11

The Washing of the Feet

Opening the Channel to the Divine

I take the dust from the lotus feet of the guru to cleanse the mirror of my mind.

OPENING DOHA OF THE HANUMAN CHALISA

A woman of the city . . . began to bathe [Jesus’s] feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair. Then she continued kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment.

THE GOSPEL OF JOHN 12:38

RED FOOTPRINTS

I once spent a short time in a simple and sleepy Dalit^*25 village in South India somewhere near the border of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. This was a traditional place, where the women of the village cooked communally over outdoor fires, washing was done in the river, and neem leaves were burned on the earth floor of houses to drive off the evening’s mosquitoes. There was plenty of time for conversation, relaxation, and spiritual practice. Every day except Sunday was pretty much like every other day. The deep sense of peacefulness, safety, and contentment was for me both novel and welcome.

And so I was quite surprised when one night, already stretched out for sleeping, I heard a loud knocking on the doorpost. I woke up, startled, to the sound of what seemed like a thousand drums all beating in the darkness. “Time to get up, please,” I was told by a villager I did not recognize. “Time for walking, please.”

“What? Walking where? What are you talking about?” I asked.

“Time to get up, please . . . time for walking, please . . . time is now, please.” I guessed that this was about all the information I was going to get from this town crier. I shrugged my shoulders, rubbed my eyes, and put a shirt on, stumbling still sleepy out of my room into the night and the drums. I began to wonder what was going on. Had I overstayed my welcome? Perhaps I was being “drummed out” of the village, the way bad soldiers were drummed out of the French Foreign Legion in old black and white movies. I quickly scanned my mental calendar. Was it a religious feast day? Were they expecting me to perform my priestly function somehow? I was used to midnight worship services only at the Easter Vigil and Christmas Eve; this was January. I just kept walking, following the town crier who had gotten me up out of bed.

There was a glow of light nearby that drew us forward out of the inky blackness, and soon we were standing at what seemed to be the start of a parade route. There were drummers lining about a quarter mile of the main road through the village, dozens of them, all pounding large wooden dholak drums or thappu frame drums particular to Dalits, with supporting musicians behind and around them. The whole village had turned out, and even the young children and infants had been awakened for this special event. The road was lit by torchlights and personal flashlights. There was a fragrance in the air, neem mixed with some herbs or incense.

When we arrived at this starting point, the village leaders were gathered there with two Europeans, an elderly couple from Germany. One of the village leaders, who was more proficient in English than my wake-up caller, told me that in the 1950s the village had burned to the ground. The villagers had no resources with which to rebuild; all had seemed hopeless. This German, then a young man, happened to be traveling through the area and decided to take on the cause of these villagers. Through some friends in Europe, he collected enough funds (not a lot to a European of the time) to rebuild the entire village. Since then, each year the village held a party in his honor. He had come back a few times to visit since the rebuilding in the 1950s, and this time, having been away for over ten years, he was back again at eighty-five, together with his wife. He had told the villagers that this would be the last time he would visit. At his age, the trip was difficult for him, and so he had come to say his farewell to these people whose lives had become intertwined with his own for many decades. He had come to bless them and receive their blessing one more time before he died. And tonight was to be an important part of that mutual blessing.

I don’t know why I was chosen to participate together with the German couple in what happened next; perhaps it was because I was a priest (this was a Christian village), perhaps because I was a foreigner (a rare occurrence in this village), or perhaps it was simply a gesture of hospitality since I was a visitor and a stranger. I’ll never know. But what happened was this: the two elderly Germans with me following slightly behind them, together with some village elders guiding us, all started walking through this happy gauntlet of drumming and cheering and bells and general festive cacophony.

Every so often, someone would dash out in front of us and spill what looked like a bucket of red dye or paint across our path. The first time this happened I was confused; was this person a party crasher? Was it blood? What did it mean? Luckily, I was following the Germans, so I did what they did. Each time the red dye was poured out in front of us, we were directed to step in it so that we created red footprints down this central street of the village as we walked. Each time the red dye was thrown, each time we stepped into it, the voices of the townspeople cheered even more loudly.

There was a definite sense of the sacred about this. The walking, drumming, and cheering of our little parade lasted probably about half an hour, and then everyone sat down for a big meal. My being nabbed from bed in the middle of a sleep cycle made the whole night seem dreamlike. I found out later that the purpose of the red dye was so that our footprints would be marked permanently (well, at least until the next monsoon) onto the main dirt road of the village. The red footprints of this man who had been such an important part of their history would serve as a visible focus of veneration, a reminder of the footprints he had trod in their hearts, and they in his, through their common work of rebuilding the village. It seemed to me that the kindly German elder was revered as if he were the living patron saint of this village. That being so, the blessing of his footprints, of his feet upon their soil, was indeed something to celebrate.

VENERATION OF THE FEET

This story of how one small village honored its patron is one of many expressions of how veneration in South Asia and the Middle East is often expressed through attention to the feet. Footprints matter to us. From the red footprints of this old man, to the preserved ink-on-paper footprints of our infant children, there is something about footprints that fascinates us and seems to evoke the eternal within the temporal. Our footprints, and the feet that make them, are unique expressions of who we are. Our feet are where we most often touch the earth; they are a primary point of contact between one’s body and one’s world, and a primary object of veneration in many cultures.

In India the traditional form of reverence offered to an older or significant person or to an important object or representation of a deity is pranama, meaning “to bow or bend (anama) forward (pra).” While various types of pranama are appropriate for home, school, and so on, the form of saluation particular to the temple or to interaction with a holy person is charanam-sparsha, a deep bowing combined with a touching of the feet of the person or statue being venerated. Within Indian guru culture, the feet of the guru are considered particularly auspicious for one’s devotion. The feet of the guru are considered to be powerful channels of divine grace. The Guru Gita (Song of the Guru) is an Indian hymn that was likely originally part of the Skanda Purana written somewhere between the 6th and 15th century CE.¹ In its preface, we read:

Meditate on the feet of the Guru, who is Siva, who reveals the Supreme Truth as a lamp removes darkness, who is eternal, all pervasive, and who is the visible form of the Imperishable.

The feet of the guru are very often the objects of a heartfelt devotion that draws upon and heightens the eros of the bhakta (devotee), leading to the experience of union with the Divine: “When we speak of the Guru, mention of ‘the feet’ is never far away. We surrender to the feet, we sit at the feet, we give offerings to the feet, we touch the feet, and if we are lucky enough to be graced by them, we ultimately merge with the feet.”²

Touching, holding, rubbing the guru’s feet has profound significance in the Hindu tradition. For out of the guru’s feet comes the spiritual elixir, the soma, the nectar, the essence of the sacred Ganges River—the subtle pran, or energy that heals and awakens. To touch the feet of such a being is not only to receive this grace, but it is an act of submission, of surrender to God, for that is what the guru represents on earth.³

And in the sixth verse of the Paduka Panchaka we read:

I adore the two lotus feet of the Guru in my mind. The jewelled foot stool on which they rest removes all sin. The Guru’s feet are pinkish-red like young leaves. The toe nails resemble the full moon shining in all its glory. The Guru’s feet are radiant with the beautiful lustre of lotuses in a lake of nectar.⁴

What is so special about feet? Why have the feet rather than, say, the hands, become such an object of deep desire and devotion on the part of the guru’s disciples? Why is it that feet are used to represent the sacred life-giving parts of a person—the genitalia—in multiple places in the Hebrew Bible, such as in the stories of Saul⁵ and Ruth⁶ and in the description of the seraphim (fiery angels) who form part of the Prophet Isaiah’s vision?⁷

Likely some of this has to do with the physiology of our feet: the feet contain an incredible amount of nerve endings and are one of the body’s most sensitive places. The feet are incredibly responsive to touch; tickle any infant’s feet and you will see a much larger reaction than from tickling the hands, head, chest, or back.

The feet are highly alive. The alternative therapy of reflexology utilizes the sensitive nerve density of the feet to stimulate and heal various parts of the larger body: our sensitive feet are connected with our whole body and all its processes. And so the feet come to stand for the guru’s entire presence of self. Feet are also related to presence in Jewish and Christian tradition.⁸ The nature of the divine feet “suggests a deep and intuitive knowing of the Presence rather than simply an outward and intellectual type of knowing.”⁹

Throughout the didactic poem Padamalai, in which Sri Muruganar records the teachings of his guru, Sri Ramana Maharshi, Ramana in his entire physical form is referred to as “the foot.” The loving veneration of the lotus feet of the guru (called guru charanam in Sanskrit) is not only a historical experience of Indian devotees. In modern times, many of the Western disciples of the Indian saint Neem Karoli Baba found the experience of guru charanam both powerful and liberating. The presence of the saint’s feet and their interaction with his feet were important in the disciples’ learning to experience and modulate the energy of their deep erotic connection to life itself. One of these Western disciples recounts his own surprise at the power of the desire for the holy foot:

I was watching the man next to me. The expression on his face suggested that he was experiencing waves of rapture, and as I watched him out of the corner of my eye I felt jealous. . . . Before us, sitting on the table cross-legged, was [Neem Karoli Baba], well-wrapped in a bright plaid blanket, so that only his head showed above the blanket and a bare foot stuck out beneath. It was this foot that was the source of both the rapture and the jealousy, for the man was massaging the foot with great tenderness and love, and I was yearning to be in his place. How bizarre to find myself sitting in a tiny Hindu temple halfway around the world, jealous because I could not rub an old man’s foot!¹⁰

Another Western disciple of Neem Karoli Baba recounts his experience of dissolution through veneration of the guru’s feet:

I was sitting in front of [Neem Karoli Baba’s] tucket, rubbing his feet for the longest time, wondering if I was pure enough to be doing this. Then I went beyond thoughts, going deeper and deeper into that love until there wasn’t any concern about rubbing [his] feet or even my love for [him]. I was just “swimming” in his feet.¹¹

The surrender of the disciple to the feet of the guru—guru charanam—is not particular to Tantra. Throughout Indian guru culture the veneration of the guru’s feet is a common means for a disciple to awaken to the presence of the living God in his or her holy teacher. In fact, the guru’s primary value to the disciple is not in the corpus of teachings the guru transmits or in the spiritual disciplines the guru imparts to the disciple. The primary value of the guru is her or his ability to be a channel of the experience of the Divine, to lead the disciple to a theophany such as the Transfiguration.

Often those who reflect upon the Hebrew and Christian scriptures fail to remember that these faith traditions came to birth in Middle Eastern cultures much closer to the guru culture of India than to our present egocentric individualist-materialist culture of today’s developed nations. Traveling Israelite and Judean teachers and prophets gathered disciples, imparted their own forms of shaktipat as well as knowledge,¹² and were venerated and remembered as holy by those who followed them. Foot washing was part of the culture of hospitality in the Middle East, with hosts (or their servants) washing the feet of those who visited them as an act of hospitality and veneration. In fact, a form of pranama and foot washing (one form of guru charanam) appear in a foundational story of the Jewish people, the visitation of the Lord to Patriarch Abraham in the form of three visitors at the oaks of Mamre. In this story, Abraham’s hospitality leads to the visitors’ prophecy that Sarah his wife will bear a son in their old age, Isaac, from whom the people of Israel shall come. Here is the beginning of that biblical story:

The Lord appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day. He looked up and saw three men standing near him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent entrance to meet them, and bowed down to the ground. He said, “My lord, if I find favor with you, do not pass by your servant. Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree”¹³ [italics mine].

As these three men were “the Lord,” the cultural context is clear that Abraham literally bows to (pranama) and makes sure that the feet of God are washed. And from this act of guru charanam come the Hebrew people and the Jewish religion, including its offspring, Christianity.

Another marker to help us remember the Middle Eastern context of scripture is the image of the golden calf. Children who have learned this story in Sunday school come away with an understanding that Aaron, Moses’s brother, made an image of a golden calf, which the Hebrews worshipped while Moses was away up the mountain receiving the Ten Commandments from God. When Moses came back down the mountain, he was appalled that the people were worshiping an “idol” and smashed the original tablets containing the commandments in his anger. Reading the scriptural story after post-Deuteronomic redaction makes this version very easy to believe.

The archaeological and literary evidence point to a more nuanced reality: the golden calf may not have been, in fact, a “competitor god” to YHWH (Yahweh), the god of the Jews, but originally a symbol of guru charanam: the golden calf was YHWH’s footstool, allowing worshippers to locate where the holy feet of the Lord were within the tent or temple.¹⁴ Therefore, the location of the bull or calf would be an aid to worship in a culture that, like the cultures of South Asia, attached importance to the feet. Many scholars believe the bull was merely an alternative footstool for YHWH, rivaling the Ark of the Covenant and the cherubim of the Jerusalem Temple. The Temple itself was, after all, the resting place for God’s feet. The prophet Ezekiel gives voice to this understanding:

As the glory of the Lord entered the temple by the gate facing east, the spirit lifted me up, and brought me into the inner court; and the glory of the Lord filled the temple. . . . He said to me: Mortal, this is the place of my throne and the place for the soles of my feet, where I will reside among the people of Israel forever.¹⁵

After the fall of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, Judean iconoclasts reinterpreted the form of the religion practiced outside the Jerusalem Temple. They cast the bull or calf as an idol rather than as the living footstool of YHWH in the ancient Northern Israelite high places of worship in Bethel and Dan.¹⁶ This may have been tied to an attempt to consolidate politico-religious power in Jerusalem¹⁷ and led to the “spin” to the golden calf story involving Moses that Sunday school children commit to memory. If, then, the scholars are right, the existence of the golden calf in the Sinai desert and among later Northern Israelites is not an indication of apostasy but of the importance of guru charanam.

In the New Testament we see the survival of the veneration of the feet of the guru in first-century Judaism. In the Gospel of Matthew, “Mary Magdalene and the other Mary” are the first to encounter the risen Jesus and we are told that “they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him.”¹⁸ The stories around the veneration of Jesus’s feet have a sensuous and erotic flavor. In the Gospel of Luke, we read that

[a] woman in the city, who was a sinner, having learned that [Jesus] was eating in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster jar of ointment. She stood behind him at his feet, weeping, and began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair. Then she continued kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment.¹⁹

One scholar comments on this passage, [“Jesus’s] presence has evoked tears in her. His love has released from her depths the desire to change. . . . It is a desire deep within the human heart. . . . It is the presence of love that releases us to be true to these depths.”²⁰

At another dinner party, according to the Gospel of John, Mary of Bethany, a disciple of Jesus and one of the hosts of the dinner, “[t]ook a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.”²¹ In these stories we gain not only the information that Jesus’s feet were objects of veneration consummate with his status as a rabbouni, a guru, but that this veneration was bound up with a sensual connectedness to the divine presence, resonant with the Indian understanding.

Theophanies arising from the veneration of feet can occur outside the exoticism and romance of an Indian temple setting or Northern Israelite shrine. Such theophanies can occur quite by surprise, outside of any overt autosuggestion. This points to the deep and universal sourcing of guru charanam in our basic experience as embodied human persons. As an example, a friend of mine, M., a loving and intentional Christian, was paying a few visits to an elderly shut-in as a favor to another friend. This shut-in was extremely verbally abusive to M. Thanks to many years of inner work, M. was able to bear with the woman, though of course inside she acknowledged being angry and hurt. Each visit to this nasty old woman became more and more difficult, more and more trying. Her level of abuse and brutality did not abate in spite of M.’s kindness to her. She refused to open up to M. in spite of multiple kind invitations to do so.

Eventually, the cycle of visits was coming to a close, and M. was with her shut-in for the last time. During this final visit, M. had to bathe the woman, including washing her feet. M. felt her throat close a little bit, as the old woman was not much for hygiene. However, she dutifully brought her over to the bathtub, ran some warm water, and as it began to pool placed her feet into the tub and began washing her feet slowly and tenderly. As she did this, her consciousness expanded.

This old shut-in, this nasty and abusive taskmaster, became a conduit of a powerful and healing theophany. M. experienced the tangible “light that is life” through the washing of her feet, what in the mysticism of the Gospel of John is called glory (Greek: doxa). The warmth and brightness of that light was both within and around the old woman; she became Christ transfigured, doxa embodied, right there on the side of the bathtub. M. was “swimming” in her feet, breathing and pulsing within the great ocean of cosmic eros. M. was experiencing a deep connection to the Divine through this shut-in’s feet. And the old woman had no idea, seemingly, that any of this was happening.

She was a conduit of the Divine without having spent years becoming a realized guru, a spiritual master. She was an angry, abusive person who was afraid to leave her home and bit the head off everyone who came to help her. Yet in spite of what were likely many layers of brokenness, she was a channel of that uncreated light that, as St. Gregory Palamas has told us, is the emanation of God that is not-other-than-God, which fills all things. Even her feet—the feet of a severely damaged and disempowered creature—could be the “divine lotus feet” that lead to God.

Where does the path end that begins with the veneration of the feet? Let us remember that in Tantra the primary temple of the Divine is the human person. The veneration of the feet can lead into our own personhood, not stopping at an externally sourced sacredness. One modern Hindu commentator on the Guru Gita says that

[t]he Guru Gita offers guidance on how to meditate on the mystery of the guru’s role and nature, how to cultivate loving devotion to the teacher and teachings, and how the personal growth gained through this relationship leads to Self-realization and service to all beings. . . . The transformative power of these teachings . . . is not that the guru has attained an enlightened state unreachable by us. The teachings of the Guru Gita have the power to inspire and transform precisely because the guru is a human being like us, and because we all have the same spiritual potential within, waiting to unfold.²²

Even clearer on this is Ramana Maharshi himself, as recorded by Anamalai Swami:

A devotee once approached Bhagavan [Ramana Maharshi] and asked him if he could prostrate to him and touch his feet. Bhagavan replied: “The real feet of Bhagavan exist only in the heart of the devotee. To hold onto these feet incessantly is true happiness. You will be disappointed if you hold onto my physical feet because one day this physical body will disappear. The greatest worship is worshipping the Guru’s feet that are within oneself.”²³

Interestingly, it is really in Christian practice that the veneration of the lotus feet of the guru, guru charanam, attains a definitively left-handed tantric character. We see this “tantric turn” at the Last Supper in the Gospel of John, Jesus’s farewell discourse with his disciples before his arrest and execution. At this last dinner together, Jesus overturns the typical practice of the disciple venerating the feet of the guru and instead washes and venerates the feet of his own disciples. After they had eaten, Jesus strips off his outer garment and, taking the position of a servant, venerates the feet of his own disciples. That this washing was true veneration is clear; we have already seen how Simon Peter, one of his most highly initiated disciples, is so aghast at this left-handed tantric action of Jesus that he initially recoils in horror and refuses to comply. The story continues:

After [Jesus] had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord—and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.²⁴

Figure 11.1. Christ washing the feet of the disciples with Peter in shock (Albrecht Dürer, ca. 1509–1510, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)

There are multiple interpretations of this story, and all carry some truth. In medieval times and still today, this action of Jesus is seen as an expression of humility. Thus on Maundy (Holy) Thursday, the Christian holy day in which this scene has been remembered and reenacted in churches since the 7th century, kings, abbots, bishops, and other high-ranking people would wash the feet of ordinary citizens or of the poor and marginalized. Together with this focus on humility there is another, more clearly tantric understanding to the washing of the feet at the Last Supper highlighted in Christian liturgy. From the perspective of his culture, Jesus in washing his disciples’ feet is not only giving them an example of humility, he is affirming to them that they themselves carry the Divine within themselves, that they themselves can and should function as channels of doxa, of divine glory, for others. He is venerating them “as if” they are already deified beings, because in one sense they—and all of us—already are.

In this interpretation, the washing of the feet is connected to Jesus’s new commandment (Latin: novum mandatum) from which Maundy Thursday likely gets its name. The commandment Jesus gives is this: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”²⁵ This love is not, as we have discussed earlier, some type of general human kindness or universal moral regard; it is a deep love, rooted in eros, welling up in tears from the depths of our primal desire that we are to share with one another. If it were anything less, the veneration of the lotus feet—guru charanam—would not be connected to it. This love comes from experiencing the glory of the Lord within the other, being opened in ecstasy to the uncreated light of the spirit alive in one another.

Washing one another’s feet can open the eyes of our hearts to see the divine core of one another, the “image and likeness of God” in which each of us is made. That is why when the washing of the feet is done in church, we should enter it as an experience to be had in the present, not as if we were playacting something Jesus did in the past. In the Maundy Thursday liturgy, the washing of the feet is the turning point toward experience:

This reading [of the washing of the feet] sets up the major shift in the Triduum [i.e., Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Great Vigil of Easter] liturgies: no longer observers and responders in a third person relation with Jesus, those gathered for this liturgy are now called to imitate Jesus. That is the ‘point’ Jesus makes in the footwashing account.”²⁶

We do as Jesus did, as the disciples did, in order to experience what Jesus experienced, what the disciples experienced. “We therefore wash one another’s feet as Christ commanded that we all may share in that love. It is not an acted parable to be watched, but an action in which all are invited to participate.”²⁷

In doing so, we each become channels of the one guru, Christ the param-guru, for one another. It seems this is Jesus’s wish, and this was and is radical enough that in order to open his disciples’ minds to the possibility, he turns religious protocol on its head in the left-handed (Vamachara) “sacrament” of washing his own disciples’ feet. It is one of several tantric practices that can bring about the lived experience of Jesus’s words, “where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am among, between, and within them.”²⁸

History supports our insight that the washing of the feet has to do with a vision into divinized human nature, into glory. Bishop Ambrose of Milan (337–397 CE) reports that in northern Italy there was an already long-standing custom of washing the feet of the newly baptized, those who were reborn and beginning the path toward divinization, as described earlier.²⁹ So that they might understand that a clear channel of doxa existed within themselves as well as external to themselves, they were, we might say, venerated as guru, as a “means of grace,” just as Jesus had done to his own disciples. There are allusions to similar practices among East Syrians, and an early injunction against this practice (which means it was happening) by the Spanish Council of Elvira in 305 CE.³⁰ So we see that Christians early on and in multiple locations connected new birth and the process of deification with the tantric understanding of the veneration of the feet practiced by Jesus.

It is even possible that the washing of the feet may have served as the initiation ritual into some early Christian communities rather than baptism through immersion in water.³¹ This possibility points up how central this experience was to early Christians. Foot washing in the Christian model combines the sublime and shocking tantric reversal of hierarchy coupled with the primal erotic power that rises in us physiologically and psychologically from a sensuous engagement with the feet. The early church understood that this channel of tantric power allowed for a powerful experience, an initiatory experience, of the reality of Christ’s glory alive in one’s neighbor and in oneself.

Christian tantrikas of the past and the present, offering something akin to guru charanam to one another in the washing of the feet, find that “[t]heir identities have taken a step toward soteriological fusion with the identity of Jesus”;³² that is, this sacred ritual that affirms Christ (guru) in us, affirms the eventuality of our deification, equips us to serve as healers of and in the world, mediating the uncreated light to all that is still shrouded in darkness.

PRACTICE

Sacred Foot Washing

Since the majority of today’s Christian communities practice the washing of the feet only once a year on Maundy Thursday (the Thursday before Easter), we will look at how you can create and engage in a ritual of foot washing in addition to this once-a-year communal opportunity. You may wish to gain the opening of vision and feeling that can come from tantric Christian guru charanam more often than once per year. As with the gazing practice, you may choose to enter into the sacred space of reciprocal foot washing with a spouse, partner, or lover, or simply with a friend or acquaintance willing and able to hold sacred space together with you.

Create a clean, sacred, and intimate space where you will not be disturbed. You will want two chairs and perhaps a low stool for the person doing the washing, if that is more comfortable than sitting on the floor. You may wish to include fresh flowers, sacred objects or images such as icons, and incense or fragrant oils in your space. You may also find that sacred or soft, spalike music helps both you and your partner relax and open your hearts more easily. As each of you may spend time seated on the floor when washing the feet of the other (unless you choose to use a low stool), make sure your floor is clean and comfortable. You may want to place a sheepskin or soft rug in the space where the one washing will be kneeling or seated and where the feet of the one being washed can rest and be warm. Having a lit candle or a number of candles included in the focus area of your space can help to create a pleasant, soft light and enhance the sacred atmosphere.

You will also need a basin, a pitcher of water, and at least two plush hand towels. Make sure there is enough warm water in the pitcher so that it can be poured over each foot. It is recommended to add some aromatic oil such as lavender or rose or ylang-ylang to your water to enhance the deeply sensate aspects of this ritual for both the washer and the one having his or her feet washed. Pour just a few inches of this water into the basin as you make your preparations. You may choose to add rose petals or plumeria flowers or even gold flecks to the water in the basin for a beautiful visual effect. Decide before you begin who will first wash the feet of the other, and other logistical items such as who will monitor the music. Get all this out of the way so that you can fully inhabit the sacred space you will enter through the doorway of guru charanam.

Remember that what you are doing is not simply a reenactment of a past event, nor a blind adherence to Jesus’s commandment in John’s Gospel (“So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.”), but a tantric practice in the present moment that can open your own inner eye to truly see how the one you venerate, and your own self, are filled with the divine uncreated light of Christ. Therefore we must do our best to clear our inner channels so that God’s grace may flow: we have to do “our part” in our relationship with the Divine so that the veil made of our illusory constructs separating us from the rapture and joy of the really real may be torn asunder by grace. Once this veil is removed, you will always remember and be able to return to the really real. The experience we seek in the washing of the feet is nothing less than the experience of Transfiguration.

Begin with some initial heart-opening time together with your partner. Seated on your chairs, begin to play the sacred or soft music you have selected, if music is to be part of your experience. Look upon your partner, and bring your hands together in front of your heart in “prayer position,” palm to palm, pointing upward. Say, together or one at a time, “I honor the Christ in you; I honor the Christ in me; I honor the Christ here in this place.” Slightly bow your head to your partner. You are bowing to the divine core, the Christ, within them. Now close your eyes. Make the sign of the cross to activate your Great Heart. Take a few minutes to practice Prayer of the Heart or the Jesus Prayer, depending on your personal practice. When you feel your heart begin to soften and open, gently open your eyes. Place your right hand over your heart and your left hand over your belly, and wait for your partner to be in the same place.

Now gaze gently into your partner’s eyes, softly focusing at first on the left eye, then letting your soft gaze wander to the right eye or to both eyes as you feel moved. Spend several minutes here, too, seeking the openness of the other and opening yourself to the other. Smile slightly but leave the face soft. When you feel the circular connection of energy begin to flow between you and your partner (this may take anywhere from one to ten minutes), bring your hands into prayer position again. This should intensify the sensation of energy flow. Once you are both in this position, you are ready for the washing of the feet.

The partner who will begin the washing moves slowly to the floor or stool, and now gazes at the feet of the other. First take the left foot of your partner, and place it in the basin of warm water. Pour some additional water over the foot from the pitcher, and begin to massage the foot. Be intentional in your touch. Too strong a touch may hurt your partner; too soft a touch may tickle or feel “creepy.” Massage the foot as if you were washing the feet of Christ. You are, in fact, washing the feet of Christ—you are honoring the Christ in your partner through offering guru charanam to him or her, just as you would to Christ or to one of the great holy ones, the saints.

If you would like to infuse directed healing activity into your devotion, you may want to look ahead of time at where certain reflexology areas are located on the foot and massage into these areas as you wash your partner’s foot. Spend time washing the top, the sole, and the toes; take your time. This is an act of selfless devotion and should not be rushed. When you have completed washing the left foot, lift it out of the basin and rub some aromatic oil onto the foot, beginning with the top of the foot and moving to the sole and toes. After massaging the small amount of oil into the foot (don’t use so much that the foot becomes greasy), dry the foot lovingly with the towel and replace the foot onto the floor. Through this whole process, keep the foot supported so that your partner can thoroughly relax and let go during the experience. Next, take your partner’s right foot and offer guru charanam in the same way. During the washing, focus your vision and your heart space onto the foot of your partner.

When it is your turn to have your feet washed, allow yourself to be guided by your partner; if he or she moves to lift your foot from the floor, allow it to be lifted; if your partner moves or maneuvers your foot to one side or into or out of the water, stay soft and yielding and allow him or her to do so. Keep your gaze soft, taking in the whole scene of your foot being washed by the Christ in your partner. Allow your heart to open to the reality that Christ is washing your feet, just as the physical Jesus washed the feet of his disciples during the Last Supper. Really let yourself be open to this: here is God-with-us, Emmanuel, offering you the devotion accorded to God, the devotion of guru charanam! What an amazing upside-down, left-handed reality this is! This is Vamachara Tantra at its most sublime. Do not let your heart move into thoughts or feelings of unworthiness or shame; stay instead in the amazement that Christ-Shakti in your partner is offering guru charanam to Christ-Shakti in you. How beautiful! Enjoy the pleasure of this and encourage the mind to relax and sink into the heart.

Aside from the opening greeting, this exercise has been without words. This is best. If you talk with your partner during the foot washing, it will be easy to end up in your heads or feel the anxiety of finding the “right thing” to say in this unique and holy situation. This can close us to experiencing the power this tantric ritual offers. However, true silence is sometimes an invitation for our mental monologues to begin, and this too can take us out of the moment and out of the sacred space of Tantra we have intentionally cocreated with Christ-Shakti present with and within us. What to do? One solution is to use silent mantras such as those recommended below. These mantras can be coupled with the breath cycle to help focus our experience in the right place. If you are washing your partner’s feet, here are some mantras you may find useful in orienting your heart and mind toward the offering of guru charanam:

Christ is light / You are light

You are the salt of the Earth / You are the light of the world ³³

Kyrie Iesou Christe / eleison me [Greek for: Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me]

Ong namo / Guru-dev namo [Gurmukhi for: I bow to God / I bow to the divine teacher]

These mantras can help activate the pathway of spiritual sight into the other as a bearer of the uncreated light, the Shakti that is Christ in and for the world. The first part is said on breathing in, the second part on breathing out. Use these mantras here as a form of love poetry; they are words of sweetness carried on and from your breath to the Shakti-Christ that is unveiling itself to you through your partner’s feet.

When it is your turn to have your feet washed, there are other mantras that can help you inhabit the space of being Christ-Shakti for your partner and of receiving the devotion of Christ-Shakti at the same time. Your work here, the way you open the channel, is to affirm your own inner divinity, the possibility of your own eventual deification prophesied by the symbolic action of your partner, who is venerating the Christ in you. The following mantras, again coupled with the inhalation/exhalation, can be helpful:

I am the way / the truth and the life ³⁴

Hummee hum / Bram hum [Gurmukhi for: I am the I am; I am divine spirit]

Om namah / Christaya³⁵ [Sanskrit for: I bow to Christ, the anointed one]

So / hum³⁶ [Sanskrit for: That (divine spirit) I am]

When both you and your partner have washed and been washed, return to your seated positions in your chairs; bless one another by bringing your hands into prayer position in front of your heart, and say, together or one at a time, “I live, not me, but Christ in me; you live, not you, but Christ in you.” Now slightly bow your heads and close your eyes and say a prayer of gratitude for the gift of your partner, who (like all of us) carries Christ-Shakti within him or her. When you are finished with your prayer, open your eyes and bring your hands to your knees or lap. When both of you have completed your prayer, the one of you predetermined to do so strikes a meditation bowl or rings a bell to close this sacred time. Slowly rise from your chairs, stretch, and leave your sacred space, carrying with you the deep experience of divinity in yourself and in your partner.

Sprouting the Seeds of our Practice

As you build experience in this foot-washing exercise, the real exercise begins: to open the same channel of sacred homage and service to every person you meet as you go about your day—friend, enemy, stranger—in as many circumstances as possible! Like all tantric practices, the real fruits of our work are borne in our life in the world. The benefits of such a ritual for a primary relationship or partnership are likely pretty obvious: we ensure that we do not harden our hearts against our loved one and continue to see the deep beauty living within.

We can also cultivate the affect we experience in our formal practice with others we encounter during our day, and we can fortify that affective work with some deep thinking around how we can offer homage and devotion to all these others in our life. This offering can be as simple as expressing thanks for a job well done or noticing and complementing something unique about someone. This offering can also be personally engaging. When we genuinely inquire about someone’s state of being—and stick around to genuinely elicit and respond to their answer—we offer homage to the importance of their inner self.

Perhaps the deepest way of offering the holy perspective of foot washing into the world is to intentionally seek out ways to serve those who occupy a lower station than we do. Part of the tantric, antinomian character of foot washing as Jesus practiced it was to offer homage to the divine presence alive in those that considered themselves inferior. Our shadow selves often express their worst toward those who stand below us on the social ladder since they are seldom able to stand up for themselves or do us harm. Day laborers, undocumented workers, the homeless and the poor, the institutionalized and imprisoned are all some of those we might seek out to serve. Rather than force such marginalized persons to shoulder our displaced anger and contempt, how can we find ways to offer them the homage and service we experience in the washing of the feet? Such a practice can radically transform how we understand and engage our social order. Such transformation was, of course, at the heart of Jesus’s tantric teaching.