I suppose I’ll write the story of why I am becoming a Catholic.
I grew up in a Hindu household and can recall my earliest notions of God. His presence was never a question for me, I recall fearing his judgment greatly. I accepted the existence of God with all the innocence of a child. It wouldn’t last too long. Despite the will of my parents, the fear of God left me totally by the time I entered high school. The snare of scientism caught me and I rejected God out of a sense that this was the obvious and rational decision. Didn’t modern science sufficiently explain the entire development of the universe—why believe in magic? I became an obnoxious and arrogant teenage atheist and I raised hell upon my Christian friends for their faith which I found childishly naive. God forgive me for this. Yet miraculously and unaccountably I learned, of all things, the Hail Mary prayer and recited it sporadically.
Life broadened upon me in college. I began reading a little bit of stoic philosophy which really changed my life. I felt that life on Earth was sorrowfully precious and that I ought to start to slow down and learn from men wiser than I. Stoicism soon led me to Eastern philosophy and religion, especially by figures like Alan Watts and Ram Dass. During this period I began to meditate, as my father had taught me. I listened to hundreds of hours of lectures by spiritual and religious teachers. I was quite interested in the Orthodox Hindu Advaita Vedanta philosophy. I also found myself gravitating towards Zen and Buddhism. It felt that there was profound insight in each of these traditions, but I truly puzzled myself trying to see how they could both fit together—they appeared to me to contradict one another in some of their core teachings. They certainly seemed to contradict Christianity, which I only had a vague impression of. I experimented with a few methods of meditation and eventually came to love meditation in the tradition of the Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh.
Through zen meditation I learned how to see the preciousness of existence in the present moment. But all this time I saw the strange figure who made the most extraordinary claims in the world, and yet was respected by most Eastern religious masters as a great saint—Jesus Christ. In fact, Thich Nhat Hanh himself called Christ one of his spiritual fathers (Buddha was the other one). He wrote a book called Living Buddha, Living Christ which I felt gave me some permission to learn what Jesus teaches. Guided by some kind of Grace, I attended a mass in beautiful St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City when visiting the city. I had never experienced anything remotely like it; It was Heavenly. The next morning I meditated on Jesus Christ instead of on my breath which was the routine. It was brilliant.
My experience with Zen was necessary for me to approach Catholicism. Over the years I had built up many mental conceptions of what I thought Catholicism and Christianity were. They were entirely wrong, but I was only able to figure that out because Zen taught me how to break through mental conceptions. St. Augustine wrote:
“Si enim comprehendis, non est Deus”
(If you understand it, it’s not God)
The center of Catholicism is the mystery of the Trinity. God is not to be intellectually understood, but surrendered to in love (something I learned first from Hindus). But I also find Catholic theology and philosophy to be the most intellectually compelling as well. St. Pope John Paul II wrote:
“Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth”
In other words, I find Catholicism to be radically sane.
There is tremendous insight and light in Eastern religion and mysticism, but I now believe that it originates in the Holy Trinity and is revealed in the Church which Jesus Christ established on Earth. I cannot really adequately explain my conversion in the end; God’s grace is beautiful and subtle, and I am a poor writer. Whatever my faith, I am always delighted to have dialogue about God and religion. I could learn a thing or two from just about everyone out there.