What do you get when you combine the Dalai Lama, Louis Farrakhan, a sprinkling of Buddhists, witches and Zoroastrians?
One hell of a religious experience.

ONE UNUSUALLY WARM NIGHT last fall, I found myself in Chicago’s Grant Park with fifty witches (and assorted others) baying at the full moon. Around me, drums rumbled, cymbals crashed and bells rang as men and women in long black robes decorated with stars and half-moons collected themselves in a huge circle and sang ancient pagan songs. A bearded shaman with a wolf’s skin draped over his head danced around us screaming, “Get close to the ground! Listen to our mother telling us to come home!” Home, indeed. Now, I’m as open-minded as the next guy, but after our fourth breathless lap in a circle, I began to feel that my best shot at transcendence would be a martini at the hotel bar.

The full-moon “Esbat” festival was only one of the hundreds of ceremonies during the Parliament of the World’s Religions, a weeklong meeting of 8000 people, representing 150 faiths from around the globe, who had gathered in Chicago—of all places—to promote spiritual harmony. Like many of the Parliament’s events, the Wiccan celebration was not without controversy—their pagan presence caused a number of Christian Orthodox groups to walk out in a huff. Before the week was over, four Jewish groups had left to protest the inharmonious presence of Louis Farrakhan, the black Muslim leader; a Moslem had been heckled and a Sikh forced from the stage by a group of irate Indians.

As one who lives a life that is predominantly urban and secular, I found that a week at the Parliament is like a trip to a religious Epcot Center, a strange sojourn in a self-contained world in which everyone is exceedingly devout, although each in a completely different way. The Parliament is an odd juxtaposition of the sacred and the profane, the multi and the cultural, all coming together to offer a unique opportunity to observe the curious ways that the religious and the worldly often collide in the modern world.

Wandering the halls of the elegant, cavernous Palmer House Hilton, I am acutely aware of the unbearable whiteness of my being. I chat with Jain nuns, resplendent in starched robes, whose heavily accented English is barely audible from behind the small cardboard shields they wear over their mouths to keep them from accidentally swallowing insects (Jains eat only milk products and vegetables, which they call one-sensed beings). Buddhist ascetics in ocher robes nod and smile at my questions, until I realize, to my chagrin, that their vows of silence keep them from responding in any other way. A Hindu swami, under a vermillion cloak and white turban flecked with gold, explains the relationship between the divine Krishna and the 100,000 other gods and goddesses of his faith. A distinguished-looking Indian with an elaborately coiffed beard wears a button reading, “I (heart) Sikh Homeland!” As the always-jammed elevator bursts open, the devout flood the lobby in a sea of dazzling colors and unintelligible languages, and a Taoist priest nudges me: “Looks like the bar in Star Wars, don’t you think?”

A singular event, if not a completely unprecedented one, this was actually the second time the Parliament has been convened. The first was held in 1893, during the Columbian Exposition, a celebration of the 400th anniversary of the discovery of the New World. On the brink of a new millennium, the exposition was fueled by the idealism of a world that had yet to see one world war—let alone two-and the boundless optimism of a country whose frontier was still open. Nearly three-—quarters of those attending the earlier Parliament were Christians, and neither the continents of Africa nor South America had significant representation. Despite the presence of Hindu priests, Buddhist monks, Confucianists and Taoists (many Eastern religions made their first inroads into America at the meeting), ethnic issues were not addressed. Native Americans were represented by a lone professor of anthropology.

For a dedicated seeker, this year’s Parliament was an embarrassment of riches: prayer sessions led by different faiths every morning at dawn, more than one hundred seminars, workshops and performances each day, with concerts and receptions at night. In four exhausting days I lost two and a half pounds and got callouses from running between lectures. I begin to wonder how anybody can ever find The One True Path amidst all this confusion.

Luckily, I run into Steady Swami, a holy woman from the City of God, a Hare Krishna ashram whose ornate, gold-leaf- covered temple looks like it should be beside the Taj Mahal and not in the back woods of West Virginia—which is where it is. “We’ll never figure out all the details of God’s truth,” she assures me with the matter-of-factness of one who believes she probably has, “but we’re all heading in the same direction. Just pretend you are browsing in a department store and take the best that each boutique has to offer.”

Of course. Why didn’t I think of that? I take Steady’s advice and slow my pace. That afternoon I find myself drawn to a huge auditorium by the familiar New York accent of a woman who sounds disconcertingly like my Aunt Bebe. But it is not my aunt, it is Ma Jaya Bhagavati, the deeply tanned, Coney Island-born leader of the Kashi Ashram in Roseland, Florida. “Breathe together, breathe in your Guaawd, your Christ, your Boodaahh, your Kriishnaah,” she intones. ”You are now as light as a buttahfluy.” Swathed in a purple-and-red silk sari, she sits lotus style on a huge yellow pillow and peers our from behind a pair of thick, black, rhinestone-encrusted glasses.

Midway through the story of her spiritual awakening (Christ appeared in the bathroom of her tenement to summon her for a religious life), she breaks into borscht-belt humor. “So the first thing Christ told me was I couldn’t have sex! And I said, ‘What? This is a vision? It sounds more like a nightmare!’” I move closer and see that folk singer Arlo Guthrie, one of her devotees, is two rows away. I get a big whiff of her perfume, Red by Giorgio Beverly Hills. A small, gold chain around her neck catches the light-in loopy, ornate script, it reads simply, BROOKLYN.

It seems that the world’s religions are more unified in diet than in ideology: the devout all love vegetables. Showing me around the Palmer House hotel’s five vast kitchens, Food Director Gene Anderson is elated because his vegetarian pizza has been an unexpected hit, with 456 pies served in the first three days. The Parliament eventually devoured 1000 pounds of rice (half of which was basmati) and 1200 pounds of vegetables. Planning the menu took three months of research; after all, what does a Zoroastrian eat? “Last night we served a delicious soybean veal piccata, and today we did Fakin’ Bacon for breakfast, then at lunch Italian egg-drop soup—only we left out the eggs, cheese and chicken,” he ticks off the offending ingredients. “They loved it.” Only one request threw the kitchen for a loop: late Tuesday night, someone called room service and ordered a whole, uncooked fish with two bowls of cooked rice on the side.”! guess he ate it,” Anderson says. And what did the Dalai Lama require? “Oh, that’s easy. He eats everything.”

All week people are buzzing in anticipation of the Dalai Lama. And why not? While the devout are well represented, the Dalai Lama, whose followers believe he is an incarnation of the Buddha of Compassion, is the only actual god—although, as one monk said, he is “a very laid-back deity.” Wearing simple leather sandals, maroon and ocher robes and thick, tinted glasses, the puckish holy man enters the room with a flurry of waves to the assembled crowd.

Asked about the Chinese, who have occupied his Tibetan homeland since 1950, he says that although he abhors their politics, he loves their food—in fact, he just finished a delicious dish of pork with Chinese fried rice. What is the Dalai Lama’s position on abortion? “All life is very precious,” he says somberly. “But right now, too many precious lives. We must have nonviolent birth control.” He pauses before breaking into a broad grin and gesticulating wildly—“We need more monks! More nuns!”

The Parliament concludes with the signing of a “Global Ethic”—as politic and inoffensive a document as a speech by the Queen Mum. Many grumble that in the interest of unity, the Ethic omits any reference to abortion or AIDS, not to mention God-who was left out for fear of offending deity-free religions.

One afternoon, I talk with Mazher Ahmed, Muslim and architect, who lives just outside of Chicago. Speaking with a melodious anglophone accent, she arranges her headdress as our discussion turns from Islamic art to the interfaith vision of the Parliament. “It’s ironic, really, but by coming together for peace and understanding, we’re also reminded how much we disagree with each other,” she reflects. ”I never realized just how different we all are.” She pauses, as we both consider the inchoate ideal of spiritual harmony: “I’m not sure I like it.”