When Vrindavan Dust Set Off an Airport Alarm

“Stay where you are. Don’t move even one bit.” The airport security officer pointed his gun at me and spoke in a stern voice. I had just entered the United States and was clearing security at Denver airport when an extremely loud alarm suddenly went off. Almost immediately, several security personnel rushed toward me. The officer standing in front of me was tall and well-built, with sharp, piercing eyes and a pointed jaw. Taken aback, I asked, “What’s the matter?” “We have detected that you are carrying some explosives.” “Explosives?” My surprise was fast turning into concern. He pointed toward my crutches. “Our sensors have detected something inside them.” “I cleared security in Delhi, and then again in transit in London, using these very crutches. I have been traveling with them across the world for over a year. There has never been any problem.” “Our sensors have detected something inside them,” he replied firmly. “We’ll have to break them open.” My concern turned into alarm. “I can’t walk without them.” Another security officer stepped forward. He was a little older, with slightly grizzled hair and a kinder expression on his face. He picked up one of the crutches. “Can these be opened?” “Yes,” I said, feeling a little relief. I showed him how. They opened the crutches and shone a flashlight inside. Then they turned them upside down and shook them. Some particles of dried mud fell out. “What is that?” I looked at them carefully and immediately recognized what they were. “I think that’s some mud from Vrindavan.” “Vrindavan?” “I’m a monk,” I explained. “I had recently gone to a holy place near Delhi called Vrindavan. I was walking beside the Yamuna River there, and the rubber tips at the bottom of my crutches had become worn out. Some mud must have entered the hollow shafts. I subsequently replaced the tips, but apparently some of the mud remained inside.” Wearing gloves, one of the security personnel picked up the particles and rolled them between his fingers. He brought them close to his nose to smell them and then near his ear as he examined them. The crutches were passed through the detection system again. The alarm went off again. “Are you sure this is mud?” “Yes.” They probed farther inside the crutches with a long instrument and pulled out more of it. After examining the material and the crutches further, they finally seemed satisfied. “All right. There are no explosives here. You can go.” But the officer added, “Cleaning your crutches is not our responsibility. Please clean them as soon as possible.” As I was collecting my luggage, I asked him, “Can you tell me what triggered the alarm?” “Some things within soil can trigger false positives in our detection systems.” As my wheelchair assistant took me away, the knot of anxiety inside me finally began to loosen. Until then, airport security had generally been a routine, uneventful, and often uninteresting part of my travels. This had been by far my most dramatic experience while passing through security. Two Visions of the Same Dust Later, as I journaled about the incident, the irony struck me. When I had replaced the worn-out rubber tips in Vrindavan, the devotee who had been taking me around had said, “Don’t remove all the dust. Let some of it remain inside. Then wherever you go, the sacred dust of Vrindavan will go with you.” I liked the sentiment. But that was only part of the reason the dust remained. Part of me had also been a little lazy about cleaning it from deep inside the crutches. I was in a hurry and didn’t want to be late for the airport. Let it remain, I had thought. The spiritual sentiment had provided a convenient justification. Vrindavan had indeed traveled with me. But what was sacred to me was suspicious to them. The contrast reminded me of a striking verse in the Bhagavad Gita (2.69): what is night for ordinary living beings is day for the spiritually awakened, and what is day for ordinary people is night for them. The verse illustrates how radically spiritual and material perceptions and priorities can differ. My instinct would naturally have been to prioritize the spiritual vision and subordinate the material one. To me, the substance inside my crutches was sacred dust. To the security personnel, it was unidentified material that had repeatedly triggered their detection system. But were they wrong to take it seriously? Certainly not. That question brought back another encounter. When Spirituality Looks Dirty A few months earlier, I had taken a group of American seekers from a yoga background on a tour of sacred places in India. One early evening, we were at Keshi Ghat in Vrindavan, one of the revered places on the banks of the Yamuna. A gentle breeze was blowing in from the river, soothing devotional music played in the background, and the atmosphere was serene. One woman from the group approached me. “I appreciate Indian spirituality,” she said, “and I can feel that these places have sacred vibes. But then I see this.” She pointed toward plastic bottles floating in the water nearby. “So many pilgrims come here. Why does nobody make the effort to keep these places clean? Why are sacred places allowed to become so dirty? Why is the Yamuna allowed to remain so polluted?” I offered her an explanation I had often heard and had myself found meaningful. “Yes, what you are saying is true. But there is a material way of looking at things, and there is a spiritual way of looking at things. Sometimes something spiritually transformative may be concealed behind a veil that is not materially attractive. Part of our spiritual seriousness is whether we can see beyond that external appearance and persevere in seeking the spiritual reality beneath it. That can distinguish spiritual seekers from those who have come merely for sightseeing.” She nodded at my explanation. I still think there is truth in it. But now, after my encounter at Denver airport, another question came to me: Could a valid spiritual explanation sometimes become a justification for an avoidable material problem? Could “see beyond the material” become an excuse for not improving the material? The Bhagavad Gita does not teach that matter itself is false or worthless. In 7.4, Krishna describes earth, water, fire, air, space, mind, intelligence, and ego as his material energies. The material and the spiritual are distinct, but the material also comes from the divine. Perhaps, then, the responsibility of a spiritualist is twofold. We need to learn to see beyond material appearances to spiritual reality. But wherever possible, we should also arrange the material so that it makes the spiritual easier to perceive, not harder to perceive. While growing up in a Christian convent school, I had learned the saying, “Cleanliness is next to godliness.” Later, my param-guru, Srila Prabhupada, repeatedly emphasized that our temples should always be kept very clean. And one of my spiritual teachers reworded and expanded the saying I had learned in childhood: “Cleanliness is not just next to godliness. Cleanliness can itself be godliness when it is done in God’s service.” As I thought about this, I realized that the lesson applied to me personally too. I have often been guilty of not keeping my own surroundings—my room or wherever I happen to be staying—as clean and organized as they should be. I live so much in my head. I may spend considerable energy organizing my thoughts carefully while hardly noticing that the things around me have become disorganized. And the dust in my crutches was a case in point. It had remained partly because I treasured it, but also because I had been in a hurry and somewhat lazy about cleaning it out. I remembered another devotee who had spent almost a year in Vrindavan. He once showed me an attractive pouch in which he had preserved dust from different sacred places. Each sample had its own neat compartment and a clear label identifying where it had come from. He treasured the sacred dust too. But he had found a far more thoughtful way to carry it. As that realization registered within me, I felt that despite all the anxiety and agitation at airport security, the dust of Vrindavan had indeed blessed me—just not in the way I had expected. It had blessed me with a precious insight: Respecting the spiritual does not mean disregarding the material. Sometimes the best way to respect the spiritual is to arrange the material in a way that fosters respect for the spiritual. As I contemplated the incident, I offered a prayer: My dear Lord, please give me the vision to see spiritual substance beyond material appearance, but also the responsibility to care for the material appearance as far as I can. Let my spirituality never become an excuse for negligence. Help me arrange whatever is within my power—my surroundings, my actions, and my choices—so that I make the path toward you easier for others to see and walk. *** 07.04 Earth, water, fire, air, ether, mind, intelligence and false ego – all together these eight constitute My separated material energies. The post When Vrindavan Dust Set Off an Airport Alarm first appeared on Chaitanya Charan Das, Bhagavad Gita ISKCON .