Abby Murray
Lying Awake and A River Sutra both deal an emptiness that all people feel in
their lives, and the dissatisfaction that it causes, and the desire to fill it. This expression
of dissatisfaction with life has deepened my personal understanding of religion. The
Carmelite nuns discuss the common discontent felt by many people: “Many successful
people go through periods where they wonder, ‘Is this all there is?’ and think about
giving it all up for the spiritual life.” 1 The protagonist and the Jain monk of A River
Sutra embody such successful people who have “renounce [d] the world.” 2 The
overlapping theme of desire to find something “more” in life in order to fill an internal
emptiness is something that I have experienced in my personal faith.
I think that for me at least, the desire to have a relationship with God can exist
without the relationship ever really coming to fruition, but that the mere existence of the
desire for the relationship is rewarding in an of itself. That’s what religion is to me—an
effort, and expression of a desire to know God, with the understanding that the reward is
not necessarily anything otherworldly or spectacular. A passage read to the nuns from
Augustine’s Sermons on 1 John in Lying Awake reflects my feelings on the matter: “The
entire life of a good Christian is in fact an exercise of holy desire. You do not yet see
what you long for, but the very act of desiring prepares you, so that when He comes you
may see and be utterly satisfied.” 3 It is extremely interesting to me that satisfaction is
the final reward. I suppose that we are meant to be perpetually dissatisfied with our
relationship with God. If we were satisfied, there wouldn’t be any desire—as the
1
Mark Salzman. Lying Awake (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000), 28.
Gita Mehta. A River Sutra (New York: Vintage International, 1993), 41.
3
Salzman, 25.
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eloquent Chagla of A River Sutra said, “‘but, sir, without desire there is no life.
Everything will stand still. Become emptiness. In fact, sir, be dead.’” 4 Religion is a
mysterious structure that cannot be fully comprehended. The desire that drives our
actions would come to a halt, and all life would sputter to a stop. So, it all comes back to
emptiness: there is an emptiness that we desire to fill, but if we ever lost the desire to fill
it then we would be consumed by the emptiness and have to purpose or driving force in
life, because “Desire is the origin of life.” 5
The nuns then have an argument over whether loving God and giving oneself over to
spirituality is an all-consuming or gradual process:
“‘You’re not concerned that she’s leaping from one extreme to another, with
no middle ground?’ Sister Bernadette asked.
“‘There is no middle ground when it comes to loving God. It’s all or
nothing.’
“Sister Bernadette bristled. ‘For most people, Sister, it’s more complicated
than that.’” 6
For me, it was definitely more complicated than that. While I wouldn’t say that I leapt
“from one extreme to another,” when my parents decided I was old enough to take my
religious life into my own hands, I jumped at the opportunity to quit my Catholic youth
group and annoying Sunday masses. After this relatively drastic switch, I entered a
“middle ground” period, when conflicting desires for freedom from the restrictions of
religious doctrine, and for a grounding, supportive community kept me suspended and
uncomfortable with my desertion of my faith. After two years out, I rejoined youth group
(not without some doubts and new perspectives). Sister John’s vigil in the choir, when
she is trying to make a decision about the surgery, echoed my own experience making a
4
Mehta, 142.
Mehta, 143.
6
Salzman, 29.
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difficult decision. Salzman’s distinction between being lost and being alone informed
my thoughts on why I chose to go back to the Church. “A sister might feel lost, but she is
never alone.” 7 I have often felt lost and confused, and religion eases that loneliness by
showing me that I am not alone.
The theme of loneliness reverberates in the two novels, and relates to how people
today use religion to fill emptiness. Loneliness and liminal states are also inextricably
linked in the novels. The idea of liminal states is complimentary to the theme of
loneliness, because a liminal state is where someone is in between stages of
transformation, and thus not in the same emotional or physical capacity as people around
them. They are isolated by the transition. In A River Sutra, the River Narmada is the
underlying foundation of the story, and is the traditional boundary between North and
South India. Therefore the river itself is a veritable liminal body. Its power could be a
manifestation of its liminality.
In A River Sutra, the protagonist has never felt strong desire or love or loss, and
so he is empty of those emotions essential to life. The Jain monk has emptied himself of
wealth, and explains that Jain monks follow “…a man who found all his wealth, power,
beauty gave him no more than transitory pleasure and who yearned for a pleasure that
could be sustained…” 8 Nitin Bose reflects on his early life, when he and his friends
returned from the night’s escapades, and “knew our lives were leaking away.” 9 All these
characters feel a spiritual void, which they aim to fill somehow.
7
Salzman, 142.
Mehta, 20.
9
Mehta, 111.
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In Lying Awake, the extreme loneliness of Sister John as she struggles to
transition from a period of communication with God to a less rewarding relationship also
marks a liminal state. During this time, she complains of “Loneliness, the hole at the
center of [my] being.” 10 Though people use religion to fill a void, emptiness is also
essential to gaining spiritual insight: “God means to fill each of you with what is good, so
cast out what is bad...The vessel must be emptied of its contents and then be
cleansed…”11 The role of emptiness in religion has now become more complex for me.
I arrive at the conclusion that there exists a spiritual emptiness, which feeds our hunger
for religion. There is also a wealth of excess cultural and human qualities which we must
empty ourselves of, in order to maintain our “good” emptiness and not fill it up with
trashy junk.
Authenticity concerns the nuns, who are concerned with the authenticity of their
interactions with God. I was often concerned with authenticity in my various religious
experiences. Youth group—sometimes I felt like I was making up what we were
supposed to be experiencing. The confirmation process, finally finding authenticity,
having it reinforced by outside recognition. Now, I doubt what I once thought was
authentic, because I have let it slip away. However, my experience of letting something
slip away has been different that Sister John’s, because she wants nothing more than to
bring it back, where as I am more concerned with exploring my personal spirituality.
In Persepolis, I began wondering about the differences between spirituality, faith
and religion. Marjie has strong personal spirituality as a child, but her faith is destroyed
by the terrible way that state religion manifests itself in her life. I witnessed a lot of
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11
Salzman, 115.
Salzman, 25.
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disillusionment, questioning, distrust during the sex scandal of the Boston area Catholic
Archdiocese, and the conversations we had in my youth group got me thinking a lot about
the relationship between myself the individual, and the religious structures which frame
and at times, dictate my faith.
Being raised Catholic and liberal can be contradictory at times. By the time I was
in high school, I began to realize that I had personal views that technically went against
Catholic doctrine. I don’t really understand why my mom can’t receive communion
because she is divorced, or why the Pope refuses to accept homosexuality as natural, or
why a group of old guys hundreds of years ago should have the authority to tell millions
of people today when it’s alright to have sex. These are the laws of the governing body
of my faith, and I have issues with them. Yet, its not easy to just switch religions,
because of he cultural and social importance of religion in everyday life.
The way I was introduced to my faith reminds me of the nature of religion in The
Telling. Catholicism is expressed and explained to children in stories. Jesus, Noah,
Moses, the Apostles, Mary, David, and numerous other figures first entered my
consciousness as storybook heroes and heroines. As the practitioners of the Telling pass
on the stories of suffering, because without suffering there is no life, I took in the gory
tales of crucifixion. I think religion is equally a cultural construct as a spiritual one. Just
as we hear stories that shape our national identity, racial identity, and so forth, we hear
stories about our religious background that serve the same purpose.
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