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Probing the inner life of Sandgropers
Australian Religion Studies Review, vol. 2, no. 3, 1989, pp. 5-14.
Paul Stange, Asian Studies, Murdoch University
In setting out to stage a forum exploring spirituality in Western Australia, I did not hide conviction that the materialistic face of the state is counterpointed by a diverse, however publicly marginalised, spiritual life. In introducing these fragmentary traces of the exploration which resulted, I will to touch on the sense of spirituality guiding construction of the forum and suggest my own perspectives. I speak as part of the community, a migrant engaged in meditation practice, and as a professional interpreter of religion in Asia, but in this instance reflecting on my home context. I will also introduce the contributions and summarise something of what came out of the forum as an event.
Mention of the prospect of testing the spiritual pulse of Perth brought a remarkably uniform response: "it won't take long". The reflexive assumption for most residents appears to be that our spiritual pulse is so weak as to be virtually non-existent. The impression that local preoccupations are predominantly material arises quickly for many visitors and is widespread within the community. Our self conscious images, including those suggested by media labelling of ourselves as 'sandgropers', prioritise physical pursuits. Sporting festivals, peaking with the America's Cup, bring our wildest publicly expressed enthusiasms; morality enters public debate mainly when connected to the handling of money. At first glance we appear to be complacent lotus eaters, dominated by material satisfactions.
The most common leading suggestions are that we inhabit a 'panel-van culture', lost in hedonism, preoccupied with beaches, boats and barbecues. The most dramatic times of population growth and public building have been initiated by the Kalgoorlie gold rush of the 1880s and the boom in mineral exports from the northwest in the 1960s. The European and Asian migrant populations, convict settlement aside, have been moved from the start more by the propect of material advantage than by visions of new religious community. Perth has never been termed a 'city of Churches' like Adelaide. Religious impetus nowhere traces into the landscape of European settlement to the extent so visible in many parts of North America.
Religious and cultural concerns are certainly not prominent in the ways universities carve up knowledge or politicians appeal for votes. Pragmatic utilitarianism dominates economic planning, educational restructuring and political debate. Even excellence of intellect is virtually absent as social ideal. According to Dawkins, Fremantle's Parliamentary representative, the central purpose of learning institutions is to prepare us to earn so as to serve the economy. Our educational offering to Asia is construed as marketing, constructed to assist the balance of payments; migrant intake aims to supply labour and skills we will not cultivate. Economic values thus determine the complexion of our relationships among ourselves and with others.
It is worth noting these features of our environment even though the objective here is not to probe why material concerns have been so prominent or why they may be growing. If public discourses and media images phrase life in increasingly materialistic idiom then economic considerations overshadow and implicit repress other values. This recognition provides a necessary basis for reflection on our spiritual life. Spirituality and religion appear marginal on the surface, but if we pause to consider the terms of our exploration, we might reconsider the materialism of our environment. We may even see it as a mode of spirituality rather than a distraction. Whether we identify with it as another matter.
There is need to question the opposition between 'material' and 'spiritual'. If it dictates a view, leading us to conclude that 'spirituality' is impoverished in our context, it is possible we are tacitly restricting ourselves to simple views of what the inner life can be. I do think our dominant public versions of spirituality are impoverished. They appear too flat to take in the richness of the inner life we can know through actively attending to what we experience within ourselves. But this is a matter of preference, not necessarily the best starting point for questioning. At least in inquiring into our spirituality we should begin by considering our environment both as context and potentially as way.
Though perhaps privately holding otherwise, in public most people, including a remarkable number of local academics, maintain a crude reading of what religion is. They might deny the suggestion when phrased this bluntly, but 'religion' usually refers only to participation in churches and acceptance of uncritical belief; 'ritual' is understood mostly in its colloquial sense, as 'meaningless' rather than charged; and 'truth' is only a relative construct of human imaginings, not a mystically knowable absolute. Even intellectual inquiry into religion within this environment finds little credence, reflecting our leading values. Politicians and vice chancellors consider the study irrelevant; students who pursue it nonetheless find their mates asking, "what for?" Close examination of 'spirituality' should lead beyond such superficial understandings, probing practices beyond those easily recognised as 'religious'.
Spirituality relates to aspects of the inner life which are a facet of the human condition. Like the stomach in relation to material subsistence, the spirit is present even when ignored or unmentioned. It does not depend for its existence on our belief. We need not be technical, it is enough to say our 'spirit' is an aspect of 'life' within the body; presumably we can agree we are alive. Spiritual commitments are in this sense clearly expressed not only in established churches and newly imported religions but also through informal meditation groups and in unspoken ways in private lives. We can even begin by considering our spiritual condition as tacitly reflected through the implications of our whole social order. Much of what appears at first to be a statement of our materialism, can be reread as revealing our spiritual temperament.
Anthropology directs us to read between lines when exploring religious practices. Identification of tacit convictions leads us to interpret religion through how people act rather than only by commitment to textually defined orthodoxies. Directing the same style of reflection to our context we can ask seriously, not just tongue in cheek, whether the America's Cup represented a 'cargo cult'. It did demonstrate how people here imagine their hopes will be fulfilled. With feverish anticipation business and government focussed on the creation of marinas and hotels, convinced that these preparations provided a platform for the influx of wealth. Bond was on the crest of a wave, exemplar of what could be attained, a guru at the appex of a great pyramid game.
The local superheroes, glamour capitalists, are easily read as cult figures. Bond & Co. inscribe their identity in popular imagination through media their cohort controls; on the physical landscape, through buildings, marinas and billboards. Ordinary people are preoccupied with these billionaires as they might be by royalty. Politicians vie for headlines and sports heroes surface momentarily, but achievement of wealth captures more enduring imagination. Spiritual virtue in itself is unconceived; teachers who refer to it can hardly appear in public discourse except as materialistic entrepreneurs. On the other hand public aspirations focus on exemplary capitalists. Are our spiritual guru capitalists or are capitalists the teachers we tacitly really follow?
Behind the recent and now threatened Bond cult stand several decades of millenially tinged tradition. Court's government projected a rosey future based on mineral exports financed from abroad, conveying an engrained tradition shaped by residual colonialism. In colonial systems the arbiters of wealth and power lie outside dependent states, resting on the sanction of overseas interests, if once the queen now international financial markets. When the rituals of presentation (control of labour) are proper, all good things (our credit rating) come through the largesse (capital investment) of superior forces from 'beyond'. In government, business or universites one underlying conviction is that success depends on the magic buttons of marketing. This implicit conviction in what finally matters relates not just to political and economic success, but also to what people widely believe will 'work' to make life meaningful.
Anthropologists are prone to emphasise that Melanesian movements fail to grasp the 'true' mechanism of capitalism. Cargo cultists focus on the arrival of wealth rather than its generation from a productive infrastructure. Thus it is argued they have grasped only a fragment of the 'hidden secret' of European power that they sought. But Melanesian perceptions may strike closer to the bone than we want to think, grasping our myth as we actually hold it rather than as we think we do.
We do respond to money at a visceral level. Theoretically we know it is a symbolic medium of exchange, but its logic is overridding, as though it is 'really real'. While we believe we are guided by rationality in organisation, efficiency in enterprise and equality and freedom in social practice, our more deeply engrained tacit beliefs in patronage and essentially magical invocations, rituals of dress and presentation, may be what we act on as a basis for success. Most people act as though money is itself 'real', they thus can be said to believe in, to have faith in it. We can say quite seriously that the complex of convictions relating to it are our tacit religion.
In traditional Java, as in most Asian cultures, land forms and urban constructions provide clues to the spiritual values of its people. Monumental temples constituted an effort to capture natural powers, those present also in the sacred sites embedded within the landscape. Spiritual orientations were interwoven with material expression not only in ritual, text and art, but also in architecture, in the reworking of inhabitated space. Cities like Hue, Kyoto or Yogyakarta and temples like Borobudur and Angkor were statements designed to ensure convergence of temporal and spiritual power. They self-consciously wedded human social focus, material construction and spiritual purposes--as did medieval cathedrals. In Java court complexes were designed to focus and protect magical power, providing space for the sacred as a focus of social life.
In Perth's new city core steel and glass celebrate gambling, banking and mineral exploitation. When visitors leave the airport they pass the Belmont racecourse and the first striking building is a gleaming casino. On the horizon they see the skyline of central Perth, eagerly emulating international megalopolis. Dense skyscrappers self consciously speak to other urban landscapes rather than the nature they inhabit, the land they occupy or the people they serve. The immense space we occupy is deliberately ignored; buildings insulate us from rather than harmonising with their environment. Our most dramatic constructions proclaim the importance of the banks and businesses which occupy them. They are testaments to the prestige of their builders, the adventure capitalists.
In Fremantle, where the settler past is still evident as remnant or replica, the sacred geography, especially if viewed from above, is dominated by prisons. These focal constructions sit on the power points which in other contexts might be palaces, churches or in Washington the Pentagon. Our oldest treasured building is the Roundhouse; our most massive construction the still employed convict Goal. The 'sacred' buildings of our old city are walls designed to imprison--first, to our shame still, the Aboriginal population and then the convicts. The great walls of many old cities defended religious and secular privilege from populations at large; ours enclose the original inhabitants to give the privilege of intercourse with the land, our sacred space, to migrants.
As the most isolated city of its size on the planet, a conjunction of factors contribute to our lotus-eating mentality. The climate is delightfully mild, sporting facilities are plentiful, housing is comfortable, local holiday environments are pleasant. At the same time the extremes of warfare, crime and poverty prevalent elsewhere, seem distant and conceivably irrelevant. In many respects Perth exemplifies Australia, but isolation produces psychic distancing even from the rest of the commonwealth. Perth residents do not feature actively in the imaginings of eastern Australian endeavors. Those living here often ultimately reciprocate; accepting the paired liability of relative powerlessness and freedom contingent on this separation. The focus of effort and preoccupation easily turns to the seductive physical comforts of life, all so evident and so relatively accessible.
Nevertheless, in reversing these materialistic image some people go so far as to say Perth is a 'city of light', that it is an especially potent spiritual centre. They affirm that there is a sharpness and clarity in the spiritual atmosphere that goes along with the special lightness of the sky. This perspective on the lightness and openness of the 'feeling atmosphere' is not one we will have if we focus on church attendance or the dominant institutions of media, business and government. It is the sort of observation sensed when contrasting the charged and busy psychic atmosphere of Java or Bali with the emptiness, which in the positive is an openness, of Perth. Such perspectives become more apparent if we shift focus, as our forum attempted to, to spiritual activities on the ground, away from institutions.
In fact the people of WA also explicitly express, cultivate and maintain remarkably diverse commitments to moral, ethical, religious and mystical dimensions. As in most contemporary societies, here we find belief systems and practices originating from everywhere in the world--we are multicultural in spiritual as well as social terms. Much more of what is clearly spiritual is also located at home in quiet gatherings rather than in formal institutions. Then, quite apart from the range of explicitly spiritual acitivities, it is possible that the social movements which centre on peace, justice, morality and the environment are acting as the most dynamic new vehicles for spiritual impulses.
A brief inventory of local communities can only be suggestive. Anglicans and Catholics remain the largest groups of Christians, but Eastern Orthodox, Uniting, Baptist and a host of smaller denominations are active, not even only through traditional church channels. In Fremantle a major annual spring ceremony, for the blessing of the fishing fleet, brings out a depth of Italian and Portuguese Catholic commitment which demonstrates the continuing power of traditionally styled faith. Within the Christian community declining or static traditional church attendance has been partly balanced by home prayer groups, experimental theraputic sessions and born again revivalism. There has probably been more change in public perception of what is normative, as people openly admit inactivity now, than in depth of genuine popular commitment.
Established monastic communities, beginning with New Norcia, do continue to maintain Christian contemplative practices. When Father Bede Griffiths visited, expounding his synthesis of Christianity and yoga, audiences of over five hundred attended, ongoing workshops continue and a scattering of followers continue to visit his Benedictine ashram in India. In several local Anglican congregations there are followers of Muktananda's style of meditation. Fringe elements such as the Universal Brotherhood, the Church of the Mystic Christ and the Liberal Catholic Church, all essentially versions of (sometimes heretical) Christian esotericism, have been visible for decades. The picture may be far from uniform, but there is no doubt truth to the impression that the boundary between Christianity and other beliefs has softened.
'Hinduism' in this context includes more than the ritual practices of migrant South Asians, who do quietly maintain ceremonies and subsidise schools of dance. It should also bring to mind the dozens of movements which are offspring of Indian guru or yoga teachers. Followers of Sivananda's disciples, Venkatesananda and Satyanand Saraswati, have been active for several decades. In the late seventies Fremantle housed the largest community of Rajneesh (now Osho) disciples outside Poona; a large concentration of followers remain, though now less obviously. Disciples of Ramakrishna, Sai Baba and many other guru are dispersed through the community. These practices are almost part of what appears normal, no longer extremely odd, as they appeared to be several decades ago.
The Islamic community is relatively small and largely, but by no means exclusively, migrant. A residue of the so called 'Afghans', who came as camel drivers during the gold rush, remains. Malays from the Cocos Islands are visible in Port Hedland and Geraldton and have a firm niche established in Katanning, where many prepare meat for export to the Middle East. Sufi practices are not especially visible anywhere they occur. They do exist in Perth. The hybrid style of Pir Vilayat Khan, attracted hundred to workshops a year ago. Javanese sufi styled groups like Subud and Sumarah have had informal followings for several decades. Both downplay or deny association with Islam, but maintain a practice resonating strongly with Sufism. Pakistani, Indian and even Sudanese based movements have more orthodox offshoots in Perth and some of their following are local converts.
Buddhism had almost no visible following in Perth two decades ago. There are now significant organisations among migrant Vietnamese and Thai and also substantial local convert following. There are three well developed Theravada vipassana groups, informal Japanese styled zen groups and three different offshoots of Tibetan practice. For the most part these groups takes the form of lay practices which do not emphasise ritual engagement but temple and monastic support groups are firm. Rather than concentrating on memberships it might be more important to emphasise the dispersion of beliefs around the margin of formal membership. The wider influence of Buddhist philosophy and practices extends well beyond the sphere of those who would identify themselves as 'Buddhist'.
This point can be underlined in considering the changing nature of spiritual practices generally. A large range of groups defy categorisation. The Seeker's Centre, Mahikari, Eckenkar and others draw, like some already mentioned, from many different traditions. They would choose to identify themselves as 'spiritual', like Subud, without stressing affiliation with an institutional religious community. Assessment of spiritual activity is certainly complicated by movement away from traditional 'religious' categories into movements which equivocate about their identification with religions. This is only the first of at least three respects in which we can note a blurring of boundaries in our increasingly multicultural context.
A very large percentage of the people involved with the new (to our context) practices float. In moving from group to group and 'tasting' many people never firmly identifying with one, but nevertheless having been touched. The pool of those who have engaged with a range of explicitly spiritual practices, but who do not identify strongly with any one, is much larger than the membership of individual groups. While this is a sign which may be worrisome from the vantage point of particular organisations, if we read it as an indication of general commitment to spiritual practices it need not be seen in the negative.
A third factor which complicates assessment of spiritual change is that so many expressions are not necessarily explicitly spiritual. Daoist notions filter through accupuncture and Tai chi, or martial arts practices, though many who undertake them do not think of themselves as 'Daoist'. Senator Valentine was elected to office on an anti-nuclear stance. She is open about how her Quaker commitment connects with her social concerns and many of her active supporters are explicit about their spiritual concerns. On a variety of fronts the campaign to save the forests and environmental movement generally intersect with spirituality. Obviously in guaging the spiritual pulse of Perth we cannot be confined to observations about relative church and casino attendance.
In fourteen years of exploring religion in Perth universities I have noted a distinct shift in attitudes to spirituality. No doubt my 'sample' is highly self selecting, skewed by restriction to those studying religion who I encounter. Nevertheless I have no doubt that the atmosphere has changed; much that was problematic now comes as second nature. Though issues of spirituality, qua issue, seemed more prominent in the seventies than now, substantive change has percolated beneath the surface. Twenty years ago eco-activism seemed to be on the lunatic fringe and it is now becoming mainstream, even being appropriated by the media and politics. Similarly, though there is less drama associated with it, practices of meditation can be spoken of publicly now without great static. What recently seemed weird has become, not quite normal, but at least conceivable.
Suspicion that spirituality is widening and deepening, but in tacit and often invisible ways, fed into the forum. It was a one day public event, held on September 30th 1989, separate from but in conjunction with the annual conference of the Australian Association for the Study of Religions in Perth. The idea was floated one year beforehand, during early planning meetings for the conference. Its objectives included: connecting local religious studies more strongly to the range of communities of religious and spiritual practice, providing extra incentive for colleagues from elsewhere to attend, and working to publicly counter the predominantly materialistic image of our society by exposing the range of practices present.
The day was organised around three sessions. The first focussed on 'overview perspectives', drawing on academics who write on religion; the second dealt with 'pastoral views', being addressed by leaders of Christian, Buddhist and Muslim groups; the third explored 'community practices', touching indigenous, feminist and ecological aspects of local practice. It was quite clear at all stages that the forum could not consider all aspects of local practice, provide balanced representation according to notions of relative significance or for that matter even touch on all significant groups. Even to have indicated what was excluded, as the structure of the event did implicitly, is a revelation of the range of practices actively followed within the community.
These informal extracts are useful. In exposing the range of local practices, they are evidence in themselves of what is happening. Some, such as the overviews by Enid Adam or Brian Kyme, can be read as academic treatments; most are best read as instructive documentation. Many of the most useful points from discussion, are lost in this record. In the forum Phillip Carrier made instructive comments about practices stimulated by Father Bede Griffiths and two moderators, Rev Bill Loader of Murdoch's School of Theology, and Dr Will Christensen, from the School of Social Sciences at Curtin, are not represented. In any case written extracts communicate little of the spiritual vitality demonstrated in the presentations by Ken Colbung on Aboriginal spirituality, Ajahn Jagaro on Theravada Buddhism and Ibrahim Abdullah on Islam. Sister Veronica Brady on our materialism, Nado Aveling on feminist witchcraft and Paul Llewellyn on eco-activism all made stronger contributions through discussion than what comes through in notes included here.
Each session was led by a moderator, who introduced three or four panelists. Altogether the participants were a remarkably distinguished group, each is significant in their own context and most are very well known in WA. The speakers spoke briefly and exchanged views, then discussion drew from the floor as well. About eighty people were present, some for only part of the day. While not sharply focussed, discussion was active and informative. We did not focus intensively on the range or nature of different commitments and practices, at least not in the stocktaking sense we might have, but did bring an unusual diversity of perspectives into the open.
It was not the sort of inquiry from which sharp conclusions can be drawn, but several observations come to mind. The local Christian community, at least as represented, demonstrates an openness and a self critical edge, it is stretching in several directions at once. Bishop Brian Kyme and Rev Bill Loader showed sensitivity to the ground swell, changing modalities of spirituality within the churches, and respect for the integrity of spirituality beyond their spheres. Veronica Brady pushes at the social conscience of Christian faith, in the forum as in her wider public role. Josephine Griffiths speaks here of the depth of movement beyond gender constraints in the church. Phillip Carrier clarified in the forum that many remain Catholics and are yet attracted to new styles of meditation, open to the convergences between their faith and others.
The forum also made clear how mature and grounded Buddhism and Islam are now in WA. Spokespeople like Jagaro and Abdullah are both Australian born converts but carry their adopted spirituality with total comfort. In them there is not the slightest sense of affectation, as there often is with acquired beliefs. Instead their practices are thoroughly domesticated, obviously profoundly interiorised rather than mouthed. In this respect their discussions, informative as they were in other respects too, were most vital as demonstrations that the clearly conscious core of those practices is present here. These faiths are obviously lived deeply by local people, not existing as only a residue of something brought from elsewhere, or as shallow imitation. This mature depth would have been much more difficult to imagine several decades ago.
Ken Colbung was a powerfully demonstration by his presence. He articulated the cohesiveness and power of Aboriginal spiritual sensibility, demonstrating it as a continuing living presence even inside the city now occupying the land which breathed his ancestors. His message is received much more clearly now than it could have been some years ago. In part this reflects changes in our idiom, which now colloquially allows mention of vibrations, something not 'knowable' in our language until recently. As an observer it is difficult to factor out my own gradually growing understanding, but my impression is very strongly that the qualities of local Aboriginal spirituality, long ago pronounced unreal at root or already dead, are not only transparently vital, but even beginning to reach beyond the Aboriginal community with lucid force.
A decade ago a series of Confests of the Down to Earth Movement were held in the forests of the southwest. Thousands attended and in them local alternative spiritual practices were juxtaposed with each other and with other wings of the local subculture. In 1979 several dozen organizations were represented in a gathering at the Point Walter youth recreation camp in the city, testing consciousness of spiritual process beyond the boundaries of groups. When Ken Colbung spoke at the Nanga confest he clearly recognised a general affinity between Aboriginal and Down to Earth impulses. He did not see a connection between Aboriginal spirituality and the new meditation movements then, but I suspect does now. At Point Walter only active followers came, the leaders of most movements were not interested in the intersections which make them part of a larger process, in this instance leading figures engaged in a congenial atmosphere.
Insofar as the forum is an indication, the limits of openness were most tested by presentation of witchcraft and eco-activism as modes of spirituality. Paul Llewellyn, standing for Parliament as a candidate for the Green Alliance, commented on spirituality within the environment in terms which could resonate deeply. Notable groups, of those associated with clearly religious modes of spirituality, were not interested in engaging with Nado Aveling. She boldly and simply put herself on record, aiming to clear the air of significant misconceptions about feminist witchcraft. Some of those who might have been instructed chose to depart.
The last session focussed on practices relating to the earth, but connections of that sort were not drawn out, nor were threads between the three sessions of the forum explored at length. Whatever the limitations, my impression from the exchanges is of increasing openness. Differences between groups were not obscured, but people appear to recognise the authenticity of other practices more than they would have years ago. The speakers presented an overview of diversity and demonstrated consciousness of significant common purpose. They thus confirm that as people, whatever the social emphasis in our environment, there are remarkably varied and vital practices on the ground in WA. Spirits are awake and moving, even if at times through unpredicted channels, rather than as uniformly asleep as our initial impressions allow.
New: 24 October, 2021 | Now: 24 October, 2021
This page incorporates material from Garry Gillard's Freotopia website, that he started in 2014 and the contents of which he donated to Wikimedia Australia in 2024. The content was originally hosted at freotopia.org/people/paulstange/probing.html. The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.