Whats the distinction between profane and sacred?
There’s no hard and fast distinction. It is made by the people who practice a particular ritual that they see as sacred or who respect a particular site as sacred. The profane is the nonsacred and the sacred is the nonprofane. But the most important thing is that the sacred place is the spot where you behave differently, you talk differently, you walk differently; in Hinduism, you circumambulate the image of the divinity to carve out that spot as sacred. You do something different from what you do when you’re in a supermarket or a library or your own home. And is this happening already at the World Trade Center site? I think so. I wouldn’t say all those things are happening now at the World Trade Center site. We clearly have pilgrimage going on there. The most visible piece of iconography at the World Trade Center site is a cross, and this is important. It says, “This is sacred ground.” If you look at the World Trade Center site, you see workers there, you see a big hole in the ground,
