Mainstream American culture has little understanding of Eastern
religions and even less understanding of why a non-Asian would join one. So, when
I became a practitioner of Raja Yoga and the disciple (chela) of a Hindu guru, I
found myself exiled into the netherworld between two cultures.
One dealt with
my social and material life and the other dealt with my inner spiritual life. This
cultural rift has taught me some of my deepest lessons, giving me strength to
be myself and to love and accept others despite how they may perceive or
misunderstand me.
When I was12, I read a brief description of the Buddha’s
life in a dusty encyclopedia in my sixth-grade classroom. I was mesmerized. It
seemed that suddenly the answer to the thousands of perplexing mysteries that
occupy a child’s mind was before me. It seemed all I had to do was sit down, go
within and realize the Truth. So I tried. I sat cross-legged in an empty part
of the playground and waited, but no illumination shone on my ignorance. I stood
up, perplexed, with an unsettling feeling of loss.
In high school, I got every book I could find on Buddhism
and began meditating, but the attention of a teenage boy is a fickle thing at best
and my meditations remained sporadic for years. Despite my vacillating interest
in meditation, I developed a deepening interest in Indian philosophy. I read
Shankara, Aurobindo, the Upanishads, the “Manu Shmriti,” the “Bhagavad Gita”
and several others.
I soon discovered “Autobiography of a Yogi,” by
Paramahansa
Yogananda. Yogananda articulated what I had been seeking my entire life
without
ever knowing it. I had been seeking God! This realization was so
profoundly liberating
that I soon accepted Yogananda as my guru and began practicing kriya
yoga meditation
— an ancient meditation technique of pranayama, or life-force control,
used to
elevate consciousness to higher plains of energy and perception. I
spent the
next couple of years attending a local temple and inevitably joined an
ashram,
a monastic community in California — a defining experience in my life
because I
was able to renounce the distractions that occupy our lives and focus
on meditating
to attain enlightenment. At the ashram we studied the teachings of our
guru Yogananda, did group meditation and lead a balanced life of work
and individual contemplation in an environment free of distractions and
worldly
entanglements.
Half the people I knew thought I had joined a cult and the
other half thought I had retreated from reality into some kind of “New Age Fruitopia.”I
remember the endless conversations with
concerned friends, trying to inform me that I was giving up my future,
pursuing
a useless and fictitious goal. They could not understand why I would
choose a life
of renunciation because their own cultural conditioning blinded them to
any perspective other than the narrow ideology that achieving
material goals and
attaining financial success was the highest goal of life. But I had
never been interested
in money and living for it seemed the sheerest folly to me.
I became the victim of attempts to convert me to Christianity
by friends, work associates and fellow college students. The Christians that I
knew could not accept my spiritual path because they were raised with the
belief that Christianity alone contained the truth. They said I was being
beguiled by the devil. Far from compelling me to convert, this dogmatic rhetoric
only strengthened my commitment to my path and deepened my compassion for them,
since they were attacking what they did not understand out of baseless fears.
How could I explain to my critics that I was like a man
crawling through a desert that had finally found an oasis in the teachings of Raja
Yoga? I knew I was heading in a good direction because meditation and the
practice of my guru’s teachings made me calmer, happier and more loving than I
ever had been. As a result of the positive effects meditation had on my
life, many of my harshest critics eventually did open their minds. They have since
shown a greater tolerance for Eastern religions, and some have even begun
exploring Asian philosophy and meditation for themselves.
I have since left the ashram and have returned to college to
pursue a degree in religious studies. I want to teach Eastern religions in
order to increase understanding and tolerance within American culture.I feel profoundly grateful for the blessing
of finding the shelter of a true guru, and I wish to share that blessing with others,
not by convincing them to practice what I do, but by helping them to explore
their own intellectual and spiritual frontiers. Where this exploration will
lead them is not for me to decide. I can only walk my path with compassion,
ready to be of service to everyone I meet regardless of their views or
prejudices.
Matthew Horton has studied Eastern philosophy for many
years, even living for three years in an ashram. He is applying to graduate
school with the goal of teaching Asian religion and philosophy. Matthew is also
working on a novel and a book of poetry. He regularly practices yoga
meditation at his home in Chandler, Ariz.
By Matthew Horton