Boundaries Not Borders

“My tradition stands unmatched.”

How do we manage this? On one hand, a natural sentiment—without it, why would we walk our path at all? We have been moved, and that awakens wholehearted commitment, serving as our existential foundation. It’s beautiful—but beware—it could also be loaded. More crucial than the sentiment is what follows and where it leads. If it closes our eyes to the goodness found elsewhere, or worse, hardens the heart into a dismissiveness and disregard, then the beauty goes bad. There’s no monopoly in play here, ample scope to appreciate the spiritual, scholarly and secular alike. Now I’m not suggesting we oscillate to an all-embracing, immature universalism, flattening all things into a sentimental sameness. Easy on. We need balance. That means a deep honour for our own path, yet remaining open to intelligently respecting the powerful learnings around us.

Will insular thinking really nourish our devotion? In expressing appreciation for that beyond one’s tradition, some feel it to be a wholesale endorsement. Not so. I won’t insult your intelligence by problematising the tiny world of “all or nothing.” Those same individuals may perceive such appreciation as a declaration, direct or subtle, of diminished faith in one’s own path. Again, not so. To find wonder elsewhere does not destabilise the beauty we hold dear. Rather than resting in the overconfidence of belonging to what we deem “the best,” we may turn to a more crucial concern: am I bringing the best of myself to this path? The deficit lies not in my tradition, but in my capacity to receive and reciprocate with the gifts. In negotiating that deficit, learning across boundaries can be hugely rewarding.

Boundaries are healthy lines we draw with care, honouring the spaces and domains that define our existential world. Borders, by contrast, are walls built from insecurity, uninviting and defensive, marking “us” and “them” in ways that divide and estrange. Borders accentuate separation and invoke suspicion. In the first lines of the Gita, Dhṛtarāṣṭra erects a border and “others” the Pāṇḍavas— māmakāḥ pāṇḍavāś caiva. This mood of “us and them” seems to ripple through human consciousness, and even subtly in the minds of good people. May we dwell with joy and gratitude within our boundaries, and when called, gracefully venture across to be inspired and edified.

Put simply: It is not a competition.

“If one goes to another place of worship, one should think, ‘The people here are worshipping my Lord, but in a different way; because of my different training, I cannot properly comprehend this system of worship. However, through this experience, I can deepen my appreciation for my own system of worship. The Lord is only one, not two. Therefore, I offer my respect to the form I see here and pray to the Lord in this new form that He may increase my love for Him in the form to which I am accustomed’. Those who do not follow this procedure, but who instead criticise other systems of worship and who show envy, hatred and violence are worthless and foolish. The more they indulge in such useless quarrelling, the more they betray the very goal of their own religious system’‘ (Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura, Śrī Caitanya-śikṣāmṛta)

(Pictured above with the Archbishop of Canterbury in 2010, as he shares a beautiful story about “stillness”)