Thoughts on Thanksgiving
As an American living in Mexico, I don’t celebrate Thanksgiving so much. Since my mother passed away five years ago, there hasn’t been much need. My Mexican family doesn’t really get it. I try to explain, but it’s just not a Mexican thing.
When I was a kid growing up in Connecticut we did the whole Martha Stewart Thanksgiving with the turkey, dressing, and cranberry sauce. My step-father was French, and he loved the whole idea that the Indians had helped the pilgrims. The French are partial to the ideal of the noble savage first forwarded by Jean Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau, the revolutionary human rights philosopher who felt that humans in their primitive condition are generous and kind. The American Indians were his example.
Now I’ve used the word “Indians” twice, since that was my upbringing and I was talking about the 60s when I grew up. Nobody says “Indians” any more, of course. It isn’t politically correct. In Spanish the correct nomenclature is gente indigena, which translates as indigenous people. I think this is much better than “Indians” since the native American peoples are not from India. When Colombus found himself on the island of Hispaniola, he thought that he had discovered “India” and took captives for the King of Spain, calling them “Indians.” The name stuck. But in Mexico, anyway, it’s not correct to call people indios anymore.
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| Squanto at the first Thanksgiving Dinner |
My job at the family table every Thanksgiving was to read the story of “Squanto the Indian.” It was the start of my career as a story-teller and teacher. I would read a little book about how the pilgrims, who had fled religious persecution in Europe, had a hard time surviving in the “New World.” After suffering a particularly bad winter they were helped by Squanto, who showed them how to plant corn and pumpkins, to fish and hunt wild turkey. In gratitude they organized a big feast, and that was the first Thanksgiving. You’ll find some details of the story of Squanto here: http://historyofmassachusetts.org/squanto-the-former-slave/
I was about 11 years old at the time, back in 1962. Since I was to read the story, I began to read everything I could about the “Indians.” I had a huge illustrated book with color paintings of the conquest of the Americas, beginning with Cortez and the Aztecs. There was the history of the Algonquins and the East Coast Indians. I read about the “French and Indian War,” and traced the gradual retreat of the indigenous American peoples to reservations in the West where they were corralled and massacred by settlers. I could understand that the treatment of the American Indians amounted to genocide. When I learned of the real fate of the American Indians, it seemed unfair that they had helped the pilgrims only to be driven away and massacred.
My fascination was heightened when we traveled west and I got to see the big Navaho reservation in Arizona and New Mexico. Here in Mexico, the Southern “Indians” were the Mayans, the Olmecs, Toltecs, Mixtecs and Aztecs who founded the Teotihuacan civilization thousands of years ago. After the conquest they remained, mixed with the Spanish conquerors and created the Criollo and Mestizo culture which served as the basis for the modern Mexican state. Still, while there is a large indigenous population here in Mexico, it’s no paradise.
The native peoples of America are also struggling. There’s not much thanks for them. The Aztecs and their cousins the Mixtecs were the first to populate the Sonoran desert back in the stone age. And yet, if they try to cross the northern border, they may be asked to prove that they did not migrate here illegally. The Aztecs created the sun calendar, used the zero, and built pyramids to the sun and the moon. But they don’t see the point in the American tradition of thanking their cousins and then driving them into the sea.
As a kid growing up in Connecticut, I loved the story of Squanto and the pilgrims and how they all sat down together and celebrated peace. My stepfather was French: he loved the idea of the Wild West, cowboys and Indians, and so did I. I used to play cowboys and Indians with my brothers. I would wear my Roy Rogers hat and chase them around the grass in the back yard with a popgun in the summer. They had bows and arrows and would usually get the best of me. We moved out west so my father could work in Hollywood. On the way we saw the Navaho reservation near the Grand Canyon and bought souvenirs. Later I had a more sobering encounter with the Native Americans of California.
When we moved to California in the 60s, my father took interest in helping the local indigenous people there. We visited the Pima Indian Reservation in Southern California every winter where my stepfather gave out sweaters and blankets. We drank hot coffee out of styrofoam cups in the bleachers as the Pima kids played basketball on a grass court against Leo Jonas High School. In their faded uniforms and sneakers they played better than the Los Angeles Lakers.
The Pima Indians rocked.
The Pima Indians rocked.
As I grew older I never lost my fascination with the indigenous peoples of America. As the Vietnam War raged, I read “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,” by Dee Brown, a savage account of the genocide that wiped out the Indian tribes of the United States.
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| Wounded Knee Massacre |
As I said, I live in Mexico, where there is a large indigenous population. Here, we don’t celebrate the famous feast of gratitude that American school-teachers love so much. Here in Mexico we don’t know much about the “pilgrims” and the “redskins.”
Today, Thanksgiving, as I write this post, Native Americans in Standing Rock, North Dakota are struggling for water rights against oil interests who are determined to take their land. In freezing weather, they’re being tear-gassed, water-cannoned, whipped, dogged, and caged. So much for gratitude. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/standing-rock-sioux-tear-gas-thanksgiving_us_583496a3e4b000af95ece35d
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| Police react at Standing Rock |
As that great champion of the noble savage, Jean Jacques Rousseau might say, plus ça change; plus c’est la même chose...The more things change, the more they stay the same. We live in the iron age of exploitation and violence.
If gratitude to the native American people doesn’t really define Thanksgiving any more, we can still look towards the holiday as a tradition of giving thanks. Nowadays we sit around a table with friends and family and express thanks for what we have on Thursday only to race to the market on Black Friday to buy what we don’t have. A lot of people don’t even call it Thanksgiving any more: It’s “Turkey Day.”
No one really pauses much to think about where all that turkey comes from. Apart from the violence against the Native American peoples, the American version of "Giving Thanks" has grown into a celebration of mass murder against the native American bird. Millions of turkeys are slaughtered just weeks before the festive day. The turkeys don’t have much to celebrate.
No one really pauses much to think about where all that turkey comes from. Apart from the violence against the Native American peoples, the American version of "Giving Thanks" has grown into a celebration of mass murder against the native American bird. Millions of turkeys are slaughtered just weeks before the festive day. The turkeys don’t have much to celebrate.
The Wednesday before Thanksgiving is the most traveled day in the United States. Airports are jammed. Back in the bad old days of the 1970s we would stay out late at the airports trying to sell books on that day.
So many people try to get home, nostalgic for the happy family they never really had, only to find quarreling and bickering over the gravy and stuffing.
"All happy families are alike," Tolstoy says. "But every unhappy family has its own story to tell." Uncle Liberty has political views he’s determined to discuss and Aunt Jesus wants to make sure everybody has made peace with the Lord. Diversity isn’t much tolerated and discourse is all but dead. The young folks sit around the cranberry sauce playing with their cell phones and don’t know how to have a conversation. And amidst the bickering there is some pious talk about “thanks.” Perhaps for these reasons, the ritualized system for giving “thanks” that has to do with Thanksgiving sometimes seems so superficial.
"All happy families are alike," Tolstoy says. "But every unhappy family has its own story to tell." Uncle Liberty has political views he’s determined to discuss and Aunt Jesus wants to make sure everybody has made peace with the Lord. Diversity isn’t much tolerated and discourse is all but dead. The young folks sit around the cranberry sauce playing with their cell phones and don’t know how to have a conversation. And amidst the bickering there is some pious talk about “thanks.” Perhaps for these reasons, the ritualized system for giving “thanks” that has to do with Thanksgiving sometimes seems so superficial.
My Guru Mahārāja didn’t much like the idea of a “Thank you,” as a matter of formality. He found it shallow and said as much on a few occasions. He felt that to say thank you creates too much of an idea of “separate interest.” He didn’t like the idea that your interest and my interest are separate; I get something from you and go away. After I take what I want, I say “Thank you,” as a formality. I am no longer interested in you. You have satisfied my interest. So, I say thank you by way of letting you know that you have served my interest and are no longer useful.
I see his point. Many westerners would visit Śrīdhara Mahārāja hoping that he would confirm a prejudice they held and give them the authority they needed to continue with a certain orthodoxy. They wanted free information and treated him as if he were a human encyclopedia. Or they wanted entrance into an esoteric subject, or a blessing to get what they wanted. Once they had his blessing or had learned what they needed to, they would say “thank you,” and go away. Śrīdhara Mahārāja felt that a heartfelt connection involved much more than a mere thank you. He wasn’t charmed by the idea of taking something from someone and then closing the bargain with a thank you.
I have seen fanatics take their objections to this kind of formality too far. When I was in the United States recently, I visited a temple. An old friend greeted a young monk with the words “Good Morning.” The monk schooled my friend on the meaninglessness of saying “Good Morning.” He said, “What good does it do to say, ‘good morning’? What if Death comes for you when you are saying ‘good morning?’ instead of vibrating the holy name of God? What will be your destination? Better chant the holy name instead of saying ‘good morning.’”
I suppose he was doing his best to follow instructions. But the avoidance of formality can also be superficial. Govinda Mahārāja was more generous in his attitude towards such pleasantries as commonplace greetings. He would say “Please,” and “Thank you,” and “Good Morning,” with a cheerful smile. He was as joyous a man as you might ever meet in your life. He didn’t have a problem with saying “thank you,” even though his own Guru had frowned on the usage.
Govinda Mahārāja was never an imitation of Śrīdhara Mahārāja; he practiced his master’s teachings through his perfectly lived example. Instead of explaining what was meant by a “heart-to-heart relation,” or lecturing about thanksgiving, he would show us what was compassion, what was divine love, what was a dignified life of spiritual joy. He was as full of thanks for all his blessings as he was generous in giving joy to all who knew him.
I wish Thanskgiving were more of a spiritual tradition where we celebrated nonviolence with a nice vegetarian meal, instead of glorifying the mayhem of American football.
But, it's always good to take a moment and show gratitude for what we have. Having been so critical about the national holiday, it’s seems strange to add my thoughts on gratitude here. But since I grew up honoring Thanksgiving, I might as well give it a go, in spite of all the bad juju about the Native Americans and the violence against turkeys.
So here goes: I’d like to say thank you to all my friends. You know who you are. Thanks to the old and faithful and thanks to the new and untested friendships as well: “Make new friends but keep the old; one is silver and the other gold.” I give thanks to the great devotees and the small ones too. You have given me the inspiration to go on. I would name names, but someone would be left out.
You know who you are. Thanks for inviting me to your homes in Mexico, Russia, Ukraine, Thailand, and the United States.
Thanks for the memories, the good times, the work we shared together, and the laughs we had to get over the bad times. Thanks for the insights and the translations, the tea and conversations. Thanks for reading the blog, and thanks for checking in from time to time. God Bless you all, Hare Krishna, Peace and Love. Mahayogi.
You know who you are. Thanks for inviting me to your homes in Mexico, Russia, Ukraine, Thailand, and the United States.
Thanks for the memories, the good times, the work we shared together, and the laughs we had to get over the bad times. Thanks for the insights and the translations, the tea and conversations. Thanks for reading the blog, and thanks for checking in from time to time. God Bless you all, Hare Krishna, Peace and Love. Mahayogi.
