Psychologies Magazine, June 2001 —
In 1982, I celebrated my 20th birthday in India. Nineteen years later, I returned there for interviews with the Dalai Lama for a book. The reasons that once drove me to make this trip and the traces it left on me come back to me. At the time, I had been wondering—for several years—about the meaning of existence, I was studying philosophy in Switzerland, and I had four months ahead of me.
India, the ultimate initiatory journey, has become an obvious choice. My generation, the one after May 1968, disengaged from any ideological struggle, knows that politics alone will not change the world. If there is to be a revolution, it must first be internal, based on philosophy, psychology, and spirituality. At the same time, the doors of our own spiritual traditions have become foreign to us: worn-out words, too many dogmas and norms, a bureaucratized clergy, contempt for the body.
Paradoxically, India seems closer to us: primacy of experience over theory, spiritual work that integrates the body and emotions, effectiveness of psycho-corporal techniques, freedom for each person to follow their own path with a master of their choice.
These Eastern wisdoms also address the deficiencies of Westerners, who are uncomfortable in their bodies, disoriented by their emotions, and lacking in meaning. Since adolescence, I had practiced martial arts and yoga for several years. During this first trip, I learned meditation in the Tibetan monasteries of northern India. But, as the Dalai Lama and Arnaud Desjardins constantly remind us, it would be a shame if this need for the East made us forget the treasures of our own traditions. In fact, India also led me to rediscover the spiritual depth of Christianity thanks to two unforgettable stays: in a hospice and a leper colony run by Mother Teresa's sisters. I discovered compassion in action, a profound joy, and an incredible solidarity among the poorest of the poor. My values—which more or less consciously associated happiness with physical and material well-being—were turned upside down. The strength of Christ's message and of evangelical love, the importance of meditation and the body-mind "reconnection": these are ultimately the two messages engraved in me by this initiatory journey.
During my second and recent trip to India, I discussed this at length with a Tibetan lama. At the end of our conversation, he said to me with a huge smile: "I am happy that you are a Christian." "And I am happy that you are a Buddhist!" I replied spontaneously. I remember Gandhi's words: "When you have reached the heart of one religion, you have reached the heart of all religions."
Today, I notice that India still holds a strong appeal for many Westerners in search of wisdom. I meet young Europeans and Americans who have come to spend several months in India. Their looks have changed: short hair, clean jeans, laptops instead of guitars. Most of them report that the large Hindu ashrams in the South, those of Poona or Pondicherry, are emptying in favor of the Buddhist monasteries that have spread throughout the Himalayan regions since the exile of the Tibetans in 1959 (Buddhism had been driven out of India by the conquests of Islam). This evolution is ultimately consistent with what we have observed in our rich countries over the past twenty years: the growing success of Buddhism to the detriment of the traditional religions of the West, but also of Hinduism, which had its heyday in our country in the 1960s and 1970s.
Pragmatic and effective, Buddhism allows Westerners to rediscover the lost keys to their "inner Orient" without calling into question certain achievements of modern rationality and scientific criticism. "Do not believe anything I teach you without having experienced it yourself," affirmed the Buddha.
On Buddhism, let us mention two recent books:
• for a first introduction: “Wise Words of the Dalai Lama” (Editions 1, 2001).
• for further study: “Encyclopedic Dictionary of Buddhism”, by Philippe Cornu (Le Seuil, 2001).
June 2001