One day, at Gandhi’s ashram, we sat quietly in the sand-filled square near the Sabarmati River, where Gandhi meditated each day. We reflected in the room where he wrote at a small desk, spun wool, and took in the view of a courtyard outside. From such a modest room came vast ideas that would inspire Martin Luther King Jr. to acts of courage, which would stir Berkeley students in 1964 to free speech protests of moving in unison, which would nourish the student antiwar movement, which would pave the way in the swinging pendulum of history for Ronald Reagan’s rise to power. History so often follows the ebbs and flows of awe.
On one day of the retreat, I interviewed two sisters under the warm surround of a banyan tree, the national tree of India. Trupti Pandya, the younger sister, had read of Nipun and Guri’s pilgrimage and decided to set out on her own. Her older sister, Swara Pandya, begrudgingly came along, worried what her younger sister might do. Over five months, Trupti and Swara walked 1,600 miles along the Narmada River, called “mother,” like many rivers in India. Along the way they were fed and housed by strangers. For Trupti, our greatest illusion—the scarcity mindset of modern life—began to decay. Extraordinary experiences distilled each day. The river—its currents, reflections, swirling light, and rushes and hisses—sounded like the voice of God, telling Trupti that life is guided by “a gentle, kind force, every step of the way.” She and Swara created rituals: greeting the river each day, expressing gratitude to families who opened their cupboards to feed them. In visits to temples, Trupti held pebbles that had been touched by the feet of pilgrims. She felt moved, empowered, fearless, and alive. She now works in a shelter for young women who have been battered and abandoned. Decay, distilling, and growth.
On the last day of Gandhi 3.0, we took part in an awe walk that composted beliefs and practices from around the world. We walked around a dark, leaf-covered pool where rainwater was collected. Following Buddhist tradition, we took four steps and then bowed and touched our foreheads to the ground. Many of us touched trees as we passed by. Toward the end of this thirty minutes of silent moving in unison, volunteers invited us to take a handful of salt from a large pile—mimicking Gandhi’s own act of righteous courage. Bowing with forehead on the ground and eyes looking to the side, I made eye contact with Jayesh Patel, who directs the ESI built by his father, who was raised by two women who caught Gandhi in their arms when he was assassinated.
We then moved to a clearing where we all sat in silence. I felt touched by the sun on my right cheek and forehead. In nearby lush plants and trees, growing out of my composted waste, birds sang a web of sound; I could almost hear in their songs woo-hoo and whoa. A gentle breeze rushed down from the trees and over the grounds. I could feel myself dissolving into the bright sky, surrounded and embraced. I sensed Rolf smiling and spread out in the sky and distributed in the light. In relation to something beyond words. Redeeming something wild in the universe. And kind.
SECTION IV
• • • Living a Life of Awe
TEN LIFE AND DEATH How Awe Helps Us Understand the Cycle of Life and Death
What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?
They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceased the moment life appeared.
All goes onward and outward. . . . And nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.
• WALT WHITMAN
In our twenty-six-culture study, no matter their religion, politics, culture, level of medical care, or life expectancy, people told stories about being awestruck by the beginning of life and its early unfolding—and about being moved in transcendent ways by watching the end of life.
Life
Our cycle of life, compared to that of other primates, is a defining feature of our evolution. Because of the narrowing of the female pelvis, brought about by our species’ shift to walking upright, and the disproportionate size of the human head to accommodate our large, language-producing brain, our infants are born premature. In fact, wildly premature, taking ten to fifty-two years to reach semifunctioning independence, if there is such a thing. Our hypervulnerable babies require years of intensive face-to-face, skin-to-skin care, networks of caregivers, a safe home, and enculturation just to survive.
Childbirth is the most undervalued act of courage in human history. Our twenty-six-culture study revealed just how extraordinary the appearance of new life is, giving rise to epiphanies of different kinds. People were struck by the raw fact of how a sperm and ovum create life, one emerging from a mother’s womb, as hinted at in this story from Russia:
It was the birth of my daughter. The appearance in light of another person. It is a miracle! Life, which you gave, pains which passed for the appearance of a new person. The first cry. Facing that new life. I froze, dumbfounded. It is difficult to convey the feelings I felt at that moment.
Some wrote of their amazement at their baby’s sublime beauty, as in this forgivably hubristic example from Mexico.
The birth of my second daughter, and she was a very pretty girl when she was first born, contrary to all other babies who don’t look good recently born.
Babies have a transfixing physicality: a baby’s hypnotically large forehead, anime-like eyes, little lips, and small chin capture onlookers in awe-like absorption. In this astonished state, the besotted caregiver forgets about the spit-up on their new blouse, the years of sleep deprivation, the involuntary sexual asceticism, and the disappearance of evenings out for dinner or with friends. I can still recall with awe the first time I looked at my daughter Natalie’s face, just as she emerged from Mollie’s womb, and how in her eyes and mouth and cheekbones and forehead—a system of facial morphology built up by sixty genes—I could see the geometries of generations of grandmothers, grandfathers, aunts, uncles, and a mother, shaping the features and contours of her face.
People spoke of the arrival of a new life as a gift, as in this example from Indonesia:
Witnessing the birth of my firstborn. It had been a long wait, about eight hours, from eleven p.m. to seven a.m. I was there with my wife throughout her painful labor. But when he finally emerged, I just couldn’t believe what a beautiful and wonderful gift God has bestowed on my wife, and I just couldn’t stop smiling and feeling awe and grateful to God for giving us a son.
For some, the arrival of a child triggered epiphanies about time, as in this story from South Korea:
That vague wonder that I felt when I was pregnant turned into wonder and awe of life as I gave birth. I also felt the expectations and joy for the next generation, as it is the law of nature. It was also an opportunity to realize how precious life is.
And about the responsibilities of protecting a new life, as in this story from Japan: