7-1-2015, Amsterdam
BECOMING AN
IDEAL MADRE
An ethnographic account on the cultivation of
self in a Colombian Hare Krishna Community
Iris Muller – 6174515 iris_muller@hotmail.com University of Amsterdam
Department GSSS Supervisor: Oskar Verkaaik Readers: Vincent de Rooij & Peter van Rooden Wordcount: 23798 words
i For further information contact: iris_muller@hotmail.com
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Abstract
Based on ethnographic research conducted in a Hare Krishna monastery in Colombia I argue that the cultivation of self amongst female Hare Krishna devotees in Colombia takes place as an outcome of something named sadhusanga: the association with a devoted other. I clarify the importance of fe (faith) in the transition from non-Hare Krishna to being-Hare Krishna by demonstrating on an emotional level what it means to question your reality choosing
consciously to accept new ideas and beliefs that will shape your perception and thereby your way of being-in-the-world. Building upon the concept of habitus, as is used by Saba
Mahmood, I show that this shift in the perceived reality goes along with a shift in one’s outward behavior (e.g. bodily dispositions, social behavior and physical appearance) and one’s inwards dispositions (e.g. emotions, thoughts and intentions). The cultivation of a new habitus can be seen as a self-reflective pedagogical process in which an actor goes from a stage of acting towards a stage of being, striving for the cultivation of an ideal self.
This idea of an ideal self is a shared conception of reality that is collaboratively build and sustained by the devotees. The cultivation of an ideal self is therefore always in
interaction with the social other. The social other can take the shape of a stimulating other with whom an actor can willfully co-operate in the reinvention of his/her self, but it can also be a social other who is doing the opposite: confronting someone with a different view of reality which can prompt doubts which a devotee must cope with. The monastery forms a stimulating environment in the cultivation of self and can be seen as a reinventive institution, a term used by Susie Scott, in which a member is confronted with performative regulations that help to shape the new self but which can sometimes be experienced as an invisible self-imposed wall from which it seems hard to escape. This leads to a friction between personal aspirations and group-processes in which agency characterizes this process. Combining various social theories from Mahmood, Ortner, Hirshkind, Lacan, Scott and Heidegger, I add an ethnographic account on the cultivation of a self demonstrating that this is deeply
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction ____________________________________________________
11
The development of fe and the decision to change _________________
11Changing your fe, changing your reality _______________________________________ 11 An ethnographic understanding of fe and the changing of subjectivity _______________ 13 The moment of initiation and a conscious decision to change ______________________ 16
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Changing your habitus, changing your self _______________________
22The conscious shaping of an ideal habitus _____________________________________ 22 From outside to inside, working on the body ___________________________________ 25 From inside to outside, working on the mind and heart ___________________________ 29
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Sadhusanga, the role of the social other _________________________
35A stimulating social other __________________________________________________ 35 Performative regulations and self-imposed walls ________________________________ 38 The social other who is not stimulating ________________________________________ 44
Conclusion ____________________________________________________
49Glossary ______________________________________________________
55Bibliography __________________________________________________
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Introduction
“It is impossible not to change here…”
This sentence came back in my diary three times. Living in a Hare Krishna monastery in Colombia for three months means being in a mode of self-reflection twenty four hours a day. How is my behaviour? How is my state of mind? How do I feel? How do I look? How do I talk? How do I pray? From three in the morning to ten at night you are surrounded by other devotees. They talk to you about Krishna, about doing servicio1 (devotional service), about
how to braid your hair, about their secret feelings towards a praphu and what to do about that, about fe (faith), about happiness, about thoughts, about…everything. Everything, but always starting from Krishna consciousness, which is a set of beliefs and ideas about life that became popular in the Western and Latin world after an Indian Guru named Sri Praphupada arrived by boat in New York in 1966. His first book was about self-realization and that is what these people do: they cultivate their selves based upon an ideal. They shape their lives, thoughts, feelings, emotions, bodies and even tastes in line with how a perfect devoted self should be. Why? Because for them there is more than just this world. There is a spiritual world, a world where everything is real, happy and pure. The material world (the world we live in) is regarded as a beautiful prison from which every soul wants to escape. Yet, the illusion is so strong that people have forgotten about this real world and real self. The only way to
remember is through an intensive practice in which someone changes his/her2 self and thereby his/her entire way of being (or habitus) to that of the original soul. A pure soul. As I noted, it is impossible not to change when you are dwelling in this other reality, surrounded by people who stimulate you to undergo a transformation.
When I first met the devotees two years ago in South America, I was struck by them, and especially the women. Having lived in India when I was eighteen I suddenly felt in India again, but the women in the saris (Indian dresses) were now Colombian. They wore their hair in the same braid, they walked in the same modest and delicate way, they were chanting the
1 See glossary at the end of this thesis for an explanation.
2 In this thesis I have decided to use his/her or he/she or him/her when referring to persons in general.
Although I am writing from the perspective of a female devotee due to the fact that I have spent most time with them, I decided to take a non-gendered perspective when writing about a process which I think is non-gendered (a conclusion based on comparative literature and my own research).
2 same songs as I heard in Varanasi and even the tinkling of the ankle-bracelet reminded me of the women I had stared at with so much curiosity. However, they are different because this religion and culture is new to them. Before being Hare Krishna they danced salsa, drank
aguardiente (a Colombian liquor) and questioned the strong Christian influence that is still
notable in mainstream Colombian society. Preaching in their white saris in the colourful streets of the Caribbean coast, they might be confronted with a Latin man who teasingly whispers ‘if I come to your temple, could I take you out do dance and see what beauty is hidden under that exotic dress of yours..?’ Even their families, if not Hare Krishna, are shocked by the change their children go through. Most strongly critique the new lifestyle of their children, who are vegetarian, work for no money, wear strange clothes and forget about the future husbands and jobs that were planned for them. The change from a Colombian way of being to a Hare Krishna way of being is quite significant, and that is what makes the process of cultivating a new self so fascinating for anthropological research.
Becoming this ideal self is not something easy, as I noted during my first encounter with the devotees. Although I thought I had learnt a lot about appropriate behaviour for a woman in such a community, I was quickly corrected when I was talking to a praphu about his beliefs. A young woman approached me demanding me softly to leave the conversation and talk to Mohana, a twenty two year old madre who had been raised Hare Krishna and was now leader of the female sankirtan movement (public preaching). She explained to me about how women have a special treasure, and how you should protect that treasure while being with men because it can cause a lot of confusion. Although she had seen that I did not do it on purpose, I was not behaving modestly enough and evoking the wrong feelings by talking so directly with the praphu. I was shocked. Was I really flirting? What was the difference between me and her? Why was it that some women here could talk to other men, and others were huddled together not even looking in the direction of any person of the opposite sex? After having spent more time with some madres, I realised the difference was between acting and being. Some (including myself that time) were still in a stage of acting modest and had not yet internalised the habitus of being modest. This requires a lengthy practice as I realised later on and it is this practice that was at the core of my study as I asked: How do these female
Hare Krishna’s in Colombia cultivate their new selves? How do they change their bodies,
their intentions, their thoughts and their feelings that much that the same act can change completely just because they have now reached a stage of being modest? And is this everlasting?
3 It was Saba Mahmood who inspired me in her writings about changing your habitus in a female Muslim movement in Egypt. She noted that ‘moral virtues are acquired through a coordination of outward behavior (e.g. bodily acts, social behavior) with inward disposition (e.g. emotional states, thoughts, intentions) (2001: 115). Her research revealed that through an intensive training of the body, the mind and emotions, certain habits become internalized and thereby become natural. However, although she clarified a lot about this process of self cultivation, as did Zigon, Mattingly and Foucault and many more, she hardly mentioned the influence of the social other in this process. While living in a Hare Krishna temple in Colombia for the second time, I realized that I had found that very important link that was missing for me in the studies on the cultivation of self. These devotional madres cultivating their selves based on new ideals were not alone. From morning to evening and even at night while sleeping with a minimum of four madres in a room, they were always surrounded by a social other.
The social other is in this case everyone who is not the person him/her self. That means a devoted other, who is stimulating you when you have difficulty waking up for the
morning program at three. For instance, one morning I observed the interaction between two devotees: ‘Madre, wake up. You don’t want to miss the opportunity of singing for the
deidad!’ said Jaganath. ‘But it is so cold still... And dark… I think I’m starting to feel sick. I
only slept four hours’ Madana responded with a sleepy voice. ‘Sleeping is just a desire of your mind and your body Madana. Your soul wants to chant Hare Krishna. Come on. Wake up! It is half past three!’ Madana jumped out of bed, rushed to get her towel and flip-flops and ran down to the cold shower. When the clock struck four she was standing with her eyes closed, a tilak3 marking on her forehead, her damp hair neatly braided, her white sari wrapped
around her and three pairs of socks protecting her feet against the cold in front of the altar. ‘Hare Krishna madre’, she whispered while smiling at me. It seems that she had forgotten about her sickness, her sleep and her doubts.
However, the social other can also be present as a distracting influence, such as a father who takes a devotee out to dinner for his birthday when it is ekadasi, the day that you are supposed to fast and not eat grains. This is what happened to Madana. When I went to Bogota that day to say goodbye to a friend I ate pizza and felt that I had failed. Three days later I spoke to Madana and asked her if she had persevered during her fathers birthday. “I
3 A sign on the forehead made out of clay that serves as a protection and identity marker for a devotee
4 couldn’t madre…” she responded. “My father was so happy to have me there. And the cake looked so delicious… [She laughed] I really need the other devotees to complete ekadasi”. Madana is one of the examples of a devoted madre. She is young, only eighteen, but decided in spite of the critique she received from her parents, to move to Varsana: the biggest
monastery in Colombia. She developed the wish to become nun when she was visiting the temple in Bogota and started reading the philosophy. She changed her flirty attitude towards men, changed her clothes, stopped wearing make-up, became vegetarian, and hesitated of continuing her study. She is motivated to cultivate her new self because she is convinced that this is her true soul. However, as she noticed when going for dinner with her father, it is very important with whom she socializes if she really wants to change.
Madana is not the only example of this. During my research I met and lived with many
madres varying in age, in background, in seniority and in life-stories. All of them were doing
their very best to cultivate their new selves based on Krishna consciousness and the practice that comes along with this. They told me that they had chosen not just a religion, but also a new way of living. They assured me that with the intensity of the practice over the years I would start to feel the change. In those three months I not only met other madres, I also met myself. Captured in a constant mode of self-reflection, observations, and interviews, I was also living the life of a Hare Krishna nun. I was a singer for the community when I first met them, I was a novice when I settled down in the monastery Varsana for three months. I was a researcher but I was also a madre who was undergoing the same practice of waking up at three, doing servico all day, chanting Hare Krishna in front of the altar in both morning and evening and falling asleep with the soft whispering of nuns who discuss their days, the classes and how they feel. As I learned about the cultivation of self, I noticed that I changed as well.
It is my aim in this thesis to give new insight into the cultivation of self. How do these women shape their selves based on the intensive practice of Krishna consciousness? How do they change their bodies, their emotions, their thoughts and behavior as a result of their new beliefs? How do they spiritualize their faith? And what is the role of the social other in this process? Are they really just acting? Or do they reach a stage of being in which their new identity is so firmly shaped that it will stay the same in every social context? All these questions contribute to an emotional understanding of the process of cultivating of our self. The leading question in this micro ethnographic example is formulated as: How do female
5 This understanding is provided with ethnographic data based on my fieldwork in Colombia in the year 2014 (June-September). In Colombia lives a large Hare Krishna community that has been growing ever since the German guru, Paramadvaiti, set foot in the country in 1971. Thanks to his intensive preaching Colombia has over two hundred thousand devotees, which is a small minority in the mainly Christian country but a notable group on itself. Almost every big city has its temple and there are numerous ecological monasteries throughout the country. The biggest of all is Varsana, the first temple constructed in Colombia and the heart of the mission. Varsana lies on a mountain close to the capital Bogota. It is a massive complex with a big temple and various houses attached to it. It is the heart of the mission, as many call it, and houses around forty devotees (an ever changing number due to pilgrimages and different servicios). During the day devotee’s work on the construction of the new temple, they take care of the crop and fruit fields, cook dinner, wash clothes and sheets, write, study, paint walls and portraits, cut the grass, clean the temple... There is not a single moment that there is nothing to do in Varsana.
Varsana is additionally the most disciplined temple. Puro nectar [pure nectar] as the devotees call it. A place where the rules are being lived most strictly and where the morning program is attended by everyone at precisely four in the morning. Where in other temples in the cities, such as Gournitay (a temple in Bogota where I stayed for a week and visited often), the ambiance is more relaxed, Varsana aspires to be the example of what a Hare Krishna community should be. Men and women are strictly separated. They sleep in different
buildings, pray and sing in physically divided spaces, they eat in a big theater outside where men sit on one side and women on the other. The only thing they do together is servicio. However, the ideal is that while doing servicio, one is meditating on Krishna and not talking about anything else then Him. The deidades [deities] in Varsana are the biggest and most adored, the temple always smells of incense and the nature is just overwhelmingly beautiful. It is in Varsana that the yearly celebration of Krishna’s birthday takes place, a festival that attracts hundreds of devotees from all corners. It is in Varsana that every devotee wants to have lived once in her life. It is Varsana where I spent the greater part (three months) of my research and it should be seen as the base of this story.
Apart from Varsana I have visited and lived in other temples due to my three-week tour as a chaski, a conscious singer. It gave me the opportunity to form an overview of how, in different temples, Hare Krishna houses and monasteries, devotees were creating a piece of Hare Krishna culture in the middle of Colombian society: how madres in Bogota wore their white saris with leggings and big sweaters because of the cold; how in Cali, on a very hot
6 day, a skirt with a tank-top was allowed; and, how in fashionable Medellin madres were dressing up for the Sunday feast in the main temple while discussing if you should wear make-up or not. I learned that every temple had its own modality, that every devotee has his/her own story and that every situation has multiple stories depending on each person’s interpretation. In reality, whatever the temple or city, house or monastery, the wish to develop a better self based on Krishna consciousness was the same. From the madre who drank coffee secretly in the café round the corner and danced salsa when no-one was watching to the
madre who chanted more than sixteen rounds a day and never left the temple without her sari.
All of them were striving for similar ideals, being confronted with their own struggles and questions and enlightened with the same happiness when standing in front of the altar chanting Hare Krishna at Janmastami, the annual celebration of Krishna’s birthday. All of them were open, reflexive and honest about how they felt, thought and acted. And all of them came together in Varsana at the festival, the moment I realized that they all knew each other because they had lived in various temples together. As a Hare Krishna it is not the temple that is your home, it is the community that welcomes you in every place.
In that same line, I am not writing only about madres from Varsana or Medellin or Cali or Bogota. The cultivation of self from the perspective of a female devotee of Hare Krishna in Colombia stands for each and every woman who enters this process, living in a small temple in the jungle to a gigantic complex temple in the capital city. As I shall not be able to let every voice resonate in its own tone, I have chosen just a few to tell the story of the process which all of these women, young and old, rich and poor, Colombian and Bolivian, ugly and beautiful, live or try to live4. Additionally I shall also reflect upon my own role as
madre and analyze specific situations from which I understood their position through the way
I was acting, or being acted upon5. However, although my conclusions are based on
4 The women in this community vary widely in their social backgrounds. Some of them come from
poor families and have come across Krishna consciousness through food-programs or people who chant in the streets. These women have often only finished secondary school. Also there are women who can be described as more upper-class; they come from rich families and have studied at a university, or are studying. In between these two far-ends there is a whole range of women from different social backgrounds who are becoming equal after they have become Hare Krishna, where their ideals are like-wise and their ‘material social position’ (as they call it themselves) does not matter anymore.
5 In the community everyone was aware of the anthropological research I was doing. However, I was
living there as a madre: a nun just like the rest of the nuns. They treated me as a madre, I had to do
servicio all they just like they did, I had to get up with them, follow each class with them and was
bounded to follow the same rules and regulations as they did. They saw my research as a devotional-task and my interest in the cultivation of self as the plan of Krishna. For this it was normal for them to both live with me and do interviews with me. Because of this I gained insight from the process of
7 ethnographic research, I am also influenced by my theoretical background that have helped me interpret my data and contribute to existing debates. As much as my own reflections, the following pages will also contain the ideas about identity of symbolic interactionist such as Goffman and Mead, the thoughts of Heidegger and Zigon on being-in-the world and moral breakdowns, and the ethnographic examples of Mahmood and Hirshkind about cultivating faith and the book on constructed identity by Scott, that all have a notable influence on this work. For this reason, I shall present the significance of their (and other) ideas briefly before I move on to what this thesis is really about: an ethnographic account on the cultivation of self.
When writing about a religious community I could not forget the influence of faith, the honest belief in some higher power that is inexplicable and untouchable but that has a notable effect on the actions of people. In former research I had already come across the discussion on faith. The ideas of Durkheim on ritual and religion as an institution that bound people, Geertz who wrote about religion as cultural system through which subjects give meaning upon life, and Luhrmann and Harding, who both stretched the importance of language as a way to believe, all made me explore the existence of a multiple reality in which everyone gives meaning to their selves and lives through their particular belief-system. Luhrmann, a psychological anthropologist who tumbled around the question ‘why do people believe?’ answered this question doing anthropological research in a Cristian community in the United States. She addressed language as one of the main factors through which people learned to have new experiences that meant God to them. The people of this community used lexicon (specific words) in a particular way (syntax) to create a bodily and mentally experience that is named
metakinesis. However, her dismissal of what these people told her about their very personal
and emotional experience with God was just a “sensory hallucination” (2004: 524) seems to presume a scientific truth versus the emic (falsely) perceived reality of her informants. Who was she to suggest that science was true and religion an illusion? More than her conceptual argument she influenced my work in the realization that I wanted to write differently about my subjects. I wanted to show that they are persons, women, just like everyone who try to give meaning to their selves and lives based upon a set of ideas and beliefs that they
cultivating a self through introspection and self-reflection because I was part of that same process. This insights I could then compare with the information I gained through observations, interviews, and in general living with the other nuns. The reason I take my own introspection as valid point of
reference is because as an anthropologist I was able to step outside of my social role as a madre and analyse my thoughts, behaviour, emotions and so forth, based on different perspectives.
8 themselves have chosen. Just as Luhrmann decided that psychology was her set of ideas and beliefs through which she gave meaning to the world and herself.
Obviously that thought might have been the result of Heidegger’s concept about being-in-the-world and the way we relate ourselves to the reality we are dwelling in (see Zigon 2007). And Mattijs van de Port who builds upon the ideas of Lacan regarding the imaginary, the symbolic order, and the concept of the Really Real: that what lies outside a symbolic order and cannot be captured in words (Van de Port 2011; Stravrakakis 2002). Using their theories I could explain why some experiences in different contexts could not be explained to my own social environment: these experiences where outside of the symbolic reality that they were living in, and thus outside of their basic range of experience, therefore making an understanding on an emotional level impossible. If I wanted to explain something about what some thought of as real, and they thought of as unreal, I had to come up with metaphors from their own lives to show that what they thought was also just an outcome of their way of being-in-the-world (a term introduced by Heidegger). This thesis explores this same process: the adaption to a new symbolic reality that is created in between a group of others who are different than your former others. Maybe this is not the really Real, as we all search for according to van de Port (2011), but at least it can be seen as moment of self-reflection in which we become aware of our own created reality and choose to adapt a new one. Instead of moving back into an unconscious state of being-in-the-world as Zigon suggested in his paper on morality and the moral breakdown (2007).
But if people work upon their selves, how do they do that? It was Mahmood, as I already mentioned before, who rose like a shining star in a dark horizon. She uses Aristotle’s ideas of habitus as a conscious internalization of moral virtues on a mentally, emotionally and bodily level shifting from the unconscious habitus of Bourdieu, to a conscious and
self-reflexive act of changing your bodily dispositions and way of being-in-the-world through a pedagogical process – demonstrating this with her ethnographic account on Muslim women in Egypt. Hirshkind (2001) took this even one step further by delving into bodily learning from experience, which he calls emotional kinesthetic learning. This was in line with theorists like Wolputte (2004) and Csordas (1994), who all wrote about embodiment, the internalization of virtues on a bodily level. They made a separation between body and soul, body and self, writing about the body as an ‘ethical horizon for the (un)making of a self’ (Wolputte 2004:251). All of these theories focused on cultivation of self departing from a very individual perspective.
9 However, my own experience and research continued to highlight the importance of a social other, an idea conspicuously absent from these recent works about the cultivation of self. It was not until I came back, writing down my own conclusions about the importance of the group when cultivating a self, that I came across Susie Scott who builds upon the ideas of Goffman regarding total institutions and identity making, translating them to the largely voluntary institutions for self-reformation. She terms these “reinventive institutions” referring to a material, discursive or symbolic structure in which voluntary members actively seek to cultivate a new social identity, role or status. This thesis builds upon the theory of Susie Scott, adding a detailed ethnography of the cultivation of self amongst female devotees of Krishna in Colombia.
Together with my ethnographic data these theories and ideas will be examined in greater depth in the following chapters. This thesis starts by clarifying the importance of something called fe (translated as faith) in the transition from non-Hare Krishna to being-Hare Krishna. Introducing different madres, I shall demonstrate on an emotional level what it means to question your own reality choosing consciously to accept new ideas and beliefs as part of a new reality that you now slowly start to live. I stress the importance of personal convincement to change your ideas about life and self and the conscious decision to cultivate your subjectivity based upon a new ideal. I shall show that without a conscious decision to change, a transformation of the self will not occur. This idea I shall analyze in greater depth, showing how the cultivation of self takes place at the level of changing your habitus. I shall reveal a blueprint of the ideal self for which they strive, showing that it is a process of changing your habitus based upon this ideal that takes place, moving from outside to inside, from the body to the inward dispositions, and from inside to outside (from inward dispositions to the body). The former can be seen as a process that goes from a stage of acting to a stage of being whereby the intention of the act plays the greatest part in the result of the process. Having built up the argument thus far, I shall finally present the main conclusion of my work:
sadhusanga (the association with a social other). I shall argue that it is the social other that
motivates you, following the chosen path of cultivating your self based upon the given ideal, but that it is also the social other who is not involved that can stimulate you in developing different ideas about life and self thereby moving you away from the practice. I pay attention to various group-processes that are at stake in the form of performative regulation in which individual aspiration sometimes slips into a perceived group-pressure. Here I shall question the sustainability of a newly developed self, suggesting that the changing of a social
10 environment will always influence a person’s identity but that at the end this influence can be regulated by a conscious awareness.
With this thesis, I hope to make a contribution to both a theoretical as well as an emotional understanding of the process of cultivating a self showing that this process is inherently bounded to the interaction with a social other. Having chosen the perspective of a Colombian Hare Krishna woman I present their thoughts, emotions, feelings, struggles, doubts and ideas about their own process but nevertheless I want to invite the reader, on a journey of change. Because after all, we are all influenced by who we meet, what we do, where we live, what we experience and, let us not forget, what we read.
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The development of fe and the decision to change
Changing your fe, changing your reality
“But do you really believe in Krishna? I mean, do you really feel him” I asked several times to different madres. It was such an abstract thing for me. Although I had always believed in something ‘higher’ out there, I just couldn’t believe in a personal God who had his favorite dishes, a blue colored skin, many different avatars through which he manifested himself in this world, and who was the prettiest, smartest and perfect person that had ever existed. The answer I got was always the same. “It is not that you always feel him madre. You have to develop your fe”. In this chapter I shall analyze various ethnographic examples to explain how someone develops his/her fe (translated as faith) and how this generates a change in one’s way of being-in-the-world. Showing that these devotees are self-aware, I shall stress the importance of a conscious decision to adapt to new ideas and believes that give meaning to the perceived reality.
The development of fe is not something Hare Krishna’s do intellectually. As Maharaj (a high up Krishna who has studied the philosophy for many years) explained to me: “one day you just feel: this is Krishna. And that is when you have fe” (interview with Vindata Sridhar Swami)i. He pronounced clearly what I had been hearing from everyone during my months in the community. That at first the devotees stand in front of the altar and don’t feel anything – they just see the deidades (deities in the altar) as a bunch of puppets in fancy dresses. With painted faces and funny accessorizes. Later, at a certain moment, the devotees will suddenly become aware of the fact that these puppets are really God themselves, noticing things such as “how he moves, smiles, gains weight, becomes slim…” (Vindata Sridhar Swami)ii. Many
devotees told me that over time they become aware of the fact that they are not only looking at the deities, the deities are actually looking back. After this moment, the devotees notice that the deities are happy when you chant their glory in mangalartik at four in the morning, and they feel that the deities are sad if they stay longer in bed. “And then suddenly madre you realize it: Krishna really exists!” Sadhu Sewa told me while beaming of excitement.
12 My informants also note that most of the time there is not this intense feeling of
Krishna. The constant servicio, the chanting, the transformation process are also undertaken because of fe in the guru. Even if they are not able to feel Krishna all the time, they know that their spiritual master is connected to him. Fe in their guru produces fe in Krishna. Moreover, sometimes it happens that they do not see their guru for two years. Yet, as they have fe in his practice, which is followed by the other devotees, they have fe in the continuation of the process: if it is instructed by the persons they have fe in, than it will lead to progression. When speaking about fe, they are basically speaking about a feeling of trust, surrender and faith in the presented practice named Krishna consciousness. They have fe that this is the right way for them and that fe is strong enough to keep on going on with the process they have started: the cultivation of self. But how does someone develops fe?
To answer this question I suggest that we go back to the concept fe. Fe as they see it can be seen as an emotional decision or force that enables someone to change or live his/her life according to what his/her beliefs dictate. What I have understood of the way Hare Krishna’s perceive their fe is that it isn’t different from what they felt before. The emotion is the same, the shape has changed. “We all believe in something madre” Madana explains me, “before I believed in love, in science, in Jesus…”. In this sense I suggest that we look upon a more anthropological term for what I think is the essence of fe namely subjectivity as is defined by Ortner.
With subjectivity Ortner refers to ‘the ensemble of modes of perception, affect, thought, desire, and so forth that animate acting subjects….as well the cultural and social formations that shape, organize, and provoke those modes of affect, thought and so on’ (2005: 31). This importantly adds agency to the ideas of Bourdieu when he talks about a subject who internalizes the structures of the external world that eventually form a habitus and Geertz who defined culture as a system that shapes our way of being. Although we are partly shaped by the social systems we are confronted with since the moment we are born (again the influence of Lacan), I don’t agree with the structuralist ideas that the freedom of the subject is
illusionary (Ortner 2005:32). In line with Ortner I state that subjects, although influenced and limited by the symbolic reality they are confronted with, are aware of the way they are formed by their circumstances and have a certain degree of reflexivity about themselves and their desires6. In this sense they can also be (come) aware of their own subjectivity: the way they
6 I want to underline here that I am not speaking about agency in terms of agency as the capacity to
self-13 act upon the world and themselves. It is here that I might be able to explain the essence of fe as an emotional decision or force that gives direction to the way people perceive their realities: based upon an awareness of their own subjectivity they can make a conscious decision to change their ensemble modes of perception, affect, thought, desire and so forth that give direction to the way they act upon the world and give meaning to their symbolic reality. Fe is in this sense the emotional force and trust that you need to develop in a different symbolic reality in order to change and shape your subjectivity, your way of being in the world. As William James (1996) explains to us; believing is a passional decision and it is based upon an already existing possibility (in the range of possibilities we have in our symbolic reality) to believe in. For this he says that it abstractly expresses a will: ‘I trust’ (or not). Fe can thus be explained as a will to accept and develop a new subjectivity. I shall clarify this through the ethnographic example of Madana which I now present.
An ethnographic understanding of fe and the changing of subjectivity
Madana is a young and bright madre who lives in Varsana and who comes from a middle class. When she was fifteen she started having questions regarding her self, her life and the existence. She couldn’t find the answers for the strange feeling that she had felt different. That there was more out there, that God wasn’t how she had learned it in the church when she was young and went to mass, that the world didn’t only exist out of material things. In her hometown in Bucaramanga she participated in a theater-play from the revolucion de la
cuchara. A vegetarian activist group of young people who stimulated people to think about
their food habits that included eating meat. The young Madana was enchanted by their ideas (things she herself had already thought about before) and became vegetarian. She became friends with them and started searching for answers through them. “In the beginning I didn’t realize they were practicing some kind of religion” she told me. But she felt finally heard.
It was only two years later when she moved to Bogota to study anthropology that she met the devotees again and started going to Gournitay, an open minded and fresh temple in the center of Bogota.
awareness and thus the option to decide and act upon that decision (see for an interesting discussion on agency Mahmood 2001).
14 And when I met the devotees I encountered an answer. A clear answer, a practice and one that someone is able to live…because it was the most scientific that I had seen like that, something I could apply to my life…it’s is not so much theory, but it is more practical….Very personal (interview with Madana)iii.
She started going to classes more and more and at a certain moment she received jappa beads. With these beads she could also meditate on Krishna the devotees explained her. As she started practicing the chanting of her jappa’s, eating vegetarian and doing servicio she
developed a feeling of peace inside her that made her realize that this was the practice that she wanted to follow. She thus decided that she trusted this practice and that she was willing to believe in this. This changed a lot in herself and in her life. Through the development of fe in the practice of Krishna consciousness she now started to analyze her life and self in this new light that was given to her. She became aware of many habits that were inside of her with which she now felt uncomfortable. One of those habits was her flirty behavior towards men.
For example, now I didn’t feel the same for those men as I did before that. For example when a group arrived and I saw a pretty boy….I started flirting, saying things…well, that things that happen right? But, when I started getting to know the devotees I tried to control that a lot. And that felt great (interview with Madana)iv.
While based upon her former beliefs and ideas about life that flirting with man was something good (you are young and beautiful and you have to use that to find a husband while it is still possible) she now started to analyze the same act from the perspective of Krishna
consciousness. In Krishna consciousness the woman is represented as a pure and modest woman who does not evoke any wrong feelings (sexual desires) in men. Love is something sacred that involves two souls and that has nothing to do with the physical appearance of a person. Moreover, following this primordial feelings of lust will distract from meditation in Krishna and therefore the spiritual progress required to become a pure soul. Lust hinders the escape from the prison of the material world, and prevents devotees from accessing the spiritual world where everything is beautiful. Consider Madana, adapting herself to this new ideas and beliefs about womanhood, feels guilty and even a sense of disgust when she notes in herself the desire to flirt with men just to get attention, or to kiss for the sake of fun. Based upon a new practice of consciousness she changed her way of being-in-the-world and hereby her subjectivity: emotions, thoughts, feelings and actions.
15 This radical change obviously was experienced at times as a clash between her new self and her former social environment. Modesty is not the only new practice that she adapted herself to. In Krishna consciousness there is a strong division between the material world and the spiritual world. Everything that has to do with the material world is considered an illusion made by a goddess named Maya. She created this illusion so that our souls would forget about Krishna and the spiritual world, the place where our soul is really free. Our soul is considered free in the spiritual world because here in the material world we are bounded to a body. The body has desires, such as sleeping, eating, breathing and having sex. These desires retrain us from listening to our soul. In the modern world it is even worse, not only are we caught up by our primordial desires, also are we constantly trying to satisfy our needs and find happiness through material things. Practically that means that for a devotee of Krishna everything that is material and what is not used to satisfy Krishna is considered wrong. That implies a lot of detachment from all that you formerly owned or enjoyed. To go back to the example of Madana, imagine what this means for her in her daily life.
Slowly Madana started to feel a clash between her and her former friends and family. Not that she hated them, it was just that they thought about things differently than she now thought of. She couldn’t find satisfaction anymore in drinking and going out, or going shopping with her mother, or talking about boys and other ‘superficial things’. Only with the devotees did she now felt understood and comfortable. That caused a movement in her life. As she was developing the wish to become Vishnu Priya (a nun) she started receiving critique from her parents that she wanted to quit her study. Yet, simultaneously she received critique from the devotees about continuing her study which was considered a ‘murderer for the soul’ because it just fed her rational side which held her back from experiencing fe. This is an important breaking point in the life of everyone who pursues Krishna consciousness. It requires the potential devotee to choose between the two, as they cannot be lived in line with each other due to contrasting ideas about certain acts. Madana made her decision by moving to Varsana just a month before I arrived there. I had spoken to her in Gournitay in the first days of my stay there and lived with her for the following two months sharing our new statuses of being a Vishnu Priya.
While we were reconstructing the wooden fence that was just behind the theater we started talking. “Maybe you are a sign of Krishna that I should start studying again” she told me with a thoughtful voice. She gazed at the sky pondering about her life and her decision being here. “You know, sometimes I really think. What am I doing here? I am carving a wooden fence in this cold, waking up at three in the morning...I mean, sometimes I think am I
16 really doing right with this? What does Krishna want from me?” She was clearly hesitating here, something that is normal in the process of every Hare Krishna. However, in this small conversation lies a hidden meaning that I only noticed while writing it down in my diary. She clearly assigned Krishna as the one who was making her wonder, who had brought me here as a sign and who tried to tell her something. As Harding concluded in her study about
fundamentalist Christians in the United States, it is speaking that is believing (2000:60). Also Luhrmann addressed this, stating the language we use shape our thoughts and emotions about our experiences (2004). Jackson (2002) and Ochs and Capps (1969) state the same when writing about narrating yourself. Departing from the idea that the self in an unfolding reflective awareness of being-in-the-world they show that we use narrative to comprehend experiences and bring them to our conscious awareness (1969:21). Madana is clearly
narrating herself in the language of Krishna consciousness. However, it can also be seen as a marker of the degree of fe someone has. It became clear to me at the moment that Madana explained her doubts recalling Krishna as the cause, that she wasn’t doubting her fe: she had internalized the idea of Krishna on an emotional level and her actions now came forth out of this new belief she had in the presented practice of Krishna consciousness. She was doubting the way she had to construct her reality based upon the fe she had developed in Krishna consciousness. Without noticing she had moved from a stage of non-believing to a stage of believing, and that convincement was strong enough to keep her inside this new position of
Vishnu Priya she had chosen for herself. It is this last sentence that stretches the importance
of the second point in the cultivation of self that I would now like to make: the decision to change.
The moment of initiation and a conscious decision to change
When talking about the decision to change it might be interesting to consider the moment where the conscious decision coming forth out of fe is the most strongly represented: the moment that a person decides to initiate him/herself to a spiritual master taking four vows7 and making a promise that he/she will follow the advice of the guru regarding their lives. It is a moment that many informants have described as ‘a feeling you die, and are born again’ (interview with Govri)v. Someone is given a new name that is specifically meant for the
7 The four vows a Hare Krishna takes are: not eating meat, not having illicit sex, not intoxifying the
17 personal mission someone has in this life, something the Guru will sense at the moment he looks you in the eyes. The name makes someone part of the group and gives identity to a person. It is a name that invites someone to be constantly remembered of his/her new self, and that is something you note directly after the initiation. Everyone is addressing you with your new name, asking what it means, saying the name to others (her name is Vashanti!) and praising you with the perfection of the name matching your identity. Furthermore the Guru tells you what you should do. He gives you the advice of taking the vow of Vishnu Priya for a minimum of a year, he requests you taking responsibility to open a new cultural center in your hometown since there isn’t any yet, or he inspires you to lead a group of female nuns to preach in the street, and so forth. Yet it isn’t all glory and love, a decision to become a devotee of Krishna can also feel as a big commitment as Ima, one of my main informants explained to me.
Ima is a thirty year old Spanish madre who arrived in Varsana by coincidence. When she finished her job in a laundry shop in a little town in the Basque countries she decided to visit her friends in Bogota and travel through South America. While searching for organic seeds on the market in Bogota she met a young man with a shaven head and a little braid departing from the crown of his head. Around his neck he was wearing a little bag that
seemed to be constantly attached to his hand. That nice man explained her about the seeds and that he was about to return to the organic farm just outside Bogota where the seeds came from. If she wanted to come, he asked her. Just being freed from her nine-to-five job schedule she decided to go with the flow and visit the farm right away. As she walked in the kitchen of the farm she realized that there was a connection between this man with his strange hair and bag and the rest of the people in the farm. It turned out to be a temple and while still being in a state of surprise she was introduced to the temple president with the words: “Krishna brought her to here, praphu”. She felt intrigued but pleasant. The president asked her, while looking her in the eyes with an inquiring look, if she was happy. When she hesitated he told her: “Welcome, here you have a way to find your self” (interview with Ima)vi.
She began as a volunteer, meaning that she paid a little money, worked half days doing servicio and was given classes of yoga and different food. She felt uncomfortable being treated differently and followed every program waking up at three in the morning just like other madres. After a week one of the madres asked if she wanted to stay with them as a learning madre. The very atheist Ima decided to do it, “just because it felt good” (interview with Ima)vii. This was eight months before I met her, and ten months before she initiated herself. I had the chance to reflect with her upon her process, her thoughts about initiation
18 which meant that there was no way back, and the rollercoaster of emotions she went through. At the morning of the initiations, the second day of Janmastami (the yearly celebration of Krishna’s birthday where hundreds of devotees come together in Varsana to see each other and the guru), I woke up early from the exited voices I heard.
“Madre wake up, today is a special day…you are going to initiate!” Jaganath whispers of excitement. “You can take this dress Ima, that will be just perfect” Madana says. While braiding her hair I ask her how she feels. She tells me that she feels nervous but also exited. “It really feels like a big step madre” she whispers softly. I accompanied her all day, seeing at least hundred people being initiated before it was her turn. Just before she walked towards the guru who was standing with a big circle of people around her she blinked at me over her shoulder. In her eyes I read peace. Peace and a small hint of fear that flashed towards me when she stood in front of him, as she later revealed me in the conversation we had right after her initiation. He looked down at her. His blue eyes gazed at this small woman, her big jam-pot glasses and a white flower in her hand. He whispered the holy mantra in her ear, gave her the jappa’s, wounded the kuntis around her neck and closed his eyes. “Daneshvari” he said, the guardian of the sacred garden. I smiled, from the moment she had arrived in Varsana she had taken care of the medicinal plants with a passionate devotion.
A week after her initiation I sat down with her for a long interview. On this peaceful afternoon she told me how she had the feeling something had changed. She now felt more responsibility for the path she had chosen. If she was first in a state of trying it out, she had now consciously made a decision that this was her new life and that along with that, the old Ima was history. “The process has really started now” she told me, “and I am going to change myself, see how I can function as an instrument of his love”. Before the moment of initiating, you can still do what you want she explained. But once you are initiated you have accepted to follow the guidelines regarding your life and self. Now she cannot visit her friends in Bogota whenever she wants, she has to ask permission (I shall reflect on this in chapter three
regarding a term I shall call invisible walls). With the performative act8 of the initiation her new self had become part of her new reality, something she was willing to live although it
8 Performativity, a term originally introduced by Austin, is explained by Butler as a speech act that
enacts or produces what it names (see 1988). Inspired by Lacan we can drive this further suggesting that language in general construct our reality: by naming things we place it into a symbolic order. With the speech act of being given a new name that carries your personal purpose in life and the act of stating out loud that you will follow the four vows and serve to the mission for the rest of your life, you have chosen to ‘enrol yourself to this new path’ and hereby made this decision part of your new reality.
19 would mean that she gave up her freedom (her term, meaning in this case not being able to visit her friends) and had to stay in the monastery.
Important to note is that Ima has chosen for this. She had the possibility to leave but decided to stay after she had realized that living outside a temple just didn’t make sense to her. This stands in sharp contrast with the children born in Krishna consciousness. In many conversations with madres raising their children in Krishna consciousness I heard the same theme playing the storyline: Their children when reaching adolescence all reached a stage of hesitation. Being confronted with other ‘realities’ they became reflexive towards their own way of being-in-the-world. While their parents where convinced that this was the path, they never had the possibility to choose for Krishna. This often ended up in periods of distance from the temple in which the children experimented with the ‘material world’ that had always been critiqued in their lively homes. Purna, a madre of twenty five who grew up in Varsana, reflected with me upon her situation. She recently made her come back to Krishna
consciousness but explained to me how she was confronted with a different reality when she came to live in Cali (a big city):
And that is where I met other friends. Karmies (non-devotees). I met with a different religion, different music, and how they dance it... a lot of things that I didn’t know. And that was what made me turn completely. Completely. I moved away from Krishna consciousness…didn’t go to the temple, was more with other friends. The only principle I didn’t break was not eating meat, from there on, I broke every principle. All of them…smoking, drinking, dancing, boys...everything that you can imagine. I went like a bird who they had locked up too long (interview with Purna)viii.
You could say that she was just in puberty, but analysing her words carefully I realised there was more at stake here. The importance for her didn’t lay in a rebellion against her parents, it lay in the expanding of her limited life-world in which she sought for answers through other practices then the one she had been born in. After five years of being outside the temple she met her current husband and became pregnant. It made her reflexive to what she was doing and she started to become interested in Krishna consciousness (again) but now from out of her own conscious decision. “And now I really saw that it made sense” she told me. With her daughter she tries to leave the decision up to her without forcing her into any belief or turning her back when her daughter wants something different “because everyone has different habits and we all have to respect that”. She made her point very clear: choosing for Krishna
20 consciousness and changing your life and self based on this practice is something that is only possible when you have chosen it for yourself9.
It is here where I come back to the concept of agency and subjectivity as I have
explained referring to Ortner. Analysing various ethnographic examples I have concluded that my informants (and I would suggest actors in general) are aware of their own subjectivity and are, here, able to make a conscious decision to make a move towards a new way of being and acting upon the world, based upon the development of fe in a present system of ideas and beliefs that is in this case Krishna consciousness. This builds upon the ideas of Lacan and van de Port who stretch the existence of a symbolic order, a constructed reality captured in
language and symbols through which we give meaning upon life10, the works of Geertz and Bourdieu (and many more) who see the influence of culture on the acting subject, and the argument of Ortner that every subject is a ‘knowing subject’ that has agency. I would like to suggest that it is the possibility to choose to believe in the presented ideas, coming forth out of the willingness to act and believe at all, that increases fe in the presented practice and thus the transition from non-hare Krishna to being-Hare Krishna11.
This transition as I have outlined happens at the level of changing your consciousness, your subjectivity, your way of acting upon the world. However there is more going on here. The development of fe definitely generates a decision to follow or belief in this new practice that is based upon a set of ideas and beliefs that shape the reality. Yet in the transition from non-Hare Krishna to Hare Krishna someone is not only developing a new consciousness, as an outcome of this someone is cultivating his/her self12. This cultivation of self is notable not only in the way a person thinks or acts upon the world, it goes through a conscious changing of habitus based upon an ideal self that is presented in Krishna consciousness. Habitus in this sense refers to both the outward behaviour as well as the inward dispositions that shape a
9 If you choose to accept Krishna in your life, you will become aware of his presence in your life as
became clear in the example of Madana. However this does not imply that as a devotee you do not have to make decisions and that they are all taken for you: you have to become aware of your own being and based on that awareness and combine this with your knowledge of Krishna consciousness and make a ‘right decision’. Any other decision you make (for example leaving the devotees) will be seen as you not being ready to follow the right way but also that can eventually be the will of Krishna making clear you are not ready yet with the material world.
10 For more on this I would like to refer to the articles of Eagleton 2009; Luijpen 1969; Van de Port
2011 and Stravrakakis 2002.
11 That someone is, as William James explained: willing to believe. He states that someone can only
believe in something wherever there is willingness to act at all (1996)
12 The self can be understood in the light of what Foucault (1987), Guignon (2004) and Mead (1974)
21 person and his/her way of being in the world. I shall demonstrate this in the following chapter, shifting here to the level of habitus.
22
2
Changing your habitus, changing your self
She moves without being noticed, always accompanied with a soft smile on her face. Her hair is neatly tight in a braid that falls over the clean and white sari she wears. With everything she does I can see her lips moving, softly chanting Hare Krishna while she is doing her servicio in unconditional devotion. She is loving, delicate, humble, friendly, peaceful,
respectful, tolerant, sincere and timid. She is free of any material or physical desires and bad habits such as anger, jealousy, lust, egoism and pride don’t exist in her spectrum of being. For her internalized modesty she never evokes wrong intentions in the opposite sex, not in her behavior nor in her physical appearance. She is a description of the perfect madre, but she would never say so because of her humility.
The conscious shaping of an ideal habitus
Above is a blueprint I have constructed based on observations, conversations, interviews, classes, literature and introspection. This blueprint captures the base of the ideal self these women are trying to cultivate at the moment they have developed enough fe in the practice of Krishna consciousness that they are willing to work upon themselves in order to make a change. This change not only happens on the level of consciousness and subjectivity, as I have demonstrated in the last chapter, but also on the level of habitus as I shall explain now. This differs from the level of subjectivity because it not only talks about modes of perception, affects, thoughts and so on, but really deepens out the actual process of shaping one’s way of being-in-the-world through the internalisation of certain virtues. In what follows I shall dive deeper into the cultivation of self showing, through the analysis of various ethnographic examples, how a new habitus is being internalized. I shall make a distinction between the outward level, referring to the body and behavior, and the inward level: the conscious change of thoughts, emotions and intentions. Although analytically they are presented as separately, they are inherently connected in the shaping of an ideal habitus as will become clear.
23 In the Vedic literature, the base of Krishna consciousness, is written about 26 character traits a devotee of Krishna should develop or possess13. However, the blueprint I have
constructed doesn’t include all 26 character traits because I have based it on those qualities that are being addressed constantly by my informants. Interestingly enough is that although we are speaking here about a development of certain ideal habits, these qualities are
considered as natural to a woman. Madana, as many madres, explained to me that she experienced these Hare Krishna habits as more natural and true then the habits she had developed due to the influence of the (Colombian) society she lived in: “through Krishna consciousness you remember who you are” (interview with Madana)ix. The same was
something that praphu Jaganath recited:
A madre, when she is a devotee, she should not forget about this essence [of a woman]. Its more, those qualities are not said like: every woman has them. No, they
have to develop [he emphasises this by raising his voice slightly] this essence because
potentially they have this” (interview with Jaganath)x.
Praphu Jaganath and Madana clearly underline that the ideal qualities of a madre are natural
to the soul (the essence), but forgotten by our socialized selves while being brought up in a society where we learn to develop different qualities (remember the example of Madana about her flirty behaviour). This is a general idea in Krishna consciousness as I have already hinted at; the idea that all that is material is an illusion. All that we do based on this material desires, is considered as wrong and should be changed in something good. That ‘doing good’ is our essence, something that should be natural to every soul. So staying with the example of being modest, a woman can develop this quality and change her habitus more easily according to the philosophy because it is already inside of her and she just has to remember. As if you would go on a bicycle after ten years not riding it, it would feel strange in the beginning but you will not have to start all over learning it. Flirting might then be a desire of the body and the material, but modesty is the essence of a woman. It is in the practice of restructuring this habitus that someone is working upon his/her self.
When talking about habitus it might be important to recall my use of this term. Based on my reading of Mahmood I have understood the changing of habitus as a conscious
embodiment of moral virtues through ‘a coordination of outward behaviour (e.g. bodily acts,
24 social behaviour) with inwards disposition (e.g. emotional states, thoughts, intentions)’
(Mahmood 2001: 215). It is through the intensive training of the body, the mind and emotions that certain virtues become embodied habits and one shapes one’s self. I have chosen to use this notion of habitus, instead of the formulation of habitus by Bourdieu, because it tends to focus on a conscious craft through which someone actively forms his/her habits rather that an ‘unconscious power of habitus through which objective social conditions become naturalized and produced’ (Mahmood 2005: 138). It is interesting to note that Hare Krishna’s refer to their former habitus as objective social conditions that are naturalized and produced by them while living in mainstream society. This habitus has to be ‘unlearned’, they say, and changed into a conscious and pure habitus of an ideal devotee. Both notions of habitus thus find their way in the philosophy of my informants: the conscious crafting of habitus (Mahmood) takes place after the awareness of one’s unconsciously learned habitus (Bourdieu). The difference here can be addressed to the word conscious, something I would like to focus on using the example of tolerance.
That every devotee should be tolerant is what we learn from the classes and literature. It is one of the most cited habits a devotee of Krishna should change. If someone stands in a long row waiting for the food after a long day of servicio and another person jumps the queue the first emotion would be irritation followed up by an action that might be: “hey you should wait your turn!”. This comes forth out of the desire to get food since you are hungry and the thought that you have the right on that because you are waiting. However, as Maharaj Vindata formulated so poetically: everything is Krishna and everything that happens is part of his divine plan so nothing should upset you. Believing this, and having internalised this way of thinking (as I have shown in chapter 1) a devotee will become self-reflexive towards his/her actions and thoughts and emotions. So he/she will auto-correct him/herself and remain silent when something happens. With the controlling of hunger, the acceptance of the imperfection of everything and decision to change, a devotee in this example is practising his/her tolerance until it becomes something natural. This is when someone is shaping his/her habitus in a conscious way, becoming aware of his/her emotions, thoughts and actions and self-reflexively controlling this and changing it into a desired habitus.
As I have shown in chapter one, the process of cultivating a self is based upon the moment that someone becomes aware of his/her own being-in-the-world and starts to change his/her perspective of reality (and with this his/her subjectivity) based upon fe in certain ideas and beliefs about life and self. This self-reflexiveness is essential in the potentiality of the desired change because only if someone is aware of his/her own behavior (bodily acts, social
25 behavior) and inwards dispositions (emotional states, thoughts, intentions), someone is able to change it. As Susie Scott has written in her book about changing identities departing from the analysis of Goffman:
A need for redemption and self-improvement is not passively taken but actively interpreted and worked with by the client as a knowledgeable agent…The self-reflexivity of these identity projects introduces another level of analysis: not only are individuals aware of themselves as objects to be reconstructed, but they are also aware of themselves as subjects, driving the process of reconstruction (2011: 38, 39).
I could not have better formulated the conscious shaping of one’s habitus through the awareness that it is also you, as a subject, that is changing it. A devotee who is changing his/her self is both the one who changes, and the one who is directing that change14.
This process can be seen as a practice that is moving from outside to inside, acting in order to cultivate the desired habitus and from inside to outside: changing the intention through which the desired habitus comes out naturally. This happens at a bodily level and an emotional level (speaking of thoughts, emotions, intentions). These two ways of working upon the self strengthen each other as long as they are practiced correctly, but they can also weaken each other when either one of the two is practiced incorrectly. I shall show this in the following paragraphs starting with the outside: the body.
From outside to inside, working on the body
Two years ago, when I met the Hare Krishna’s for the first time, it struck me how the women were all behaving very modestly, socializing mainly with other women, and talking to men in a very ‘distant way’. Eyes were focused on the ground, at the hands or at any other thing but the eyes or face of the men. When eyes cross it was only for a brief instant, where the eyes made a straight contact with the chin upheld and immediately followed by looking away. After all, otherwise they would have been considered to be flirting. The body posture was calm and soft without moving the hands, hips or head to much. The topic of the conversation
14 This idea is found in different literature. If you are interested in this topic I would like to suggest a
close reading on Foucault 1987; Guignon 2004; Heelas 1996 and Mead 1974. They all address the cultivation of self departing from the idea that there is a conscious ‘I’ (or self) working upon his way of being-in-the-world.
