SOURCE: "Mrs. Moore's Experience in the Marabar Caves: A Zen Buddhist Reading," in Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 31, Nos. 2-3, Summer-Fall, 1985, pp. 279-85.

In the following essay, Shahane describes Mrs. Moore's experience in the Marabar Caves in E. M. Forster's A Passage to India as a spiritual encounter with the Zen ideas of non-attachment and the Void.

Mrs. Moore's experience in the Marabar Caves, what actually happened in the caves and how it affected her mind, and the implications of this momentous event—these issues are crucial to a deeper understanding of Forster's A Passage to India (1924). Although critics seem to agree that the Marabar visit and the temple ceremony are important events, yet their interpretations of what these events signify differ greatly depending on their critical approaches to the novel itself. Whether the Marabar in A Passage to India is a "mystery or a muddle"; whether Mrs. Moore...