Some people misunderstand the purpose of myths and rituals in life. They are part of religion but more than religion. Rituals are the celebrations of our myths, the stories that comprise the process of living; they are indispensable for our lives. Yet for some reason the words myth and ritual have negative connotations in vernacular use: Myth has come to mean unreal, and rituals are considered obsessions. In fact, myths are felt beliefs of generations within a culture, and rituals are concrete enactments of those myths. They may range from our worshiping deities in temples to reading books to our children at bedtime. They are found in the most sacred and the most ordinary. Their seeds germinate in every soil--they just have to be sown.
There is a major difference between obsessive compulsion and ritual. Obsessive compulsions are mechanical obedience to one's neurotic needs, involuntary coupling of thought and behavior to ease psychological tension, without succeeding. They are chains on the legs, not halos on the head. Neurotic compulsions may carry personal (albeit unconscious) meaning for the individual, but rituals address our collective unconscious and provide communal meaning, serve as the cohesive bonding of the fabric of society. The rituals in churches, temples, or mosques are all geared toward connecting us to our past traditions. As the noted twentieth-century British journalist and author G.K. Chesterton said, "Man was a ritualist before he could speak." The ritual acts of lighting candles, fasting, praying, and confession, baptism, and bar mitzvah, as well as reciting a mantra, all have historical connections, giving meaning to the present but relevant only within a given religion and culture.
One cannot adapt to rituals of a religion or a culture without believing in its tenets. One cannot import rituals from a culture divorced from its religious grounding. The man who is often thinking that it is better to be somewhere other than where he is excommunicates himself, warned Henry David Thoreau, as he dreamed of Walden Pond.
In the East, mantras are the ritualistic equivalents of Western prayers. "Om, ah, hum," the most well-known mantra in Sanskrit, are not just relaxing sounds; together they serve an overarching purpose of spiritual footing. Om stands for the body, and the essence of physical form; ah for the speech and essence of sound; and hum for the mind. In one's recital of these spiritual sounds, Om is intended to purify all the negative actions committed through one's body, ah through one's speech, and hum through one's mind. By reciting mantras, the chanter is purifying not only him- or herself but also the environment and all other beings within it.
In the West these mantras have no spiritual grounding. They are frequently used as a relaxation method, a self-hypnotic tool. As a means of vacating the mind, they can paradoxically be a compulsive companion to mind-altering drugs. The real ritual, however, isn't an intended act, it is enacting. One has to belong to an anchoring belief system that generates the rituals. What is important isn't doing a ritual, it is being in the ritual. Thomas Moore makes the crucial distinction between genuine ritual and playing at ritualism--the personal intentions and preferences of the one performing the ritual are secondary to the traditions and rituals that emerge from the original source.
That is why it is difficult to inoculate a ritual of one culture into another. To Westerners, mantras are devoid of their natural historical connection. An extraordinary devotion is required to overcome this obstacle. The reverse is, of course, equally true. Even within one's own community, the rituals wouldn't have a meaning if the child were raised without the needed acculturation. Some families deprive their children of religious, ethnic, and nationalistic connections. Under the strong belief of internationalism or agnostic or pluralistic paradigms, parents disconnect their children from their natural roots and their history. If they ever come back to religion and tradition, these children invariably lack the inner convictions that were severed or never formed. Their commitment may help the next generation, but they themselves will be playing at ritualism. Incidentally, the more zealously they try to succeed in their intention, the more likely will be their inner disconnection from the rituals, which will ultimately become mere obsessive-compulsive behaviors. What is needed is not to adopt any ritual quickly but rather to seek the spirituality that inheres within the religion and culture to which one belongs; then the ritual will naturally follow.
T. Byram Karasu, MD is the author of The Art of Serenity
