazon and ordering, you know, some CD of Kabbalah. That's just some Kabbalah quotes or getting some, you know, 10 steps to becoming like engaged with the Kabbalah tradition or whatever, you know, there's so many of these products out there. And so those are quite different things. And so you're

not, you're not really engaging in the tradition. And so I think one of the things that I always think about as a white scholar was like, well, how does that make people who are in the traditions feel like probably not great is my guess, you know, and that's, I think, one of the ways that it's harmful. Let me read you something. And I'm just curious what you think of it. And you've mentioned this in your book. Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, there is a field. I'll meet you there. I mean, I think that's a beautiful quote. But I also think we need to remember that Rumi was Muslim.

But I don't think he was talking about erasing tradition. Or I mean, I don't think he would want people to erase the fact that he was Muslim, which people do all the time. I think that's one way that perhaps we could think about that quote. And I mean, it's a very poignant example, because it's also a translation that was provided by somebody who doesn't even speak Persian. Right. And there's a number of these people that do these translations of, you know, different different texts that don't speak the language. So you know, different, different texts, um, that don't speak the

language. So, you know, I'm somebody that, I mean, I studied Arabic first and that's what I, I passed my, that's what I used to for my language exam and grad school. And then I studied Persian. And I mean, I, I remember like in one of the last Persian language classes I took you know we did things like write you know poetry in Persian and do this and that but when I did this project it was on Persian mirror work which is called Aineh Kari which is this mirror work you find in Shia shrines and I had won this grant to go do it do do this work. And I ended up going to Syria to look at, um, look at some of these, um, some of these mirror mosaics, uh, even though I like could translate it and did

translate some articles, I had somebody also check those translations. Cause I was just like, so nervous though, and like get a word wrong or intense wrong or something, you know? And I was like super careful. And of course I'm a scholar, So it's a little bit different for me. But like, I can't imagine just like not even knowing a language and just being say, Oh, I'm going to say this is this is what this poem means. I wonder what you make of something like a Coldplay concert, you know, in which Rumi figures prominently, but not the religion that kind of undergirds that tradition. figures prominently, but not the religion that kind of undergirds that tradition. What I've read about that, my understanding is that the lead singer of Coldplay has found Rumi's poetry to be very helpful for him, like in his path, you know. And so I find that, you know,

really, like really interesting. With that particular use, you use you know to me it's like he's really celebrating his poetry and sharing it with you know sharing it with his fans which i think is is interesting and it just you know i did think about like is this exploitation or like celebration that that was kind of a hard case for me after your divorce you did a lot of self-help kind of a hard case for me. After your divorce, you did a lot of self-help kind of work and stuff. And the story goes that you went and got a Sufi master of some kind to really work with you, right? I just was looking for people who had some wisdom. I feel a lot of that in life. I'm generally just hungry to know what people think.

But how do you know about – I never even heard of Sufi until five minutes ago. Right. How do you know the next cool thing to get into, like a Sufi? Who teaches you Sufi? I don't know. I just, I like to have my eyes open and see what people are saying. What is a Sufi? Isn't Sufi from Islam or something?

It's like a, I don't, to be honest with you, I just know this one person. And he's a Sufi master. I don't know if I'm a master. I don't, to be honest with you, I just know this one person. And he's a Sufi master. I don't know if I'm a master. I don't know if you get like belts and stuff. What is, who is this guy who gets to help you? You should call me. I just have a friend who turns me on to people like Rumi and good writers.

And it's, it's just nice to have someone a bit older than me who, it's like having a teacher, you know? If you're sharing it and people are you know getting something out of it you know is it always bad and i think the question then comes again like are the people that are sharing it or are the people that are making money off of it you know are they erasing the tradition so you know as far as i know you know coldplay has not sold million

has not made millions of dollars on roomies name name. And so I think it does, there also is this issues of exploitation that comes up as like, you can ask questions like, are they completely erasing the tradition? Did the leader of Coldplay, Chris Martin, say during that concert, Rumi's not a Muslim? I don't think so. I'd never heard that. And so he, um, he was really, um, I, I want to say enchanted with, with Rumi and the, and what at the concert, what was it that happened there? You know, that he had, he had these words of Rumi. They were like time to these bracelets that lit up. So the entire, so it was kind of this, I mean, it seemed to me like it would be kind of the mystical experience. Like people talk about concerts being religious experiences because everybody's bracelets would light up at the same exact time on certain words. This being here is a guest house. Being human is a guesthouse. Every morning, a new arrival.

A joy. A depression. A meanness. Some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. In your writing, you say that in this version of mysticism, Islam disappears completely. Yeah. So, yeah, Islam is definitely not voiced there. You know, obviously, there's, you know, the question comes up, like, what would happen if, if, if Islam was voiced?

You know, how would people react? If Islam was voice, because often when Islam is voiced, then people get very uncomfortable. And part of that has to do with not understanding tradition, And part of that has to do with not understanding tradition, but it has to do with Islamophobia, you know, and mysticism is the alternative, right? Mysticism is kind of the alternative to religion, right? Or to correct religion. And so that's appealing for people, because it kind of gives them this identity, you know, like, oh, I'm not religious. I'm a practitioner of this mystical brand of whatever. Right. And it does give them this different identity and this kind of different way of thinking about themselves. Right. And I think that mysticism being being kind of identified or held up as that alternative is a big part of this. And this idea that this alternative comes, you know, from the East, that the East holds the answers to the problems of Western modernity, because that's really what we're

talking about here. Some could say that there is an element of truth to that, that the mystical marketplace could be a kind of pathway to real understanding or to answering that search that you're, you've talked about, how do you respond to that? I mean, I think that's, I mean, I think that's true. And I would agree with that. And there, there, for example, people that brought, like Inyat Khan, who brought one of the people that brought Sufism kind of to the West, you know, is somebody that in some, in some circles has looked at, I mean, I look at him as a totally legitimate, legitimate Sufi. But definitely, like, definitely a lot of the people that join the Inayat order are like people that, you know, are not maybe familiar with Islam. And it does a huge degree of good for them,

you know, and so I don't think anybody would say that it's not good to like engage with these traditions I think I think the thing that comes up is like are you erasing the tradition and are you making money off of it and you don't really believe in it you know I think that those are different things and to kind of go back to Coldplay my kind of takeaway from that was that Chris Martin who's the lead Coldplay, really got a lot out of Rumi and was really helpful to him. And so he was like, well, I want to share that with my fans. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I think that's great.

I mean, good for him and good for him sharing it with other people so that maybe they'll start to look at Rumi poetry. Hopefully a good translation, we can hope. A related question is some would say that this sort of mishmash or grab bag of ideas that kind of are, you know, this decontextualized beliefs is not just a borrowing or kind of a mixing together a bunch of traditions that is, in fact, that it is its own thing. What about that idea? I mean, one of the things there that comes up is there is actually cross pollination between different traditions. And so we see this in places like India, for example, and Pakistan, and you have cross pollination. So I think there's definitely cross pollination of different religions. And again, I think the thing is, is that if you're,

if you're kind of engaging in mystical practice and you're not even knowing like where a quote comes from, or you're saying, oh, Rumi said this and the Buddha said, or none of these people said it, that's, that's problematic. So one of the things, the things that happens when there's all these traditions kind of thrown in together is that, you know, people aren't really getting it right. And to go back to Bauman, one of the things that he, that he talks about in his work with this idea of liquid modernity is this idea that people are going from one kind of product to the next in modernity, right? And that, that is part. Right. And that,

that is part of that. I mean, I think that is something that we can see with this is maybe the reason people are going from product to product to product is because there's a level of dissatisfaction. Right. With these products, but also that it's like, they're not,

they're not getting it right. Maybe they're not getting it right because they're not really doing the tradition. I mean, if you're somebody that's on the path of Sufism and you think you're reading Rumi, but you're really reading some self-proclaimed Christian mystic, then you aren't really doing the tradition. And maybe that's why it's not satisfactory. You write in your book that mysticism is a messy colonial business. Is there a way to make it less messy? I mean, I think if people would really take the traditions, and I think there are people

that take their traditions seriously. I think the problem is that I think mistakenly, as you mentioned before, people are tied to the idea of immediatism. If they have misery or they have loneliness or they're looking for something in their lives, they want an immediate fix. And as we all know, anybody that's ever had a therapist or been in a religious community where work is required, it's not an easy fix. It takes a while. And I think the immediatism is something that's definitely part of this problem right is that people are just expecting this immediate fix to their lives right and it's work like it's all work you know and maybe um you know i think maybe if people understood that was work and they really need to engage the tradition more, you know, maybe it would be more satisfactory and maybe it would work better.

You know, I mean, some of these traditions have been around for thousands of years and it took them a while to get the system down. So they probably know what they're doing. Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase each other, doesn't make any sense. You were listening to Buying Buddha, Selling Rumi. Thank you to

Sophia Rose Ardana, Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Western Kentucky University. She is the author of Buying Buddha, Selling Rumi, Orientalism and the Mystical Marketplace. This episode was produced by Nahid Mustafa.

Technical production, Danielle Duval. Web producer, Lisa Ayuso. Senior producer, Nikola Lukšić. Greg Kelly is the executive producer of Ideas, and I'm Nala Ayyad. ¶¶ ¶¶ For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.