During the 1963-64 school year, I was a 9th grader at Ogontz Junior High School in Elkins Park, a suburb of Philadelphia. The rollercoaster events that were to take place during that year would prove to be momentous for me and for others of my generation. The first, the assassination of a president, was to take place on a chilly day in November; the second, a mere two and a half months later.

On November 22, a Friday, I was in Home Economics (a course for girls only, where we learned to sew, cook, and otherwise run a home in preparation for what was then expected to be the work of all of us once we reached a suitable age: that of wife, mother, and homemaker), my last class of the day. Feeling bored and restless, I got permission to visit the bathroom along with my friend Carol. As we washed our hands and fooled around with our hair, Carol and I chatted about our weekend plans. Checking the clock, we saw that class would let out in less than an hour, and we smiled at each other. Only 45 minutes to freedom!

Returning to the classroom, we found it strangely altered. The lesson had come to an abrupt halt. Girls sat sobbing, their heads in their hands. Others were shouting, ” It can’t be!” or “I don’t believe it!” or were sitting trancelike in stunned silence, their faces pale. Even our teacher had tears in her eyes. Carol and I looked around us, at a total loss. “What’s wrong?” we shouted, suddenly afraid. Then we learned the terrible news: President Kennedy had been shot and killed in Dallas. Having missed the announcement that had come while we had been in the bathroom, we’d been granted a few precious moments of extended innocence.

After classes let out, I walked home in the chill, my thoughts as dark as the black clouds roiling in the sky and blocking out the sun, asking myself over and over, How could President Kennedy, so vital and handsome, be dead? How could something like this happen here, in America?

The gloomy weather on that November day seemed fitting for the death of a president, matching the mood of a nation. A few days later I sat glued to my TV, watching President Kennedy’s funeral along with my family and millions of others. November 25 was a sunny day, but the spare late autumn sunlight that spilled over Jackie in her black, over the rest of the Kennedys in their somber dress, and over John-John, his tiny figure saluting his father’s flag-draped coffin, did nothing to melt the icy sorrow in my heart. The haunting drumbeat that accompanied the president’s casket and funeral procession, the rhythm of which I can recall perfectly to this day, bore witness to the light that had gone out. The world had become a darker place. For me and for so many others of my generation, the shots that rang out on that dark November day stole away our innocence, and things would never be the same.

On February 9, 1964, a mere 77 days after President Kennedy was assassinated, the Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan. John, Paul, George, and Ringo were the perfect antidote to the gloom that had settled over everyone in the aftermath of the president’s death—and I was the perfect age to appreciate them. My family always watched the Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday nights, and February 9 was no exception. There we sat, my father, mother, my brother David and I, in front of the little black-and-white screen down in our basement. I can’t remember if we knew they would be on or not, but there they were, mop-haired and adorable. I sat there, my young teenaged self just drinking them in. 73 million Americans watched the Beatles make their debut, and it was the beginning of a love affair for many of them as it was for me. At the time, no one would have guessed that the appearance of the Beatles would end up having such a large impact, one that, while hardly reaching the traumatic impact of the assassination of a young and vital president, would nevertheless exert a powerful influence upon a generation.

The second time the Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan, the following Sunday, I started screaming as they sang “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” seriously shocking my parents. They knew me to be a studious and quiet and somewhat shy young girl who got top grades in school and never got in trouble—and here I was, ranting and raving like all the girls in the audience! Right then and there, I became a Beatles freak, and life was never the same. The lads influenced my life in countless ways, even, I suspect, contributing more than a little bit to my decision to become a yogic nun. After all, my interest in Eastern religion and meditation had been sparked by the appearance of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” in the summer of 1967, and by the trip to India to visit Maharishi Mahesh Yogi that the lads later embarked on.

Two events, so different, and yet each so momentous. Two events on opposite sides of the emotional spectrum, a kind of cosmic counterpoint. Two events of a rollercoaster school year that would shape an entire generation. And, as we say, the rest is history.

At a recent book club meeting where my book, The Orange Robe, was the topic of discussion, one of the participants mentioned she thought the uniform I once wore was similar to those worn in the military—not that the two uniforms looked similar in any way (picture a soldier in flowing orange robes and an orange veil – now there’s an image!)—but that they served a similar purpose, giving the wearer a strong sense of identity and belonging. Her point was well taken, reminding me that I had often contemplated the surprising similarities between two roles seemingly on opposite ends of a spectrum—that of a spiritual teacher who teaches meditation and dispenses spiritual wisdom and that of a member of the military who often has to seek out and kill “the enemy.” In particular, the struggles both experience after leaving these roles can be remarkably similar.

For one thing, the returning nun or soldier experiences the loss of a ready-made identity, symbolized by that uniform. Suddenly, you’re back in the everyday world, wearing “civvies”—civilian dress. Now you look just like everyone else. Now you’re no longer special. You’re just an everyday person expected to do everyday things.

Closely related to the loss of the feeling of being special is the loss of a sense of mission. A strong sense of mission is vitally important to both roles. Back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, as Ananda Marga nuns and monks went about teaching meditation and starting schools and other such projects, many were convinced that the organization was going to change the world. What a heady sense of mission we felt in those early days! Even for those of us who hadn’t believed in the “save the world” thing, there was still the sense of a spiritual mission, of turning people on to the spiritual life and giving them a way of achieving enlightenment. Members of the military have a similarly strong sense of mission and feel called to serve their country. Even if some harbor doubts about the mission they are given (it’s hard to imagine that none doubted the idea that the Iraqis were going to embrace us as saviors and harbingers of democracy once Saddam Hussein was gone), they must bury such reservations deep down in order to get the job done—and to survive.

This strong sense of mission is closely linked to identifying with the group as a family. Ananda Marga was mine for close to twenty years, and leaving that family, however dysfunctional it was and however necessary it was to leave it, proved traumatic. It can be even more so for the soldier who returns to civilian life. The men and women with whom and for whom the serviceman risked his life will forever have a special place in his heart. Some returning military members feel that their real families—their spouses, children, and other relatives—cannot understand what they have been through. The book Thank You For Your Service, by David Finkel, focuses on struggles returning service members face. In its recent review of the book, The New York Times Book Review put it this way: “Home . . . is a world dominated by an elemental loneliness. Removed from the bonds of their unit—severed from the love of comrades that Finkel calls “the truth of war”—each soldier navigates the postwar on his own: “It is such a lonely life, this life afterward.” “ (Wow! What a perfect description of what I felt upon leaving my Ananda Marga family and returning home!) Indeed, faced with this feeling of loneliness, some soldiers end up re-enlisting precisely to return to the comrades who understand them, and who have become more like family than their own flesh and blood.

And then there’s the sense of being at a loss value-wise after returning. Many of those who leave their families and countries to become Ananda Marga teachers do so when they are young, some barely out of their teens. More than a few are confused and seeking direction, and in Ananda Marga, they find conduct rules and a ready-made value system that provide it. So it was for me. I was 24 when I left home for training in India. When I left the organization 18 years later, it was as if I were an adolescent leaving home for the first time. Having accepted without question a belief system and having followed a strict set of rules for all those years, I was faced with figuring out what my own values and beliefs truly were. Similarly, the majority of those who join the military also do so at a very young age and find that the military gives them a strong value system along with its disciplined lifestyle and code of behavior. Leaving all that behind can result in the same difficulty—that of sorting out what ones values and beliefs are separate from the group—that leaving Ananda Marga caused me.

These are just a few of the points in common. Of course, there are some differences. For one, most of us in Ananda Marga never had to risk our lives (though I almost got shot for meditating in the no-man’s land between Greek and Turkish Cyprus way back when, and some didis and dadas (nuns and monks) did end up dead for one reason or another), while many in the military risk theirs on an almost daily basis. And while a sizable number of those returning from the military have grievous physical wounds as well as psychological ones to deal with, those of us returning from groups like Ananda Marga only have the psychological kind. Still, the remarkable similarities do deserve a closer and more detailed investigation, perhaps as a book. I have my own life as an Ananda Marga teacher to tap for material, and I know some other ex-nuns and monks who would be willing to be interviewed. Anyone know some ex-servicemen or women who would be as well? If so, please contact me!

Ever notice how bizarre dream logic is? In dreams, the strangest occurrences are accepted as fact and are left unquestioned. Take one I had a few nights ago. I was sitting with a group of writers reading one another’s poetry. When the meeting ended, I decided to lock my poetry journal in a rectangular silver safe. This particular safe, despite being somewhat small, had several compartments. I chose one, deposited my notebook, and locked the door. Then I accidentally pushed a button and out a hole in the side came, of all things, bread dough (multi-grain with sesame seeds, not sure if organic or not). I realized the dough was my journal with all the poems in it, transformed. Upset that I’d lost my poems and also embarrassed at what had happened, I didn’t want my fellow poets to know, but ended up making a joke out of it, saying, “What just happened would make a pretty funny poem, huh?” At no time did I question how a notebook full of poems could be transformed into bread dough. It seemed perfectly reasonable in the dream. That’s dream logic for you.

While contemplating this dream upon awakening, it occurred to me that this strange frame of reference, this dream logic, when something outlandish is accepted as normal, is precisely what we have in the George Zimmerman case. How else to explain how a 17-year-old unarmed black youth carrying a fruit drink and a bag of Skittles could be stalked by a 28-year-old white Hispanic man with a gun who then shoots the unarmed boy, doesn’t get arrested for 44 days, then gets acquitted of all charges? What kind of universe are we living in? Precisely one like one you might encounter in dreams (or more appropriately in this case, in nightmares). In this strange universe, George Zimmerman’s right to defend himself against an unarmed boy is sacrosanct. What about Trayvon Martin’s right to defend himself against a man following him with a gun? No mention of that during the trial.

And strange indeed is the avoidance of any reference to race during the trial. Judge Debra Nelson decided at the beginning of the trial that the word “profiling” — but not the phrase “racial profiling” — could be used in opening statements. Prosecutor John Guy insisted that the case was not about race, despite the fact that in his closing statement, he made an obvious reference to race when he asked the jury to consider a role reversal: would Trayvon Martin be convicted if he had followed and then shot George Zimmerman? Yet Mr. Guy then went on to finish his statement by reminding the jury that the case was not about race. Well, if not because of his race, then why was Trayvon Martin profiled and followed? Because he was a teenager wearing a hoodie? No, because he was a black teenager wearing a hoodie. If Trayvon Martin had been white, it’s highly unlikely George Zimmerman would have called 911. Just consider this fact: all of Zimmerman’s calls to police about suspicious persons involved African-Americans.

Another curious figure in this strange universe is Juror B-37, recently interviewed by Anderson Cooper on CNN (her face blacked out), who claimed that “George” (as she repeatedly called him) had been “frustrated” by all the break-ins that had been occurring in his gated community. Because he was frustrated, and (get this!) because it was raining (!) and a strange teenager was walking and looking into people’s windows, George Zimmerman then decided to take action. Well, we only have George Zimmerman’s word that Martin was looking into windows. Even if he was, so what? It was dark, and the insides of houses would have been lit up. I often go for walks at dusk in my neighborhood, and I sometimes look in windows (from the street, mind you), my eye caught by a particular wall color, or an interesting lamp or painting. I’ve never been followed by a neighborhood watch volunteer, and certainly not one with a gun (by the way, who ever heard of armed neighborhood watch volunteers?) But I, of course, am a older white woman with grey hair. If I were a boy of Trayvon’s age and race, maybe someone would have called 911 . . . or worse.

The defense claimed that George Zimmerman was walking back toward his car (note: in order to walk back to his car, he had to have gotten out of it to follow Trayvon Martin in the first place)when Martin came up to him, pinned Zimmerman on his back, and assaulted him. We’ll never know what really happened, but even if this account of events were to be true, there needs to be some penalty for someone with a gun going after an unarmed black teen who had been walking in a community minding his own business. Bottom line is, George Zimmerman should have never followed Trayvon Martin, and he certainly should never have followed him with a gun. Once he did that, Trayvon Martin had every right to defend himself. The fact that George Zimmerman was declared not guilty is a travesty of justice. The fact that the prosecution shied away from talking about race and the obvious racial profiling that led to Trayvon’s death is also a travesty. The not guilty verdict also sets a very bad precedent. How many other George Zimmermans are out there (so-called neighborhood watch volunteers or not), secure in the knowledge that if they stalk and then shoot an unarmed black teenager, they’ll get away with it? Strange universe, indeed, and I wish I could wake up and find it all to be just a . . . nightmare.

With the recent revelations about all the spying the NSA is doing on us American citizens (trolling through phone calls, e-mails, and whatnot), some of us may find ourselves nervously reviewing and thinking back over our phone calls and electronic communications over the past several years. Most of us don’t have any links to terrorists or any involvement in terrorist plots to worry about (unless you count sharing dark wishes concerning the fates of Bush and Cheney from time to time with friends similarly appalled at the invasion of Iraq on false pretenses and so on), but what about other indiscretions we may have shared? What about calls to accountants near tax time about clever schemes to lower what is owed the IRS? What about calls or e-mails to friends about getting together to party with illicit substances, or calls to obtain such substances? At the time, you’d have thought, Nothing to worry about! This is America, land of the free!

Well, even if we’re not as free as we thought we were, I certainly don’t have anything to worry about. My phone and electronic communication of all kinds has always been circumspect. It’s a habit I developed long ago, during my years with Ananda Marga in Australia.

In the 1970s and ’80s, the Australian government considered Ananda Marga a terrorist group, largely because it had been suspected of carrying out the only terrorist attack in that country’s history– a 1978 bombing at the Sydney Hilton during a meeting of Commonwealth leaders. At that time, Ananda Marga’s spiritual leader, Shrii Shrii Anandamurti, was imprisoned in India, and the Indian prime minister Morarji Desai claimed that Ananda Marga had attempted to kill him because of it. Although the case has never been solved, Ananda Marga was the prime suspect for years.

Consequently, the Australian government kept close tabs on Ananda Marga. Phones were known to be tapped, so whenever we spoke on the phone to one another, we were always conscious that someone may have been listening in, and we were careful not to divulge any sensitive information about our movements or plans. In particular, we were careful not to say anything to tip off listeners about two particularly sensitive topics: our smuggling business and what we called our “BMs” (bogus marriages).

For many years, when Ananda Marga members went to India, they would carry with them video equipment, either smuggling it into the country (by not declaring it upon entry) or by declaring it, having the information written in their passports, and then getting rid of the incriminating evidence. (The way such evidence could be gotten rid of was by having one’s passport sprayed before the trip, and then, once safely in the country, removing what was written by the custom official with some liquid brought along for the purpose.) Then the contraband would be sold to one of our contacts for a tidy profit, since in those days, India had very high import duties for such equipment. So, whenever we needed to talk about procuring equipment, we’d talk about going shopping. Those listening to such conversations must have been puzzled that nuns and monks, renunciates dedicated to social service, would have had such an avid interest in something so mundane!

“BMs” were done so that Ananda Marga didis and dadas could get citizenship and stay in the country. Obviously, any monk or nun discussing marriage would have caused a few raised eyebrows among our phone tappers, so here we were also models of discretion. Most of these bogus marriages worked out well, and the lucky didi or dada obtained citizenship and could travel back and forth to India without worrying about getting back into Australia. I had one, but mine did not turn out so well. A year or so after my BM, my “husband” disappeared. This was before all of the paperwork was complete, so I was left in limbo, with no legal status, for the rest of my time in the country.

Anyway, all this surveillance, which also included visits (we called them raids) to our centers by Special Branch, the Australian counterpart of the FBI, inculcated in me a lifelong sense of discretion when it came to phone and electronic communication. Back here in the U.S., I might have felt like knocking off Dick Cheney, but I would never have said so over the phone or through an e-mail. The few times I experimented with marijuana after years of abstaining (something I never do now, as marijuana leaves me shivering uncontrollably even in the hottest of weather), I would never have discussed such things over the phone. Code for smoking with one friend included saying, “How about we get together and watch Magical Mystery Tour?”

So I’ve nothing to fear from the NSA. My memoir, The Orange Robe, has lots juicy details about illegal activities, but they are beyond the reach of law enforcement as the statue of limitations has expired on all of them. Likewise the accounts of them in this blog. But, wait! Is the NSA limited by statues of limitations? Uh-oh . . .!

Those of you who have read my book, The Orange Robe, know that one of its themes is identity. (How could it not, when over the period of close to 20 years, I’d had three spiritual names and three legal ones?) One aspect of this theme was my identity as a Jew. As I shared in the book, at the time I encountered Ananda Marga, I was searching for a new identity. My rejection of the one I had grown up with had to do with the family I came from (not a warm or close-knit one by any means), the zeitgeist of times (the late ’60s and early ’70s), and my youth. But my desire to be someone else had also resulted from internalizing the subtle but still fairly pervasive anti-Semitic attitudes I had grown up around in ’50s and ’60s America, something called in the literature “internalized oppression,” which happens when a person attempts to distance herself from membership in a devalued group because she accepts, to some degree, the negative evaluations of the group held by the majority.

In 1975, not long after becoming an Ananda Marga nun, I was sent to Israel and arrived in the country eager to plunge into the work of establishing the mission of Ananda Marga there. At the time I considered myself reborn. No longer was I Marsha Goluboff, a Jewish girl from the suburbs of Philadelphia. Now I was Acarya Malatii, proud daughter of Shrii Shrii Anandamurti, the founder and guru of the movement, and no longer the daughter of Max Goluboff, who had emigrated to the United States as a young boy from a shtetl in what was then the Jewish Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire.

Several vivid memories from those days in Israel come to mind, the first involving a man with a thick Polish accent (a man I have no doubt was a Holocaust survivor) whom I encountered one day when out and about in Jerusalem. On that day so long ago, I was striding down a sun-splashed street in my bright orange robes. As I made my way down the street, the man, coming from the opposite direction, stopped in front of me and stared, a stunned look on his worn face, his thinning gray hair framing his face like a halo. “What are you people doing in our country?” he shouted, his voice thick with anger and full of pain. “Stop trying to convert us! Go back to where you came from!” Before I could say a word, he drew his lips together and spat at me. I wiped the mess off the front of my uniform with my handkerchief as best I could and then went on my way, mentally reciting one of our conduct rules, the one about always being ready to accept all sufferings as rewards.

Now I think, What if he had known that the young woman standing before him in a habit almost identical to a Catholic nun’s save for the color, had come from a Jewish family? What would he have thought, have felt? I was a girl whose great grandfather on her father’s side had been conscripted into the tsar’s army at a very young age, as was common practice in tsarist Russia; whose father, along with his mother and sister, had come to join his own father in America not long before a major pogrom in his shtetl killed over 1,500 Jewish residents, some of whom surely must have been members of his extended family, as none of his aunts, uncles, or cousins had emigrated with him. I was a girl whose maternal grandmother had emigrated from Poland in the late 19th century and whose maternal grandfather had come to America from what had been Austria-Hungary. How many of their extended family members had ended up perishing in the Holocaust? And yet, here I was, dressed in orange robes, looking like a nun, trying, as the man said, to convert Jews! Of course, I didn’t see it that way. I wasn’t converting anyone, just bringing real spirituality (as I thought of it) into people’s lives. Now, looking at the ignorance and arrogance of this young girl, I think, What nerve, what (to use an apt Yiddish word)chutzpah!

And then there was the little matter of the Ananda Marga symbol, which we called a pratiik. It consisted of a six-pointed star (that everyone besides us would have called a Jewish star) in the middle of which was a rising sun. And in the middle of the rising sun was, of all things, a swastika. Some Israeli Ananda Marga members asked me not to display this symbol in public because it would be upsetting (to say the least!) to new people to see a Jewish star and a swastika displayed together. I pretended to listen to their concerns, but didn’t, really. “I understand,” I told them. “But it’s our symbol and it’s important. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. We just have to explain it to people. Then they’ll understand.” (After all, our swastika wasn’t the German one, we would tell anyone who would listen; the Germans had taken this ancient Eastern spiritual symbol and distorted it, put it on an angle, and misused it.) Predictably, more than once, a new person would come to our center, take one look at the pratiik, have the blood drain out of his or her face, and bolt out the door before we could say anything in its defense.

And then there was the time the guru visited Israel. I was elated, sure that once the Israelis came to know the greatness of his teachings, would recognize Shrii Shrii Anandamurti as the savior for whom the Jews had been waiting for thousands of years. (More chutzpah!)We rented a hall in a park in Haifa, in which he would give his spiritual discourse. On the evening in question, we prepared for his talk by placing a dais for him to sit on in the front of the hall, and on the wall behind the dais, a huge pratiik. The discourse started off without incident, but halfway through, we were disturbed by voices at the back, first just a few, but as time went on, more and more; and they sounded angry. Seems the door had been left slightly ajar. Since the hall was in a park, people passed by, and some of them looked in. Imagine how they felt when they saw this Indian guy and behind him, a huge Jewish star with a swastika in the middle of it! And how did we feel? Well, we felt that these people had disturbed the sanctity of our guru’s discourse. If they only knew who he is! is what we were thinking. Not, What are we doing, displaying a Jewish star with a swastika in it in a public place in Israel!
A profound sense of shame and sadness passes over me as I think of these things now. Back then, I considered myself a universal spiritual personality, one without a past, one who had embraced the universal family and had left her little Jewish one behind . . . and one who certainly didn’t care about the Holocaust or her father’s experience of Cossacks on horseback thundering into his village in search of Jews . . . or about the reactions of some Jews upset about seeing a swastika inside a Jewish star!

But it’s important for me to make an effort to look upon that young woman with compassion and let go of judgment. For she had been young and naive. She had thoroughly believed in the guru and in what she was doing, and that she could assume a new identity as easily as donning a new outfit. In some ways, the person I am now does resemble her. I haven’t completely lost my idealism and like to think that I am helping, in my small way, to make the world a better place. I have, however, discarded the arrogance I had back then and the zeal, no, the fanaticism resulting from believing that the path I was on was the one way to truth and salvation for the entire world. Thankfully, in that way, the young woman I was then bears no resemblance to the person I am now.

Spiders are taking over my house and garden. Well, not really . . . but there are a lot more of them around lately. It’s not because there’s been an explosion in the spider population as far as I know. I just haven’t been cleaning or working in the garden as much.

Reading this statement, you may think that I’ve grown lazy. Well, maybe I have. But more to the point are these two reasons: a realization that being overly fastidious about removing dust bunnies (and spider webs) in the home or a proliferation of weeds in the garden is a waste of time, and a growing need to put my beliefs about the natural world into practice.

When you get to a certain point in your life, you realize that you are running out of time. A clean and well-dusted house may have meant a great deal to me when I was younger (my mother had something to do with this attitude of mine; she was always cleaning, and I would often come home from school to find the rugs rolled up and her down on her hands and knees and scrubbing the floors or find her with her head inside emptied kitchen cabinets), but now it occurs to me that having a clean house is a waste of precious time. I have a button on my bulletin board that declares, “A clean house is a sign of a wasted life,” and I pretty much agree. It’s not that I let the house get totally out of hand; it’s just that I’ve developed a certain tolerance for letting things get messier and dustier than I used to. Cleaning a house may make you feel good, and there may even be a sense of accomplishment, but this is short lived, as one’s domicile quickly returns to its pre-dusted and scoured state. The same can be said for weeding: If I weed my garden from start to finish (from one bed through to the last), by the time I finish (this over several days, as my garden is rather large), weeds have staged a comeback in the first bed I worked on. Any sense of satisfaction I may get from my tidy garden fades as soon as I see those weeds have returned, and my satisfaction turns to annoyance. So, while I do weed, I allow myself to tolerate a greater amount of weediness than I would have tolerated previously, before I set to the task again.

Don’t get me wrong: It’s important to feel a sense of accomplishment, and some people get this from a house well cleaned or a garden well weeded. It’s just that I’ve decided to put my energies into things that deliver a sense of accomplishment more long lasting. Writing, for instance. While it took me years, I did finally finish and have published a 350-page memoir. That’s given me a sense of accomplishment that won’t fade so fast. And if my house wasn’t dusted as often or my garden weeded as often as the previous me would have wished, so what? Another thing that has given me much enjoyment has been music. Two years ago, I joined a choir. As singing with others has been something I’ve wanted to do for years, I have found it immensely satisfying and inspiring to do so. And I’ve been playing guitar much more regularly and have actually gotten to the point where I’m not afraid to play in front of others. The sense of satisfaction I’ve gotten from my musical endeavors isn’t likely to fade quickly, either.

The increasing number of spiders in my house and garden also has to do with putting my beliefs about the natural world into practice. Spiders have a right to live, just as we do. What harm is there if a few spider webs (and even a bit more than a few) appear in the upper corners of rooms for awhile, or if webs proliferate in the shrubs and flowerbeds? Spiders are amazing creatures, spinning their webs almost overnight, and they catch mosquitoes and other insects I’m not overly fond of. It’s not that I don’t sometimes remove spider webs (one large spider built a huge one overnight last summer right outside and across our front door!), but I ask myself this question before acting: Do I really need to remove this web at this time? I remind myself that I’m about to destroy the spider’s home, akin to a Hurricane Sandy event for this creature (albeit not involving water). Granted, it’s easier for a spider to rebuild its home than it is for us humans when flooded out, but from the spider’s point of view, maybe not. After all, they have a much shorter life span than we do. In one of the shrubs next to our front door, we had a veritable spider condo going on for quite a few weeks, until it got so out of hand, I (very gently), removed the webs, taking care not to injure the occupants. They’ve already started reweaving.

I recently came across an interesting graphic on Facebook, depicting, on the left-hand side “EGO,” showing a man at the top of a pyramid of beings, with a woman on the next level along with a whale, followed by other creatures such as a pig, dog, bird, and chicken; down to (among other things) a starfish, ant, tree, flower, and mushroom at the bottom. On the right-hand side was “ECO,” depicting the man and woman as just two creatures among all the others in a circle. It brought to mind something I’ve been thinking about for a long time: how most religions place man (and especially men as opposed to women, as perfectly depicted in the EGO graphic!) above the rest of creation. Much has been written about homo sapien-centric Western religions with their emphasis on man’s dominion over other living beings. To quote the King James Bible: ” And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” Such attitudes have lead us to a profound disconnect from the rest of creation, for someone who lords over others is in a position of power and feels the right to manipulate and control the whole of creation for his or her comfort alone. Thus have we have come to remove mountaintops for coal, drill and frack our way to an ever decreasing amount of fossil fuels while polluting the air and waterways, and regard the animal kingdom as our personal pantry, a source of food, medicine, and so forth. On the whole, we don’t consider animals as having a right to exist beyond what they can provide for us.

What about Eastern religions, though? While most don’t talk of “dominion” over creation, they still place human beings at the pinnacle of creation. Many lifetimes, we are told, have been lived in order for us to achieve the human frame and, as such, we who have achieved the human status should make sure not to waste our lives and should engage in spiritual practices in which only humans can engage and realize divine consciousness. In the spiritual group I was involved with, Ananda Marga, the guru gave us a spiritual command, called the “supreme command,” to meditate twice a day and follow the ethical guidelines known as Yama and Niyama. The supreme command goes on to warn of dire consequences for those not following it. “Disobedience to this command,” it intones, ” is nothing but to throw oneself into the tortures of animal life for crores of years” (a crore being equivalent to 10,000,000). The language of the supreme command shows clearly the attitude that animals are inferior and that their lives are worth less than ours are. To be fair, an aspect of Ananda Marga philosophy known as Neohumanism does show respect for animals as part of the web of life. The founder of Ananda Marga, Prabhat Rainjan Sarkar, also known as Shrii Shrii Anandamurti, wrote, “When the underlying spirit of humanism is extended to everything, animate and inanimate, in this universe, I have designated this as Neohumanism. This Neohumanism will elevate humanism to universalism, love for all created beings of this universe.” But humans, being considered the “most thoughtful and intelligent beings in this created universe,” according to Sarkar, are clearly in the driver’s seat.

Let’s look more closely at the phrase “tortures of animal life.” The Buddhists say that “All life is suffering,” and this applies equally to human beings as it does to other animals. I, for one, feel that human beings experience torture more than animals precisely because we consider ourselves above and separate from the rest of creation, an attitude that leads us to pollute our environment, rape and pillage the earth with no concern from the countless species we wipe out, and often act with barbarity towards our own kind (rape, war, genocide). And by the way: I don’t know the last time you watched an eagle soar in the sky, but whenever I see such sight, I am awed by the majesty of it. No sense of a tortured animal life there!
But isn’t the goal of meditation precisely to lose the sense of ego and separateness and experience the sense of oneness that is our true nature? Absolutely. This, then, is the contradiction at the heart of many Eastern religions. We are told that we need to overcome our sense of separateness, and yet there is this attitude of human beings being at the pinnacle of creation, that we’re better than other animals; indeed, that we are the best. The attitude that we are the best, which lies at the heart of so many religions, is speciesism. Speciesism, I believe, is at the heart of the environmental crises we are facing, as well as a myriad of problems. If we truly saw ourselves as just one wonderful creature among many in the web of life, would we find ourselves in such dire straits as we are in now?

I first joined Facebook as a way to promote my book, The Orange Robe, and to inform people about book talks and signings I had coming up. Because my events didn’t take place all that often (well, not often in the world of FB posts, anyway), I found myself not posting all that often. I did, however, check out others people’s posts, and occasionally “liked” some of them. I started struggling with thoughts like, If I only post stuff about my book, will people think I’m narcissistic or overly self-absorbed? even though my primary purpose in being on FB was to do just that (post stuff about my book, not be narcissistic!). Concerned about this possible perception, I started branching out and putting up information about other topics (upcoming concerts of the choir I am in, for example) or sharing stories I think are important, inspiring, or funny.

I find myself feeling slightly disappointed when my posts (particularly those about my book) garner only a limited number of “likes” and comments. Why is this? I wonder. Why do my posts gets so few, and why does this make me feel disappointed? For one thing, I reason, I don’t have all that many Facebook friends. I have a reluctance to “friend” people I only know slightly, or the friends of friends that pop up all the time on FB. The one exception to this rule is my “friending” people in local media: columnists whose articles I particularly enjoy or producers of WHYY radio programs that I admire. (And truth be told, I harbor a secret hope that one of these local luminaries will see one of my posts about my book, get intrigued, read my book, and then . . . You get the picture.) The other thing is that I don’t “like” that many posts of others, even if I do, well, like them. You have to “like” others posts to get them to “like” yours, I figure. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. You like my posts, I’ll like yours, is the way I imagine it works.

A certain author friend recently posted information on his soon-to-be-published book. It garnered over 150 “likes” along with dozens of comments. Wow, I thought, if that could only be me! Well, it couldn’t, because I don’t have 150 FB friends. In addition, this author friend has written other books, and clearly has a following out there. I have no such following, at least not yet.

There is a certain feeling of importance and self-satisfaction to be gained from getting lots of “likes” and comments. When your cell phone starts pinging after a post, you get a jolt of something that can be compared to the Pavlovian response. A dog hears a bell that he has learned to associate with the appearance of food, and he salivates. You hear a ping from a FB posting, a sound that you’ve learned to associate with feeling important, and those feel-good hormones start coursing through your veins. You start to develop an addiction to those pings. You need more and more of them to keep you feeling good. When there are none, you feel a bit deflated . . . and disappointed. So you go on FB and post something, then go on again and post something else. You become a kind of FB junkie.

Despite laughing at myself for falling prey to such feelings, I do experience them, and I don’t let myself off lightly. (All those years doing meditation may have given me a far-too-acute awareness of my mental processes!) So will I remain on Facebook? Probably. I just need to put away my cell phone so I don’t check FB so often. What to do about those pings is another matter. I hear them even if my phone is buried deep in my handbag. Maybe I should disable them. Anyone know how?

In 1993, one year after returning to the States, I met my husband, David. (How we met is in itself an interesting story, but not the one I’m to tell here.) Nine months after that, we got married.

Both of us having rather unusual spiritual backgrounds for the time (David, like me, practiced meditation and, no longer like me, followed a guru), so the wedding plans we carefully crafted were by no means run-of-the-mill. For one thing, we wrote our own vows (some traditional ones mixed with a smattering and rewording of some Ananda Marga ones); for another, instead of arranging a minister or rabbi, we lined up a friend licensed to perform weddings. And instead of a church or synagogue, we rented Laurel Hill Mansion, one of the lovely 18th- and 19th-century homes in Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park. (The mansion, we were told, would come with two people, a man and a woman in period dress, who would lend color to our proceedings and would be on hand if we had any questions.) The back yard, enclosed with a white picket fence, was the perfect size for a relatively small outdoor wedding. But what to do if it were to rain on the big day? We briefly considered, then rejected, the idea of renting a large tent, deciding instead to count on our luck. If it did rain, we reasoned, we could all squeeze into the house which, despite being called a mansion, was actually quite small and would clearly not accommodate the 70 or so guests we’d invited.

We’d noticed a good deal of trash around the property, outside the fence and in the parking areas, so the day before the wedding, we decided to go to the site and clean it up a bit. As it was a surprisingly chilly morning for the beginning of June, we donned jackets, then grabbed some work gloves and a few large garbage bags, and headed out the door. Standing stock still on the street, we looked at each other, puzzled looks on our faces, for where was David’s car? A white Toyota Tercel that had seen better days, it had been parked just up the street, two or three doors away, the night before . . . so where was it now? We stared at the now vacant spot until the truth sunk in: Stolen!

We never even considered the idea that to have one’s car stolen the day before one’s wedding could be a bad omen. Thankfully, we still had my car, an equally old Dodge Omni, in which, after reporting the theft, we drove post haste to the wedding site. Two hours and two stuffed-to-overflowing garbage bags later, we were back home. No word on the car, as there never would be: we’d been told that thieves had likely taken it to one of the innumerable chop shops in the city.

Our wedding day dawned bright and sunny. It had warmed up considerably: our luck, notwithstanding the theft of David’s car, had held, and it promised to be a beautiful day.

And so it was. Things mostly went without a hitch–except for the moment when, after setting out with a friend in her car for Laurel Hill (David had left earlier in mine), I realized a few blocks away from the house that I’d forgotten the rings! My friend delivered me to the mansion just in time. With relatives and friends gathered round, a friend played guitar and sang a song, “One Hand, One Heart”; we said our vows, exchanged rings, and the ceremony was over. We received our guests, and then they lined up at the buffet tables, filled their plates, and made their way to the tables draped with lavender linens.

After the meal, we posed at the table with the wedding cake while cameras snapped, then began cutting up the cake. David placed a piece onto a plate, which I took with two hands and held out to David’s mother, Franna.

“No!” my new mother-in-law called out, along with close to 70 other voices, holding out her hands, palms forward, as if pushing my offering away. I looked up, startled.

“You’re supposed to feed each other first,” she explained.

“Oh!” I said, feeling my face grow red, then quickly stuffed some cake into David’s mouth. He then feed me some as the cameras resumed their clicking and snapping and everyone clapped. Then I gave a piece to Franna, which she accepted, before distributing the rest, piece by piece, to everyone else.

Both of us had been clueless. The only weddings I was familiar with were Ananda Marga ones. In those, the newly-married couple would offer sweets to others before partaking themselves. The only non-Ananda Marga wedding I had attended before all those years away had been my brother Barry’s when I’d been 15. I hadn’t remembered anything at all about any cake exchange. And David? He hadn’t attended any weddings recently, and hadn’t remembered anything about the cake thing, either.

“You guys!” Franna said later. We all had a good laugh over it.

Thankfully, the fashion misstep at my first temp job didn’t result in my being banned for life from the temp agency. Not long after, they found me another position, at a place called Ascom Hasler in the Old City section of Philadelphia. Ascom Hasler made mailing systems, and my job was keeping in touch with the sales reps in the fields, typing up agreements, and doing other clerical tasks. My supervisor was a young girl who looked as if she couldn’t have been older than twenty or so, and dressed like it, too. But I noticed she wore heels, so I made sure to wear my toe-pinching shoes every day. At least by then I had gotten my license and a car (a used Dodge Omni) and could drive to work, thus saving my feet.

But I still continued to feel as if I had dropped off the face of the earth for nearly 18 years, as if I’d fallen asleep, Rip-Van-Winkle style, and had awoken years later, a big gap in my knowledge of the world, of my home country in particular. Nothing unusual, you might say, for someone to live abroad as an expatriate for a number of years and then return home and resume her life. But in most cases, the expat would have maintained contact with her family and friends, and been aware of political and cultural developments back home. She’d have seen some of the movies, kept up with new albums put out by her favorite musicians, kept up with new trends. None of that was true in my case. For one thing, we didis were discouraged from keeping in touch with family or friends. For another, it was against the rules to go to movie theaters, so most movies came and went without our knowledge. I remember making an exception for E.T. I was in American Samoa at the time, well out of the range of prying supervisors’ eyes, so opted to go to the movies for the first time since I’d left the U.S. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, though I did have to struggle through some feelings of guilt for having broken the “no movie theaters” rule. The only other film I remember seeing in all those years was Home Alone, which I’d viewed crowded around a small TV with a bunch of other didis in our center in Germany. We’d rented the video and watched it together. We weren’t in a theater, we told ourselves, and there was no sex in the movie, so what we were doing was okay.

So when I got back to the U.S., there was this big gap, a black hole, in my knowledge about American culture. I was firmly stuck in the early 70’s. I liked Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Simon and Garfunkel, Judy Collins, Carol King–but to me they were still singing what they’d been back when I was in college. And forget television and movies (besides E.T. and Home Alone). Just to give you an idea of how out of the loop I was, I had never heard of, let alone seen, Star Wars. This state of affairs was bound to trip me up at work sooner or later. And so it did, sooner rather than later.

One afternoon about a week after I’d started at Ascom Hasler, one of the sales reps came into the office and introduced herself. “You’re the new girl, right?” I assured her I was, thinking, Well, I’m no girl, I’m 43. A heavy-set woman with long black hair and lips prominently painted with red lipstick, she asked me my name. I told her, and then she smiled a big, big smile with her large red mouth and said, “Marsha, Marsha, Marsha!” in a strange, singsongy voice, barking out a loud laugh, and looking at me as if she expected me to do something. I didn’t know what, so I just smiled. Then she went on her way, leaving me puzzled. The same thing happened a few days later. The woman came into the office, caught sight of me, and said, “Marsha, Marsha, Marsha!” in the same strange voice, once again giving me a significant look. Finally, when this happened a third time and I failed to respond, she said, “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”

“No, I don’t.”

“The Brady Bunch. I’m talking about the Brady Bunch.”

“The Brady Bunch?” I said. “What’s that?”

“You’ve never heard of the Brady Bunch? The TV show? How’s that possible?”

It was quite possible. I mumbled something about having lived outside of the country for a number of years but didn’t go into any details (something I avoided doing for quite a while after getting back).
She then took her leave, shaking her head, as if finding it the strangest thing that I had never heard of The Brady Bunch.

I still get the “Marsha, Marsha, Marsha!” thing on occasion. Now, I laugh, as if I had watched The Brady Bunch all those years ago when it was on, instead of running around in orange robes in different lands intent on saving the world.