When I tell people that I’m a religious studies major, there is usually a flash of hesitation in their faces as they try to figure out what that means. The confusion dissolves once I state that I’m also pre-med, and they nod in intrigued understanding. I can only attempt to conjecture at what goes on in those long mental sentences: What do religious studies majors study? What can you do with that major? Will she try to convert me? I thought she was normal!
Well, what do I study? The honest answer would be whatever my professors tell me to and whatever else I’m interested it. But the most profound learning experiences I’ve had have been just that: experiences. The path that has taken me to become a religious studies major in the first place is complex. While I can speak of them now like they were always meant to be, but they were just the particular way that the events panned out. It may have easily turned out a number of different ways. I could have chosen to go to Africa instead of Nepal or taken a Native American psychology course instead of Buddhist psychology. But the unique experiences and opportunities I have had through college have shaped my worldview into what it is now.
I did not grow up religious. My parents were children during the Cultural Revolution in China, so I was an heir to their distaste of any force beyond their own will. My mother called herself a Buddhist, but when I asked her what that meant she just said that she burns incense at temples when she passes by them or whenever she needs something. In Connecticut where I grew up, we had no familiar temple in which to burn incense for good grades and successful regattas. So her rituals never became mine. Rather, I independently flirted with atheism and settled with the pervasive indecision of agnosticism for a majority of my life.
When I came to Northwestern, religion was the last thing on my mind. I was a pre-med, Asian American biological sciences major ready to tackle the coursework and a healthy dose of weekend catharsis. While I won’t go into details, I pushed a bit beyond my own tolerance for collegiate pleasures. It was not a healthy balance. I did not feel true to myself, working so hard to a breaking point and then finding an outlet for its release. I began looking for another way to operate. To my surprise, a middle way began to reveal itself in Nepal. Since I had no job, internship or research lined up for my at the end of my freshman year, I chose to volunteer for a month abroad. By the time I landed in Nepal, I was ready for what the experience had to offer me.
I did not go in with any expectations other than working at an HIV clinic during the day and living in Kathmandu, the capital of the Himalayan country. It turned out I was also living at an orphanage with a few other volunteers. I felt like I had been granted so much, being surrounded by an environment where others had so little. Dirty children ran up to me on the streets asking for money or food. Beggars were not uncommon, including one woman with a baby. Pigs picked through garbage that ran through the rivers in the city. Stray dogs were a daily sight. The glossy eyes of skinned goat heads stared out at me in rows from the street vendors. It was as if all the folding screens used to hide all the uncomfortable aspects of life were removed.
Yet the people I met were kindhearted and genuine. The shopowners, who I was particularly wary of at first, genuinely just wanted to talk and have chai. They did not expect me to buy anything, but would give me small gifts instead. All they wanted was for me to greet them as I walked by on my daily path to the clinic and stop in to chat if I had the time.
Even people with very little offered whatever they could. Once, I was invited to the home of a Nepalese college student named Sameer who lived in a tin hut in a slum along the riverbanks. He cooked all day for us. In his small, barely-lit home, four other foreign travelers and I learned how to eat with our hands. The mixture of white rice, curried lentils and salty greens that had been cured on his roof filled me with warmth as I listened to his life story. Sameer grew up in the same community as an orphan. By studying hard and working to pay his tuition, he made his way to college and was an active member in his community. His eyes revealed the passion by which he approached his life. Even with the worst of conditions, he was able to make the best out of them. While not every person I met was friendly and vibrant and honest, there have been few other places where I’ve met people like Sameer.
I had a lot of time to think during this trip. It was a chance to slow down from the frenetic pace of my American habits to look at what was really important. While I was still sure that I eventually wanted to be a physician, I could not shake the feeling of dissatisfaction with my own lifestyle. I felt that something was missing. I could not reconcile this world to the materialistic one I knew. How could people be so good with so little? For a few weeks in Nepal I lost all desire for material goods. The rows of pashmina shops did not tempt me. I admired the handmade paper and intricate metal sculptures, but had no desire to own them. Even the thought of my full closet or the iPod sitting around at home was slightly nauseating. I knew these items were not as meaningful as human connections. While this feeling of distaste eventually faded, a sense that I was lacking some fundamental part of my being did not.
After returning to school for my sophomore year, I dreaded the organic chemistry and biology combination that I had signed up for, but knew I had to do it. Thankfully, I had also registered for a Buddhist psychology class that redirected my life and spiritual path. Buddhism and meditation spoke to me and filled the void that I had just perceived. I took to Zen like I was born to sit on a meditation cushion for long periods of time. And so I made it through the difficulties of my second year with the guidance of my blossoming interest in Buddhism.
Last year during the fall of my junior year, I was able to pursue Buddhist studies in India. I lived in a Burmese monastery with about 35 other students, a handful of teachers, some resident monks and attendants, and sometimes a group of over a hundred Burmese pilgrims visiting for a night or two. We were all there to live at the epicenter of the Buddhist universe. The town was Bodh Gaya in Bihar, considered the poorest and most backwards province in India, where the Buddha was enlightened under the bodhi tree 2,500 years ago. It was incredible to live and breathe the Dharma, the Buddhist teachings. Not only were we taught the scholastic significance of Buddhism, but we also put it into practice. We meditated at least two hours a day beginning with an hour in the morning at 5:30 am. This element of experiential learning, of learning through the body, transformed my mind in conjunction with my body. I even shaved my head and took vows to be a nun for a week. This was not what I expected to do when I first considered study abroad. Yet it was exactly what I needed to do. While medicine was still my passion, the unexpected spiritual path that my education took has enriched that decision and myself with greater discipline, calm and kindness.
Religious studies, for me, go outside of the boundaries of the classroom. As an intellectual endeavor it is fulfilling in its own ways, but it also has a deeply personal meaning. The worldviews that I can understand, even just for a moment, reveal to me a little bit more about my own. They allow me not just to act, think and feel according to the accumulation of habitual energy that has propelled me through the years, but to step back and see the water within which I have been heedlessly swimming.
Expanding my mind and its storehouse of knowledge is an extension of the opening of my heart and head to something greater than my small, inconsequential self. I’ve adjusted my Northwestern world to represent the values that have been influenced and practiced in places far, far away. Throughout the past three glorious years I have begun to learn how to let go, to live fully, and to love deeply. If those were the only things I have gained from my degree, I would gladly say that I have received a proper education.
Read more student perspectives on spirituality.