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╇ i

Longing and Letting Go

ii

ACADEMY SERIES

SERIES EDITOR
Aaron W. Hughes, University at Buffalo
A Publication Series of
The American Academy of Religion
and
Oxford University Press

CROSSING THE ETHNIC DIVIDE JOURNEY BACK TO GOD

The Multiethnic Church on a Mission Origen on the Problem of Evil
Kathleen Garces-​Foley Mark S. M. Scott
GOD AND THE VICTIM BEYOND THE WALLS
Traumatic Intrusions on Grace and Freedom Abraham Joshua Heschel and Edith Stein
Jennifer Erin Beste on the Significance of Empathy for Jewish-​
Christian Dialogue
THE CREATIVE SUFFERING OF THE
Joseph Redfield Palmisano, SJ
TRIUNE GOD
An Evolutionary Theology TYPES OF PENTECOSTAL THEOLOGY
Gloria L. Schaab Method, System, Spirit
Christopher A. Stephenson
A THEOLOGY OF CRITICISM
Balthasar, Postmodernism, and the Catholic OTHER DREAMS OF FREEDOM
Imagination Religion, Sex, and Human Trafficking
Michael P. Murphy Yvonne C. Zimmerman
INCARNATION ANYWAY LIBERALISM VERSUS POSTLIBERALISM
Arguments for Supralapsarian Christology The Great Divide in Twentieth-​Century
Edwin Chr. Van Driel Theology
John Allan Knight
DISABILITY AND CHRISTIAN
THEOLOGY IMAGE, IDENTITY, AND THE FORMING
Embodied Limits and Constructive OF THE AUGUSTINIAN SOUL
Possibilities Matthew Drever
Deborah Beth Creamer RIGHTEOUS RHETORIC
MEETING GOD ON THE CROSS Sex, Speech, and the Politics of Concerned
Christ, the Cross, and the Feminist Critique Women for America
Arnfríður Guðmundsdóttir Leslie Durrough Smith
MUSLIMS, SCHOLARS, SOLDIERS ENFOLDING SILENCE
The Origin and Elaboration of the Ibādī The Transformation of Japanese American
Imāmate Traditions Religion and Art under Oppression
Adam R. Gaiser Brett J. Esaki
RACE AND RELIGION IN AMERICAN LONGING AND LETTING GO
BUDDHISM Christian and Hindu Practices of Passionate
White Supremacy and Immigrant Adaptation Non-​Attachment
Joseph Cheah Holly Hillgardner
iii

Longing and
Letting Go
Christian and Hindu
Practices of Passionate
Non-​Attachment
z
HOLLY HILLGARDNER

1
iv

1
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the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
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Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
v

For Greg
vi

Strange is the path

When you offer your love.
Mirabai i

Love makes me wander outside myself.

Hadewijch ii

i. “Caturvedī’s Pada 191,” Mirabai, in The Devotional Poems of Mīrābāī, trans. A. J. Alston
(Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas, 1980), 114.
ii. “Poems in Stanzas 6: Conquest of Love—​at a Price,” in Hadewijch, Hadewijch: The
Complete Works, ed. and trans. Mother Columba Hart, OSB (New York: Paulist Press, 1980),
143, line 49.
╇ vii

Contents

Acknowledgments ix

1. The Paradox of Longing and Letting Go 1

2. Mirabai’s Love-╉Longing and Passionate Non-╉attachment 20
3. Looking Closer: Mirabai’s Voices of Longing and Letting Go 35
4. Hadewijch’s Love-╉Longing and Passionate Non-╉attachment 52
5. Looking Closer: Hadewijch’s Voices of Longing and Letting Go 71
6. Longing and Letting Go Together: Comparative Practices of
Passionate Non-╉attachment 89
7. Becoming Undone: Mirabai, Hadewijch, and Dispossession 111
8. Toward an Interreligious Ethic of Passionate Non-╉attachment 128

Text Permission 147

Bibliography 149
Index 165
viii
ix

Acknowledgments

Thank you to my tiny family of origin. My father, a single parent after

our mom died, always believed in me tirelessly and enthusiastically. His
love has made all the difference in my life. Thank you to my sister, Sharley,
who is a lifeline and fierce advocate for those she loves, including her
beautiful boy Elliot.
To my Bethany community, how did I get lucky enough to land in a place
full of so many beautiful people, vistas, hootenanies, and damn potlucks?
Thank you especially to Brooke, Shawn, Asher and Selah Deal; Kimberly
Lawless, who also designed the gorgeous cover art, and Harald Menz; Harry
Sanford and Chatman Neely; Walt Turner; J. G. Cole; Beth Carpenter (and
the wonderfully calming Phoebe); Carolyn Kitchens; Gary and Stephanie
Kappel; Travis Straub and Maura Jacob; Anita and Herb Weaver; Larry
and Carol Grimes; Anju Ramjee and Joe Lovano; Nancy and Dan Harry;
Trevor Onest; Thom Furbee; and Scott and Jeanne Thayer. Thank you also
to Katrina D’Aquin and Sven de Jong for the winning combination of good
cheer and institutional support you consistently offer this teacher-​scholar.
To my NYC community, thank you for your long hours in coffee
shops, bars, and tiny apartments working out the meaning of life and
love. Christy and Owen Cobb, Karen Bray, Meghan Pitches, Emily Smith,
Cynthia Calkins, Demy Kamboukos, Maura Raggi, Rosa Knoepfel, and my
surf chicas (Michelle, Dee Dee, Wanda, and Nancy) are some city folks
who have changed my life.
To my Texas community, thank you especially to Keely Patridge, Ashley
Babb, Holly Hungerford, Erin Golden, Becca Buechelle, Francine Speer,
Francine Burris, Kara Jasper, Erin Adwell, Megan Frederick, and Nancy
Price. Y’all are always in my heart. Texas forever.
This book would not exist without the careful eye and exquisite mind
of Catherine Keller, who believed in me as a comparative theologian and
x

x Acknowledgments

launched me with great love. John Thatamanil and Karen Pechilis pro-
vided unimpeachable direction and inspiration throughout the journey.
Michelle Voss Roberts generously mentored me as I was finding my foot-
ing as a comparative theologian and welcomed me warmly. Thank you
to the brilliant and supportive Keller Collective, my bold colleagues who
shepherded these ideas to fruition. Thank you to the fine editing team
at Oxford, who believed in this work and helped shape it into its present
form. Aaron Hughes, Cynthia Read, Glenn Ramirez, and Marcela Maxfield
are the best in the field.
To my students—​from the suburbs of Texas, the towers of the South
Bronx, and the hills of West Virginia—​thank you for sharing yourselves
with me along the way. I have been educated by your stories, questions,
and insights.
To the medical professionals, particularly Dr. David Chalif and his team
at Long Island Jewish North Shore, who brought me back from the ravages
of a grade 4 subarachnoid brain hemorrhage, thank you for allowing me to
live to accomplish my dream, my first published book. I hear it was touch
and go there, for a while.
To my late mother, Susan Hobbs Hillgardner, and to B. G. Wilson, my
late husband, in loving and losing you both, I took an early crash course
in longing and letting go. First books are often autobiographies of a kind,
and this book is no exception.
Thank you to Greg, who has taught me about longing and letting go as
we traverse the miles from NYC to Bethany and back. You are full of sur-
prises and stability: my perfect partner. As Eliza sings in Hamilton, “But
I’m not afraid. I know who I married.”
╇ xi

Longing and Letting Go

xii
1

The Paradox of Longing

and Letting Go
I will let Love be,
From my side, what she wishes.
Hadewijch 1

You have set the boat of love in motion

And abandoned it on the ocean of longing.
Mirabai 2

My first college teaching assignment included the confoundingly

expansive “World Religions” course. How, in one semester, was I to
teach all the world’s major religious traditions? Taking the advice of a
more seasoned colleague, I considered dividing the religions we would
study into “warm” and “cool” paths. As a schema to make sense of reli-
gious diversity, the “warm” paths fan the flames of desire and devo-
tion, while “cool” paths cultivate renunciation, or a letting go of worldly
attachments. Passionately warm paths thus contrast neatly with asceti-
cally cool paths.
As I rushed to construct the syllabus and order textbooks, some
drawbacks to this dichotomy began to emerge. In addition to poten-
tially encouraging an unhelpful East-​West dualism, the warm/​cool divi-
sion also occluded the complexity contained within each of the world’s

1. “Poems in Stanzas 39: Love’s Blows,” in Hadewijch, Hadewijch: The Complete Works, ed.
and trans. Mother Columba Hart, OSB (New York: Paulist Press, 1980), 241, lines 46–​47.
2. “Caturvedī’s Pada 64,” in Mirabai, The Devotional Poems of Mīrābāī, trans. A. J. Alston
(Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas, 1980), 60.
2

2 Longing and Lett ing G o

religions. Judaism or Buddhism, for example, does not exist in just one
strict pattern; the religions manifest differently through place and time.
These intrareligious complexities were nowhere as clear as when my
class embarked on our study of Hinduism, which Wendy Doniger has
called—╉as though in answer to the above contrast of temperatures—╉a
religion of both “fire and ice.”3

Fire and Ice in Hindu Traditions

The multiple paths contained in the construct of “Hinduism” include
ways to hold together fiery attachment and icy renunciation. Imagery
and stories surrounding Śiva, for example, have traditionally accommo-
dated both erotic and ascetic forces, energies of longing and letting go.4
Śiva remains at once the ascetic meditator extraordinaire and the great
lover to Pārvatī, with whom, in one particularly memorable session,
he continuously made love for a thousand years! Elucidating Śiva’s
curious combination of desire and renunciation, Doniger concludes
that “even in his asceticism, Śiva is in the world. The two joys are the
same joy, however much they appear—╉even to the god, at times—╉to be
separate. They are two aspects of one life force.”5 The forces of desire
and ascetic discipline do not relate as antithetical energies for Śiva;
instead, Doniger argues for a common opposite for both energies: “qui-
escence.”6 Those actively engaged in life, those who are not quiescent,
may traverse these twin joys, the joy of the love of the world and the joy
of asceticism.
The four classical aims of a Hindu life (puruṣārthas) likewise reflect
a simultaneous embrace of both desire and non-╉attachment. As tradi-
tionally listed, these aims are dharma (truth, duty), artha (wealth), kāma
(desire), and mokṣa (liberation). Within this structure, desire finds an
obvious and important place, and non-╉attachment is often understood
as an integral part of the path to mokṣa. In addition, the four classical
Hindu stages of life (āśramas)—╉those of student, householder, retiree,

3. Wendy Doniger, Śiva: The Erotic Ascetic (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 82.
4. Ibid., esp. section 2, “Asceticism and Eroticism in Early Indian Mythology.”
5. Ibid., 254.
6. Ibid., 312.
3

Paradox of Longing and Letting Go 3

and renunciate—​demonstrate the importance of both passion and non-​

attachment in the cultivation of a full life. As the householder stage neces-
sitates kāma between partners, the last two stages call for non-​attachment,
when the devotee begins slowly, and then more fully, to let go of the trap-
pings of worldly life in preparation for death.
In Indic mythology and as codified by the above religious schemas,
then, desire exists as something necessary and good. Still, many promi-
nent Indian philosophies find desire variously problematic. Buddhism,
Hinduism’s younger-​sister religion, may offer the most marked case.
According to the four noble truths, desire causes suffering. Similarly,
ancient Indian yoga treatises, such as Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtras, prescribe
a rigorous, eight-​limbed asceticism and warn that following desires
leads—​in an endless, destructive cycle—​to increased karmic debts.
“Non-​attachment [vairāgya] is self-​mastery,” the Yoga Sūtras teach,
“it is freedom from desire for what is seen and heard.” 7 Much yoga, as
classically understood, leads to the minimizing of desire through the
mastering of increasingly subtle methods of meditation, breathing,
ethics, and posture.
The Bhagavad Gita, too, teaches a cautionary attitude toward desire,
but one in which attachment to desire, not desire itself, needs uprooting.
Holding a space for desire, the Gita develops the idea of niṣkāmakarma, or
action without attachment. Multiple times throughout the Gita, Krishna
counsels Arjuna not to let go of desire itself, but of desire for the results of
actions: “Therefore, without attachment, always do whatever action has to
be done; for it is through acting without attachment that a man attains the
highest.”8
Attempting to reconcile the tensions between desire and non-​attachment,
the Gita teaches how to attain liberation while living in a world awash with
desire. Returning to the above metaphor of temperature, this is a path of
“warm” and “cool” energies together: compassionate actions in the world
and impassioned desire for the divine in tandem with letting go of attach-
ments to the results of actions.

7. Patañjali, Yoga Sūtra 1:15, trans. Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood, in
How to Know God: The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali (Hollywood: Vedanta Society of Southern
California, 1981), 27.
8. W. J. Johnson, trans. Bhagavad Gita (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 16.
4

4 Longing and Lett ing G o

Longing and Letting Go in Today’s World

This book has been inspired and leavened by countless conversations with
friends and colleagues, particularly those also on the hatha yoga and main-
line Protestant Christian paths I walk. Many of us yearn to hold the ener-
gies of desire and non-╉attachment together more coherently. A number of
my friends who practice yoga and I, for example, admit to harboring some
cognitive dissonance concerning desire and non-╉attachment. The path of
hatha yoga has often been traditionally understood as an ascetic wisdom
that uses the body to transcend the body. At the same time, this yoga—╉
definitely as taught in the West but also as often taught in India—╉offers
methods for living a fuller embodied life in the world. Many yoga students
that I know testify that the practices of yoga have led them to healthier,
happier, and more ethical lives in their communities.
As they lead fruitful embodied lives in the world, serious yoga practi-
tioners may find themselves in some conflict with yoga’s prescribed goals,
which are often framed in ascetic terms. While these tensions might be
seen as modern values clashing with older values, or as yet another exam-
ple of the West’s colonizing impulse, controversy about yoga’s goals is
not new. Today’s scholars of yoga, for example, engage in ancient debates
concerning the meaning of the ultimate yogic state of kaivalya, which
translates as “separation” or “detachment.” The yogi or yoginī in this state
becomes free from all bondages, including rebirth. What would such a lib-
eration look like? Could the “stilling of the changing states of the mind,”9
the Yoga Sūtra’s definition of yoga, result in an integrative living liberation,
one in which the mind does not separate from the world? Alternatively,
does the “mind-╉boggling, mad, paradoxical dualism” of the Sūtras pre-
clude such an embodied liberation?10
The contexts of twenty-╉first-╉century yoga in the West give these long-
standing tensions new intensities. Today’s yoga practitioners, who tend to

9. See Edwin Bryant’s translation of Yoga Sūtra 1:1, for this definition of yoga, in The Yoga
Sūtras of Patañjali: A New Edition, Translation, and Commentary (New York: North Point
Press, 2009), 10.
10. For more on the former option, see Christopher Key Chapple, “Living Liberation in
Sāṃkya and Yoga,” in Living Liberation in Hindu Thought, ed. Andrew O. Fort and Patricia Y.
Mumme (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 115–╉134. For the latter option,
see Lloyd W. Pfluger, “Dueling with Dualism: Revising the Paradox of Puruṣa and Prakṛti,”
in Yoga: The Indian Tradition, eds. Ian Whitcher and David Carpenter (London: Routledge
Curzon, 2003), 70–╉82, esp. 74.
5

Paradox of Longing and Letting Go 5

be white, affluent, female practitioners with careers, families, and other

worldly attachments,11 have embraced variations of practice that were
once reserved for high-​caste, male sexual renunciates, or brahmacharyas.
These shifting demographics further inform the age-old questions. Can a
yogi, then, be both passionately involved in the world and also dedicated
to yogic practice? Does a yogic life necessarily involve a “preliminary
detachment from matter, emancipation with respect to the world?”12 How
might we best describe yoga’s ultimate goal: as separation from the world
or as a deeper involvement, even a kind of unity, with the world?
In the Christian social justice activist circles in which I also orbit, we
seek answers to questions about the relationship between desire and non-​
attachment, albeit in different permutations. Activists, often alternatively
exhilarated and dispirited, may wonder, “Is it possible to work passion-
ately for change and not become exhausted by the demands of the work?”
Dedicated visionaries may become disillusioned as they struggle with the
inevitable disappointments, delays, and complexities that come with try-
ing to change the world. If practices of non-​attachment are recommended
as a remedy, questions arise. For a Christian social justice activist, what is
the place, if any, of such practices as meditation or yoga, which are con-
ventionally thought to turn the devotee inward and away from the world?
Does the fire of the desire for justice and social change become dampened
as a result of practices that emphasize an inner world? Are such practices
only respites from demanding work, or might they offer something vital
and integral for activists fervently at work in the world?
Indeed, it is not only people on yogic or activist paths who wrestle with
the tensions between desire and non-​attachment. Anyone who has deeply
loved another knows the profound vulnerability that passion creates in
this tenuous world. Mary Oliver’s poem “In Blackwater Woods” gives voice
to the inherent riskiness and necessity of longing and letting go. In the last
two stanzas, she names the “three things” one must do in the world.

Look, the trees

are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

11. And yes, I am a white, female, married, middle-​class college professor.

12. Mircea Eliade, Yoga: Immortality and Freedom (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2009), 15.
6

6 Longing and Letting Go

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers

of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able

to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.13

13. Mary Oliver, “In Blackwater Woods,” in American Primitive (Boston: Back Bay Books,
1983), 82–​83.
╇ 7

Paradox of Longing and Letting Go 7

Oliver’s poem inspires its own related questions. How can we find the
courage to love in this world of loss? In a world of “fires and the black river
of loss,” how can we find the strength to nurture these relationships on
which our own precarious lives depend? How could one ever let go of such
integral and intense passions? And if one could in fact let go, should one
do so? These concrete existential questions—╉ones I once asked fervently
as I nursed a twenty-╉five-╉year-╉old husband with terminal cancer and con-
tinue to ask today, over fifteen years later—╉paved the way for the unfolding
of this book’s comparative theological journey into passionate non-╉attach-
ment. In this sense, this book’s themes are unabashedly autobiographical.

Guides for the Journey: Hadewijch and Mirabai

I now introduce into the matrix of these questions two medieval women,
Mirabai of North India and Hadewijch of lowland Europe, each of whom
practiced a path of passionate non-╉attachment that led her deeper into
the mysteries of divine and human love. Mirabai is widely believed to
have been a sixteenth-╉century Rajasthani princess who wrote passionate
songs of her desire for Krishna. “The fire of longing/╉Is burning in my
heart,” she sings.14 Hadewijch, a thirteenth-╉century woman from what
would become Belgium, straddled the worlds of laity and the conse-
crated religious as a Beguine, part of an unprecedented community of
devoted women who did not take vows. She wrote poems, letters, and
visions that tell of her longing to become Love (Minne) itself, “to be God
with God.”15
It may seem odd and somewhat arbitrary to pluck two women from
such different times, places, and religious traditions to be our guides for
this study, but intriguing and deepening resonances between the two love
mystics inspired their pairing. Their books each spent years together on
my bedside table. First, I read them for enjoyment, and later, as I recog-
nized their deep wisdoms, I read them in a kind of prayerful lectio divina.
Mirabai and Hadewijch first drew me to them with their depictions of
full-╉bodied, sensuously imaged longing for love, but I gradually came to
realize that—╉in addition to the heat of each woman’s desire—╉each also

14. “Caturvedī’s Pada 155,” in Mirabai, Devotional Poems of Mīrābāī, 97.

15. “Letter 6: To Live Christ,” in Hadewijch, Hadewijch: The Complete Works, 61.
8

8 Longing and Letting Go

concurrently practiced an unconventional variant of asceticism. As hagi-

ography presents her, Mirabai was a female itinerant, a rare example,
who left her home and family to live simply and sing songs of divine love.
Hadewijch was a leader in the early Beguine movement, which created a
new way of uncloistered service that opened women’s options for a mean-
ingful life beyond marriage or the nunnery.
In addition to their uniquely gendered asceticisms, I also found
Hadewijch and Mirabai speaking to me and to each other, across the eras
and oceans, about their “engaged” mysticisms, a term meant to contrast
with any mysticism characterized by flights of disembodied transcendence
or dualistic interiority. Each woman’s respective longing for the divine not
only takes her on an inward journey but also opens her up into an entan-
gling involvement with the beauty and suffering of the world. Mysticism
in both Hindu and Christian traditions runs the risk of pushing away from
the world and its pressing needs as it journeys toward an exclusive union
with the divine. The resulting insular and individualistic spiritualities
stand in ironic contrast with mysticism’s implied promises, that is, con-
necting the mystic to everything. Hadewijch’s writings, however, display
not only what could be called a “vertical connectivity” to God, but also a
“horizontal connectivity” to her community of Beguines and the wider
world. Mirabai’s songs, too, evince a palpable horizontal connectivity to the
circles of other devotees singing their songs of shared longing for Krishna.
The paths of mystical longing taken by Mirabai and Hadewijch lead
them to religious disciplines that do not involve wholesale and final turns
away from the world; instead, their longings connect them to the world.
Reading them together invites our own interreligious meditations on
justice-​centered practices of passionate non-​attachment. The compara-
tive theological readings offered in this book thus extend into preliminary
explorations of why passionate non-​attachment matters. Across the miles
and the centuries, these medieval women have resources to offer us today.
Along with these women, we, too, want to know: How can we practice
longing and letting go in our relationships with one another? How can
we practice longing and letting go in our relationships with God? Which
practices help us avoid burnout, that frequent byproduct of a life lived pas-
sionately? Can practices of longing and letting go, for example, help us
with today’s pressing ethical challenges, such as the ever-​present tempta-
tion toward “climate despair”? Drawing from the wisdoms of Mirabai and
Hadewijch, this book poses these questions and ventures tentative answers
through the developing methods of comparative theology.
9

Paradox of Longing and Letting Go 9

The Methods and Promises

of Comparative Theology
To better read Mirabai and Hadewijch together, this book utilizes the
evolving methodologies of the “new” or “contemporary” comparative the-
ology. Reid B. Lochlin and Hugh Nicholson differentiate this genre, which
they trace to the late 1980s, from the early nineteenth-​century subgenre of
comparative theology that “epitomizes the universalist ideology that has
since become so problematic.”16 In contrast, the new comparative theology
denotes work that “generally uses comparison to unsettle and complexify
prevailing theological assumptions.”17 This unsettling stands in contrast
to the earlier grasping for universal religious answers. Understanding
religious identity as “relational” rather than “substantialist,” that is, as
constructed and emerging rather than fixed or static, this comparative the-
ology finds fertile ground to engage in work that both recognizes other
forms of religious identity and welcomes reconstructions of one’s own.18
As it worked to complexify and unsettle universal theological assump-
tions, early iterations of the new comparative theology tended to resist
making constructive or normative claims. Instead, they asserted the need
for a “patient deferral of issues of truth.”19 As the new comparative theology
developed, a feminist critique emerged among comparative theologians,
such as Michelle Voss Roberts and Tracey Sayuki Tiemeier, who called
for risking normative statements in light of pressing justice concerns.20

16. See Reid B. Lochlin and Hugh Nicholson, “The Return of Comparative Theology,” Journal
of the American Academy of Religion 78, no. 2 (2010): 481.
17. Hugh Nicholson, “Comparative Theology after Liberalism,” Modern Theology 23, no. 22
(2007): 244.
18. Ibid., 241–​242, 245. Nicholson utilizes Kathryn Tanner’s terms “relational” and “substan-
tialist” in his argument. See Kathryn Tanner, Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology
(Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1997), chap. 3, for her argument that cultural interactions
constitute an integral part of theology’s task.
19. Prolific and ground-​breaking comparative theologian Francis X. Clooney emphasizes
the “patient deferral of issues of truth” in his early work. See Francis X. Clooney, Theology
after Vedānta: An Experiment in Comparative Theology (Albany: State University of New York
Press, 1993), 187.
20. See Tracy Sayuki Tiemeier, “Comparative Theology as a Theology of Liberation,” in The
New Comparative Theology: Interreligious Insights from the Next Generation, ed. Francis X.
Clooney (New York: T&T Clark, 2010), 129–​149; and Michelle Voss Roberts, “Gendering
Comparative Theology,” in Clooney, the New Comparative Theology, 109–​112. Both essays, as
noted, appeared in a volume edited by Clooney, who has also taken up a number of the vol-
ume’s concerns. For example, he engaged specifically with gender theory in Divine Mother,
10

10 Longing and Letting Go

This book continues the feminist project of holding together what I see
as the twin aims of comparative theology: patient, careful, deferred
theological construction and theology’s responsibilities toward the
marginalized.
Not unrelated to those justice concerns, I also draw attention to post-
colonial calls for epistemologies that do not subsume comparative theo-
logical thinking into Westernized, Christianized categories.21 In order to
represent well the “polycentrism” of Hinduism, Richard King has argued
that scholars must work constructively with indigenous Indian ways of
knowing, particularly those that existed before the advent of the Western
academic discourse of religion.22 Heeding this charge, I choose to read
Hadewijch and Mirabai together through the schema of viraha bhakti, a
mystical eroticism from Mirabai’s Vaiṣṇava Hindu tradition that empha-
sizes communal, emotionally complex experiences of intense longing. In
this way, I advance the ancient Indian art of longing as an epistemology,
one that has significance for thinking about how we might practice pas-
sionate non-​attachment today.
Even as we prioritize the lens of viraha bhakti, we recognize that com-
parative theology does not flow unidirectionally. The most fertile theologi-
cal thinking crosses back and forth across the traditions being compared.
Therefore, we will be “cross-​pollinating” Mirabai and Hadewijch, to use
John J. Thatamanil’s apt metaphor for the work of a multidirectional,
transformative comparative theology.23 Cross-​pollination has the potential
to create something different from the compared elements: ​something
neither entirely new nor wholly divorced from its roots, but something
organically hybrid that answers theological questions in fresh ways.

Blessed Mother: Hindu Goddesses and the Virgin Mary (New York: Oxford University Press,
2010).
21. See Sharada Sugirtharajah, Imagining Hinduism: A Postcolonial Perspective (New York:
Routledge, 2003), for a postcolonial critique of the ways that Hinduism has been historically
defined, interpreted, and created by Western academics in part to bolster Christianity and
its colonialist interests.
22. Richard King, “Who Invented Hinduism? Rethinking Religion in India,” in Rethinking
Religion in India: The Colonial Construction of Hinduism, ed. Esther Bloch, Marianne Kippers,
and Rajaram Hegde (New York: Routledge, 2010), 110.
23. John J. Thatamanil “cross-​pollinates” Śaṅkara with Paul Tillich in John J. Thatamanil, The
Immanent Divine: God, Creation, and the Human Predicament (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress
Press, 2006), 206.
11

Paradox of Longing and Letting Go 11

Attempting to avoid the hegemony of typical Western epistemolo-

gies, we first read Mirabai’s songs and Hadewijch’s writings through the
lens of viraha bhakti, and then, cross-​pollinating, read back and across
the traditions, as the currents take us into theological anthropology,
apophaticism, and feminist ethics, for example. My recursive approach
enlivens the study of both Hadewijch and Mirabai, as it encourages
a shifting focus on different aspects of each woman’s longing, allow-
ing new questions, ideas, and concerns to emerge as the traditions are
juxtaposed.
I focus my comparison on a select number of Hadewijch’s and
Mirabai’s writings and songs of yearning, which I call “focus texts.”
While it would be impossible to attend to both women’s full cor-
pora within the confines of one book, yet another limitation presents
itself. Some compositions that have been traditionally attributed to
Hadewijch, along with some songs that have been traditionally attrib-
uted to Mirabai, have come into authorial dispute. A Hadewijch I, II,
and even III have been proposed.24 In Mirabai’s case, songs attributed
to her have multiplied over the centuries, well past the best dates we
have for her life.25
In my use of focus texts then, I do not claim that these limited text
selections from Mirabai and Hadewijch work as synecdoches for their
larger bodies of work and all their concomitant and overlapping tradi-
tions. The focus texts, then, spotlight just one central theme—​let us call it
love-​longing—​which, in varying ways, pervades the texts attributed to both
women. This pivotal theme inspires my application of the lens of viraha
bhakti to our comparative theological endeavor.

24. It is predominantly the texts in the latter third of Hadewijch’s Mengeldicten that lead some
scholars to surmise more than one Hadewijch, based on the texts’ tone, “mystic content,”
imagery, and vocabulary. See Saskia Murk Jansen, The Measure of Mystic Thought: A Study
of Hadewijch’s Mengeldichten (Goppingen: Kummerle Verlag, 1991), 14–​15, for a summary
of these arguments. Using a statistical method, Murk Jansen concludes that Mengeldichten
17–24 share a common spiritual perspective and vocabulary with Hadewijch’s other works
and should be attributed to her; however, she finds it “unlikely” that Mengeldicten 25–​29 are
from Hadewijch’s hand (163–​166).
25. See John Stratton Hawley, Three Bhakti Voices: Mirabai, Surdas, and Kabir in Their Time
and Ours (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), chap. 4, for an introduction to the difficul-
ties of locating the historical Mirabai.
12

12 Longing and Letting Go

Too Narrow and Too Wide: Controversies

in Bhakti Studies and Comparative Theology
Delving further into the book’s methodology, we now consider the trajec-
tory of bhakti scholarship in very general terms. I highlight a few chal-
lenges that the field of comparative theology has shared with bhakti studies
to show how each field, like genres across the spectrum of the humanities,
have wrestled with the methodological problems of categorical essential-
isms and incommensurate particularities.
As early Indologists studying bhakti rushed to categorize the different
streams of what it cobbled together as “Hinduism,” scholars employed the
term “bhakti” too narrowly and too widely. For example, in early bhakti
studies, bhakti was often read narrowly as “devotion,” an emotional and
spontaneous phenomenon, drastically different from other Hindu reli-
gious paths that emphasized the intellect, philosophical contemplation, or
rituals. In their quest to circumscribe the field, early bhakti scholars thus
missed many of the ways that various Hindu religious traditions overlap.
Bhakti, it turns out, can be intellectual, intentional, and hospitable to both
ritual and contemplation. Not simply an unbridled emotion that negates
or ignores the intellect, bhakti is best defined as “participation” and “com-
mitted engagement,” as per Karen Pechilis’s apt description. This com-
mitted engagement presupposes an active, multifaceted involvement with
God and others, rather than the passive divine adoration signified when
bhakti is defined solely as “devotion.”26
Early studies of bhakti also missed important differences among kinds
of bhakti because they did not focus on the particularities of disparate
bhakti voices, Pechilis notes. Instead of wrestling with bhakti’s complexi-
ties, these studies, she argues, strove to discover an all-​enveloping defini-
tion of bhakti that could somehow span all the voices and regions that
bhakti encompassed.27 In this way, the label “bhakti” was used too widely
and missed the specific particularities that compose its full spectrum. In
later studies, scholars engaged more deliberately with bhakti in its many
historical, regionally specific contexts.
As a discipline, comparative theology has also undergone changes
that resonate with the oscillations in bhakti studies that made the field

26. Karen Pechilis, The Embodiment of Bhakti (New York: Oxford University Press,
1999), 20–​24.
27. Ibid., 5–​6.
13

Paradox of Longing and Letting Go 13

both too narrow and too wide. From its roots in such various academic
disciplines as the first incarnation of comparative theology,28 compara-
tive religion, and “theology of religions,”29 today’s comparative theology
aims to locate its methodology between a too-​wide search for universal-
ist interreligious generalities and a too-​narrow focus on difference that
stymies constructive comparative theological work. Clooney’s aforemen-
tioned, still-​important warning to practice the “patient deferral of issues
of truth,” for example, can make cross-​fertilizing divergent traditions
seem too risky, while particularist notions of religious incommensurabil-
ity can paint such comparison as nonsensical.30 Because this book aims
to explore what both Mirabai and Hadewijch contribute to ways of know-
ing that simultaneously embrace erotic devotion and non-​attachment, it
requires that bridges of comparison be built between unique aspects of
different traditions.31 Here, in accordance with others who practice com-
parative theology, I submit that difference and commensurability do not
contradict but instead strengthen each other. In such a methodological
third space, viraha bhakti, translated as the ache of “love-​longing,”32 may
be compared fruitfully to Hadewijch’s very different, yet corresponding
notion of love-​longing, Minne.
Comparative theology makes a strong case that religious bound-
aries are porous and ever-​ changing, that comparative thinking is
implicit in all academic disciplines, and that theology has always bor-
rowed from other cultures to conceptualize its ideas.33 When risking

28. See Lochlin and Nicholson, “Return of Comparative Theology,” 481.

29. Theology of religions is a subfield that attempts to use theology to assess the phenomena
of religious diversity.
30. The “particularist” schema of thinking about relationships among religions is well
described in ­chapter 4 of Paul Hedges, Controversies in Interreligious Dialogue and Theology of
Religions (London: SCM Press, 2010), 146–​196.
31. See Francis X. Clooney, “Passionate Comparison: The Intensification of Affect in
Interreligious Reading of Hindu and Christian Texts,” Harvard Theological Review 98, no.
4 (2005): 367–​390, for an exploration of religious affect’s possibilities, even for “outsiders”
of religious traditions. He describes affect’s power to foster interreligious learning that “cre-
ates living interconnections even while reason is busy pondering whether such affective
exchange across religious boundaries is possible at all” (389).
32. John A. Ramsaran, English and Hindi Religious Poetry: An Analogical Study (Leiden: E. J.
Brill, 1973), 96.
33. See Francis X. Clooney, Comparative Theology: Deep Learning across Religious Borders
(Malden, MA: Wiley-​Blackwell, 2010), for an introduction to and brief history of comparative
theology.
14

14 Longing and Lett ing G o

the articulation of similarities and differences among religious paths,

comparative theology must still remain provisional, as well as account-
able to the religious traditions with which it engages.34 Vital, then, to
the comparative theology of this book is the diversity and particular-
ity of the traditions surrounding Mirabai, a specific sixteenth-╉century
North Indian Vaiṣṇavite woman devotedly singing with other bhak-
tas, and Hadewijch, a particular thirteenth-╉century Beguine living in a
new kind of women-╉centered Christian community. As we explore the
tensions between desire and non-╉attachment, we look to the complex
ways that both hot and cool energies play out in the voices of each of
these women.

Eros and Non-╉attachment: A Feminist Critique

In addition to being a work of comparative theology, this book also draws
deeply from the ongoing work of fellow feminist theologians on the theme
of eros. In feminist Christian theology, a strand of thought developed in
the last decades of the twentieth century that reclaimed eros as a divine
force of mutuality, beauty, and goodness.35 Responding to the theological
marginalization of eros, these feminist theological conceptions retrieved
a relational eros, which celebrated desire, embodiment and sexuality as
divine, creative energies.
Without dismissing eros’s great gifts to theology, some feminist schol-
ars have argued that some early conceptions of feminist theological eros
functioned as a type of categorical essentialism, in which eros stood alone,
unsullied by the ambiguities of life. In this understanding, eros stood as a
pure, prelinguistic, incorruptibly good force. Such an unambiguous con-
ception overburdened eros by expecting it to “include all true goods and
conflict with none.”36 This model in which a naturally pure eros remains

34. See Catherine Keller and Laurel C. Schneider, introduction to Polydoxy: Theology of
Multiplicity and Relation, ed. Catherine Keller and Laurel Schneider (New York: Routledge,
2010), 1. Keller and Schneider argue that a “responsible pluralism of interdependence and
uncertainty now seems to facilitate deeper attention to ancient religious traditions.”
35. See Carter Heyward, Touching Our Strength: The Erotic as Power and the Love of God (San
Francisco, CA: Harper San Francisco, 1989) as a prime example; as well as Mary Hunt, Fierce
Tenderness: A Feminist Theology of Friendship (New York: Crossroads, 1991); and Rita Nakashima
Brock, Journeys by Heart: A Christology of Erotic Power (New York: Crossroads, 2000).
36. Kathleen M. Sands, Escape from Paradise: Evil and Tragedy in Feminist Theology
(Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1994), 47.
15

Paradox of Longing and Letting Go 15

free from the complex fabric of the world presents a number of problems,
including the exclusion of other, less positive experiences. For example,
Alyda Faber, critiquing Carter Heyward’s groundbreaking work with eros,
asserts that Heyward makes negative experiences of relationality, suffer-
ing, and pain “less real than an essentialist eros.”37
Discussing the occlusions caused by this version of feminist eros, L. J.
Tessier frames the critique this way: “Is feminist eros too nice? Does it fail
to acknowledge the dangers along this path, claiming justice, love, mutu-
ality and harmony for the erotic and attributing all fear, grief, and pain to
patriarchal causes? Perhaps it forgets the hurt in love and the fear in sex,
the potential for damage when passions collide.”38
Tessier’s “too nice” critique thus disputes any portrayal of eros as one-​
dimensional. Love-​longing, as we explore with Mirabai and Hadewijch is
complex; it includes grief, fear, and pain. By hiding what Kathleen Sands
has called the “tragic,” early ideas of feminist eros may indeed have turned
out to be “too nice.” Yes, eros is powerful, Sands agrees, but if, as Song of
Songs asserts, “love is as strong as death,” “that is bad news as well as good
news.”39 Eros’s mixed, ambiguous nature cannot be sidestepped, so the
lens of viraha bhakti that we employ to begin this comparative endeavor
accommodates eros’s complexity. Because viraha bhakti’s primary dynamic
involves the movements back and forth in the middle spaces between the
poles of divine presence and absence, Mirabai’s love-​longing involves not
just goodness, mutuality, and beauty, but also intense grief, confusion,
and frustration. All of these complex aspects mixed together result not
in an unsullied bliss but in what Diedre Green aptly calls bhakti’s “bitter-​
sweetness of love-​in-​separation.”40
Any credible notion of feminist eros, then, must uphold eros’s embed-
dedness in the complex matrix of the world, as well as acknowledge its
tendencies toward a grasping, totalizing concupiscence. Through her
crucial insight that eros contains energies of non-​attachment that can

37. Alyda Faber, “Eros and Violence,” Feminist Theology 12, no. 3 (2004): 323.
38. L. J. Tessier, Dancing after the Whirlwind: Feminist Reflections on Sex, Denial, and Spiritual
Transformation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1997), 74 (italics mine).
39. Sands, Escape from Paradise, 155.
40. Diedre Green, “Living between the World: Bhakti Poetry and the Carmelite Mystics,”
in The Yogi and the Mystic: Studies in Indian and Comparative Mysticism, ed. Karel Werner.
Richmond, UK: Curzon Press, 1994), 134.
16

16 Longing and Letting Go

attenuate such cupidity, Wendy Farley offers a key inspiration for this
book. Coining the term “passionate detachment” to describe this dynamic,
Farley advances a philosophical eros, much informed by the eros of Plato,
that becomes detached through its focus on the pleasure taken in the
other, not the pleasure taken from the other. As Platonic eros ascends a
ladder of purification, Farley’s eros is a pleasure “purified of satiation,
possession, concupiscence, and anxiety.”41 One experiences this decen-
tering “passionate detachment” when one accepts that everything does
not revolve around oneself. In passionate detachment, one can remain
open to the beauty and suffering of others because one is not selfishly con-
sumed. While Farley’s understanding of the erotic contains more nuance
than that of the earlier feminist theologians we have discussed earlier,
her assertion that true eros does not try to possess the other may still
be read as essentializing the erotic. In this book, through the resources
of viraha bhakti’s mixed, ambiguous notion of eros, I continue Farley’s
inquiry into practices of longing that keep the very real dangers of concu-
piscence at bay.
Building on Farley’s insights about “passionate detachment,” we take
a comparative look at Hadewijch’s and Mirabai’s practices of what I call
“passionate non-​attachment.” Here, I shift to the word “non-​attachment”
in an attempt to avoid the disengaged, disconnected connotations of
“detachment,” even as we know “detachment” has its rightful place in
religious studies. Contemplating Mirabai’s and Hadewijch’s different
practices of desirous longing, we investigate how their practices, in
unique ways, contain the seeds of non-​attachment, that is, the letting go
of the cravings, aversions, fears, and false identities that keep the rela-
tional self bound in an illusory, isolating self-​possession. I propose that
erotic longing, tempered by the surprising renunciatory energies that
eros may engender, attenuates some of the problems of an essentialist
eros. Viraha bhakti, a specific kind of erotic love-​longing, accommodates
and even necessitates grief, for example. In this way, I answer the impor-
tant critique that eros denies pain, loss, and conflict. Longing and letting
go entwine in an interdependent process in which each needs the other
to flourish.

41. Wendy Farley, Eros for the Other: Retaining Truth in a Pluralistic World (Louisville,
KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), 83. Farley credits her concept of “passionate
detachment” as an outgrowth of her comparative work with Christianity and Buddhism.
Another random document with
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amendments in a subsequent, to preclude those in a prior part, or e
converso.]
When the committee is through the whole, a member moves that
the committee may rise, and the chairman report the paper to the
House, with or without amendments, as the case may be. 2 Hats.,
289, 292; Scob., 53; 2 Hats., 290; 8 Scob., 50.
When a vote is once passed in a committee, it cannot be altered
but by the House, their votes being binding on themselves. 1607,
June 4.
The committee may not erase, interline, or blot the bill itself; but
must, in a paper by itself, set down the amendments, stating the
words which are to be inserted or omitted, Scob., 50, and where, by
references to page, line, and word of the bill. Scob., 50.

SEC. XXVII.—REPORT OF COMMITTEE.

The chairman of the committee, standing in his place, informs the

House that the committee to whom was referred such a bill, have,
according to order, had the same under consideration, and have
directed him to report the same without any amendment, or with
sundry amendments (as the case may be), which he is ready to do
when the House pleases to receive it. And he or any other may move
that it be now received; but the cry of “now, now,” from the House,
generally dispenses with the formality of a motion and question. He
then reads the amendments, with the coherence in the bill, and
opens the alterations and the reasons of the committee for such
amendments, until he has gone through the whole. He then delivers
it at the Clerk’s table, where the amendments reported are read by
the Clerk without the coherence; whereupon the papers lie upon the
table till the House, at its convenience, shall take up the report.
Scob., 52; Hakew., 148.
The report being made, the committee is dissolved, and can act no
more without a new power. Scob., 51. But it may be revived by a vote,
and the same matter recommitted to them. 4 Grey, 361.

SEC. XXVIII.—BILL, RECOMMITMENT.

 After a bill has been committed and reported, it ought not, in an
ordinary course, to be recommitted; but in cases of importance, and
for special reasons, it is sometimes recommitted, and usually to the
same committee. Hakew., 151. If a report be recommitted before
agreed to in the House, what has passed in committee is of no
validity; the whole question is again before the committee, and a new
resolution must be again moved, as if nothing had passed. 3 Hats.,
131—note.
In Senate, January, 1800, the salvage bill was recommitted three
times after the commitment.
A particular clause of a bill may be committed without the whole
bill, 3 Hats., 131; or so much of a paper to one and so much to
another committee.
 SEC. XXIX.—BILL, REPORTS TAKEN UP.

When the report of a paper originating with a committee is taken

up by the House, they proceed exactly as in committee. Here, as in
committee, when the paragraphs have, on distinct questions, been
agreed to seriatim, 5 Grey, 366; 6 Grey, 368; 8 Grey, 47, 104, 360; 1
Torbuck’s Deb., 125; 3 Hats., 348, no question needs be put on the
whole report. 5 Grey, 381.
On taking up a bill reported with amendments, the amendments
only are read by the Clerk. The Speaker then reads the first, and puts
it to the question, and so on till the whole are adopted or rejected,
before any other amendment be admitted, except it be an
amendment to an amendment. Elsynge’s Mem., 53. When through
the amendments of the committee, the Speaker pauses, and gives
time for amendments to be proposed in the House to the body of the
bill; as he does also if it has been reported without amendments:
putting no questions but on amendments proposed; and when
through the whole, he puts the question whether the bill shall be read
a third time?

SEC. XXX.—QUASI-COMMITTEE.

If on motion and question the bill be not committed, or if no

proposition for commitment be made, then the proceedings in the
Senate of the United States and in Parliament are totally different.
The former shall be first stated.
[The 25th rule of the Senate says: “All bills on a second reading
shall first be considered by the Senate in the same manner as if the
Senate were in Committee of the Whole before they shall be taken up
and proceeded on by the Senate agreeably to the standing rules,
unless otherwise ordered;” (that is to say, unless ordered to be
referred to a special committee.) And when the Senate shall consider
a treaty, bill, or resolution, as in Committee of the Whole, the Vice-
President or President pro tempore may call a member to fill the
chair during the time the Senate shall remain in Committee of the
Whole; and the chairman (so called) shall, during such time, have
the powers of a President pro tempore.]
[The proceeding of the Senate as in a Committee of the Whole, or
in quasi-committee, is precisely as in a real Committee of the Whole,
taking no questions but on amendments. When through the whole,
they consider the quasi-committee as risen, the House resumed
without any motion, question, or resolution to that effect, and the
President reports that “the House, acting as in a Committee of the
Whole, have had under their consideration the bill entitled, &c., and
have made sundry amendments, which he will now report to the
House.” The bill is then before them, as it would have been if
reported from a committee, and questions are regularly to be put
again on every amendment; which being gone through, the President
pauses to give time to the House to propose amendments to the body
of the bill, and, when through, puts the question whether it shall be
read a third time?]
[After progress in amending the bill in quasi-committee, a motion
may be made to refer it to a special committee. If the motion
prevails, it is equivalent in effect to the several votes, that the
committee rise, the House resume itself, discharge the Committee of
the Whole, and refer the bill to a special committee. In that case, the
amendments already made fall. But if the motion fails, the quasi-
committee stands in statu quo.]
[How far does this 25th rule subject the House, when in quasi-
committee, to the laws which regulate the proceedings of
Committees of the Whole?] The particulars in which these differ
from proceedings in the House are the following: 1. In a committee
every member may speak as often as he pleases. 2. The votes of a
committee may be rejected or altered when reported to the House. 3.
A committee, even of the whole, cannot refer any matter to another
committee. 4. In a committee no previous question can be taken: the
only means to avoid an improper discussion is to move that the
committee rise; and if it be apprehended that the same discussion
will be attempted on returning into committee, the House can
discharge them, and proceed itself on the business, keeping down the
improper discussion by the previous question. 5. A committee cannot
punish a breach of order in the House or in the gallery. 9 Grey, 113. It
can only rise and report it to the House, who may proceed to punish.
[The first and second of these peculiarities attach to the quasi-
committee of the Senate, as every day’s practice proves, and it seems
to be the only ones to which the 25th rule meant to subject them; for
it continues to be a House, and therefore, though it acts in some
respects as a committee, in others it preserves its character as a
House. Thus (3) it is in the daily habit of referring its business to a
special committee. 4. It admits of the previous question. If it did not,
it would have no means of preventing an improper discussion: not
being able, as a committee is, to avoid it by returning into the House,
for the moment it would resume the same subject there, the 25th rule
declares it again a quasi-committee. 5. It would doubtless exercise its
powers as a House on any breach of order. 6. It takes a question by
yea and nay, as the House does. 7. It receives messages from the
President and the other House. 8. In the midst of a debate it receives
a motion to adjourn, and adjourns as a House, not as a committee.]

SEC. XXXI.—BILL, SECOND READING IN THE HOUSE.

In Parliament, after the bill has been read a second time, if on the
motion and question it be not committed, or if no proposition for
commitment be made, the Speaker reads it by paragraphs, pausing
between each, but putting no question but on amendments
proposed; and when through the whole, he puts the question
whether it shall be read a third time? if it came from the other
House; or, if originating with themselves, whether it shall be
engrossed and read a third time? The Speaker reads sitting, but rises
to put questions. The Clerk stands while he reads.
[[99]But the Senate of the United States is so much in the habit of
making many and material amendments at the third reading, that it
has become the practice not to engross a bill till it has passed—an
irregular and dangerous practice; because in this way the paper
which passes the Senate is not that which goes to the other House,
and that which goes to the other House as the act of the Senate, has
never been seen in Senate. In reducing numerous, difficult, and
illegible amendments into the text, the Secretary may, with the most
innocent intentions, commit errors which can never again be
corrected.]
 The bill being now as perfect as its friends can make it, this is the
proper stage for those fundamentally opposed to make their first
attack. All attempts at earlier periods are with disjointed efforts,
because many who do not expect to be in favor of the bill ultimately,
are willing to let it go on to its perfect state, to take time to examine it
themselves and to hear what can be said for it, knowing that after all
they will have sufficient opportunities of giving it their veto. Its two
last stages, therefore, are reserved for this—that is to say, on the
question whether it shall be engrossed and read a third time? and,
lastly, whether it shall pass? The first of these is usually the most
interesting contest; because then the whole subject is new and
engaging, and the minds of the members having not yet been
declared by any trying vote the issue is the more doubtful. In this
stage, therefore, is the main trial of strength between its friends and
opponents, and it behooves every one to make up his mind decisively
for this question, or he loses the main battle; and accident and
management may, and often do, prevent a successful rallying on the
next and last question, whether it shall pass?
When the bill is engrossed, the title is to be indorsed on the back,
and not within the bill.—Hakew., 250.

SEC. XXXII.—READING PAPERS.

Where papers are laid before the House or referred to a

committee, every member has a right to have them once read at the
table before he can be compelled to vote on them; but it is a great
though common error to suppose that he has a right, toties quoties,
to have acts, journals, accounts, or papers on the table, read
independently of the will of the House. The delay and interruption
which this might be made to produce evince the impossibility of the
existence of such a right. There is, indeed, so manifest a propriety of
permitting every member to have as much information as possible
on every question on which he is to vote, that when he desires the
reading, if it be seen that it is really for information and not for delay,
the Speaker directs it to be read without putting a question, if no one
objects; but if objected to, a question must be put.—2 Hats., 117, 118.
 It is equally an error to suppose that any member has a right,
without a question put, to lay a book or paper on the table, and have
it read, on suggesting that it contains matter infringing on the
privileges of the House.—Ib.
For the same reason, a member has not a right to read a paper in
his place, if it be objected to, without leave of the House. But this
rigor is never exercised but where there is an intentional or gross
abuse of the time and patience of the House.
A member has not a right even to read his own speech, committed
to writing, without leave. This also is to prevent an abuse of time,
and therefore is not refused but where that is intended.—2 Grey,
227.
A report of a committee of the Senate on a bill from the House of
Representatives being under consideration: on motion that the
report of the committee of the House of Representatives on the same
bill be read in the Senate, it passed in the negative.—Feb. 28, 1793.
Formerly, when papers were referred to a committee, they used to
be first read; but of late only the titles, unless a member insists they
shall be read, and then nobody can oppose it.—2 Hats., 117.

SEC. XXXIII.—PRIVILEGED QUESTIONS.

[[100] While a question is before the Senate, no motion shall be

received, unless for an amendment, for the previous question, or for
postponing the main question, or to commit it, or to adjourn.—Rule
8.]
It is no possession of a bill unless it be delivered to the Clerk to
read, or the Speaker reads the title.—Lex. Parl., 274; Elsynge Mem.,
85; Ord. House of Commons, 64.
It is a general rule that the question first moved and seconded
shall be first put. Scob., 28, 22; 2 Hats., 81. But this rule gives way to
what may be called privileged questions; and the privileged
questions are of different grades among themselves.
A motion to adjourn simply takes place of all others; for otherwise
the House might be kept sitting against its will, and indefinitely. Yet
this motion cannot be received after another question is actually put,
and while the House is engaged in voting.
Orders of the day take place of all other questions, except for
adjournment—that is to say, the question which is the subject of an
order is made a privileged one, pro hac vice. The order is a repeal of
the general rule as to this special case. When any member moves,
therefore, for the order of the day to be read, no further debate is
permitted on the question which was before the House; for if the
debate might proceed, it might continue through the day and defeat
the order. This motion, to entitle it to precedence, must be for the
orders generally, and not for any particular one; and if it be carried
on the question “Whether the House will now proceed to the orders
of the day?” they must be read and proceeded on in the course in
which they stand, 2 Hats., 83; for priority of order gives priority of
right, which cannot be taken away but by another special order.
After these there are other privileged questions, which will require
considerable explanation.
It is proper that every parliamentary assembly should have certain
forms of questions, so adapted as to enable them fitly to dispose of
every proposition which can be made to them. Such are, 1. The
previous question. 2. To postpone indefinitely. 3. To adjourn a
question to a definite day, 4. To lie on the table. 5. To commit. 6. To
amend. The proper occasion for each of these questions should be
understood.
1. When a proposition is moved which it is useless or inexpedient
now to express or discuss, the previous question has been introduced
for suppressing for that time the motion and its discussion. 3 Hats.,
188, 189.
2. But as the previous question gets rid of it only for that day, and
the same proposition may recur the next day, if they wish to suppress
it for the whole of that session, they postpone it indefinitely. 3 Hats.,
183. This quashes the proposition for that session, as an indefinite
adjournment is a dissolution, or the continuance of a suit sine die is a
discontinuance of it.
3. When a motion is made which it will be proper to act on, but
information is wanted, or something more pressing claims the
present time, the question or debate is adjourned to such day within
the session as will answer the views of the House. 2 Hats., 81. And
those who have spoken before may not speak again when the
adjourned debate is resumed. 2 Hats., 73. Sometimes, however, this
has been abusively used by adjourning it to a day beyond the session,
to get rid of it altogether, as would be done by an indefinite
postponement.
4. When the House has something else which claims its present
attention, but would be willing to reserve in their power to take up a
proposition whenever it shall suit them, they order it to lie on their
table. It may then be called for at any time.
5. If the proposition will want more amendment and digestion
than the formalities of the House will conveniently admit, they refer
it to a committee.
6. But if the proposition be well digested, and may need but few
and simple amendments, and especially if these be of leading
consequence, they then proceed to consider and amend it
themselves.
The Senate, in their practice, vary from this regular gradation of
forms. Their practice comparatively with that of Parliament stands
thus:
FOR THE PARLIAMENTARY: THE SENATE USES:

Postponement indefinite, Postponement to a day beyond the session.

Adjournment, Postponement to a day within the session.

Postponement indefinite.
Lying on the table.
Lying on the table.
In their eighth rule, therefore, which declares that while a question
is before the Senate no motion shall be received, unless it be for the
previous question, or to postpone, commit, or amend the main
question, the term postponement must be understood according to
their broad use of it, and not in its parliamentary sense. Their rule,
then establishes as privileged questions, the previous question,
postponement, commitment, and amendment.
But it may be asked: Have these questions any privilege among
themselves? or are they so equal that the common principle of the
“first moved first put” takes place among them? This will need
explanation. Their competitions may be as follows:
1. Previous question
and postpone
commit amend
2. Postpone and
previous question
In the first, second, and the third classes, and the first
commit amend
member of the fourth class, the rule “first moved first
3. Commit and put” takes place.
previous question
postpone amend
4. Amend and
previous question
postpone commit
In the first class, where the previous question is first moved, the
effect is peculiar; for it not only prevents the after motion to
postpone or commit from being put to question before it, but also
from being put after it; for if the previous question be decided
affirmatively, to wit, that the main question shall now be put, it
would of course be against the decision to postpone, or commit; and
if it be decided negatively, to wit, that the main question shall not
now be put, this puts the House out of possession of the main
question, and consequently there is nothing before them to postpone
or commit. So that neither voting for nor against the previous
question will enable the advocates for postponing or committing to
get at their object. Whether it may be amended shall be examined
hereafter.
Second class. If postponement be decided affirmatively, the
proposition is removed from before the House, and consequently
there is no ground for the previous question, commitment, or
amendment; but if decided negatively, (that it shall not be
postponed,) the main question may then be suppressed by the
previous question, or may be committed, or amended.
The third class is subject to the same observations as the second.
The fourth class. Amendment of the main question first moved,
and afterwards the previous question, the question of amendment
shall be first put.
Amendment and postponement competing, postponement is first
put, as the equivalent proposition to adjourn the main question
would be in Parliament. The reason is that the question for
amendment is not suppressed by postponing or adjourning the main
question, but remains before the House whenever the main question
is resumed; and it might be that the occasion for other urgent
business might go by, and be lost by length of debate on the
amendment, if the House had it not in their power to postpone the
whole subject.
Amendment and commitment. The question for committing,
though last moved shall be first put; because, in truth, it facilitates
and befriends the motion to amend. Scobell is express: “On motion
to amend a bill, any one may notwithstanding move to commit it,
and the question for commitment shall be first put.” Scob., 46.
We have hitherto considered the case of two or more of the
privileged questions contending for privilege between themselves,
when both are moved on the original or main question; but now let
us suppose one of them to be moved, not on the original primary
question, but on the secondary one, e. g.:
Suppose a motion to postpone, commit, or amend the main
question, and that it be moved to suppress that motion by putting a
previous question on it. This is not allowed: because it would
embarrass questions too much to allow them to be piled on one
another several stories high; and the same result may be had in a
more simple way—by deciding against the postponement,
commitment, or amendment. 2 Hats., 81, 2, 3, 4.
Suppose a motion for the previous question, or commitment or
amendment of the main question, and that it be then moved to
postpone the motion for the previous question, or for commitment or
amendment of the main question. 1. It would be absurd to postpone
the previous question, commitment, or amendment, alone, and thus
separate the appendage from its principal; yet it must be postponed
separately from its original, if at all; because the eighth rule of Senate
says that when a main question is before the House no motion shall
be received but to commit, amend, or pre-question the original
question, which is the parliamentary doctrine also. Therefore the
motion to postpone the secondary motion for the previous question,
or for committing or amending, cannot be received. 2. This is a piling
of questions one on another; which, to avoid embarrassment, is not
allowed. 3. The same result may be had more simply by voting
against the previous question, commitment, or amendment.
Suppose a commitment moved of a motion for the previous
question, or to postpone or amend. The first, second, and third
reasons, before stated, all hold good against this.
Suppose an amendment moved to a motion for the previous
question. Answer: The previous question cannot be amended.
Parliamentary usage, as well as the ninth rule of the Senate, has fixed
its form to be, “Shall the main question be now put?”—i. e., at this
instant; and as the present instant is but one, it can admit of no
modification. To change it to to-morrow, or any other moment, is
without example and without utility. But suppose a motion to amend
a motion for postponement, as to one day instead of another, or to a
special instead of an indefinite time. The useful character of
amendment gives it a privilege of attaching itself to a secondary and
privileged motion: that is, we may amend a postponement of a main
question. So, we may amend a commitment of a main question, as by
adding, for example, “with instructions to inquire,” &c. In like
manner, if an amendment be moved to an amendment, it is
admitted; but it would not be admitted in another degree, to wit, to
amend an amendment to an amendment of a main question. This
would lead to too much embarrassment. The line must be drawn
somewhere, and usage has drawn it after the amendment to the
amendment. The same result must be sought by deciding against the
amendment to the amendment, and then moving it again as it was
wished to be amended. In this form it becomes only an amendment
to an amendment.
[When motions are made for reference of the same subject to a
select committee and to a standing committee, the question on
reference to the standing committee shall be first put. Rule 48.]
[In filling a blank with a sum, the largest sum shall be first put to
the question, by the thirteenth rule of the Senate,[101]] contrary to the
rule of Parliament, which privileges the smallest sum and longest
time. [5 Grey, 179; 2 Hats., 8, 83; 3 Hats., 132, 133.] And this is
considered to be not in the form of an amendment to the question,
but as alternative or successive originals. In all cases of time or
number, we must consider whether the larger comprehends the
lesser, as in a question to what day a postponement shall be, the
number of a committee, amount of a fine, term of an imprisonment,
term of irredeemability of a loan, or the terminus in quem in any
other case; then the question must begin a maximo. Or whether the
lesser includes the greater, as in questions on the limitation of the
rate of interest, on what day the session shall be closed by
adjournment, on what day the next shall commence, when an act
shall commence, or the terminus a quo in any other case where the
question must begin a minimo; the object being not to begin at that
extreme which, and more, being within every man’s wish, no one
could negative it, and yet, if he should vote in the affirmative, every
question for more would be precluded; but at that extreme which
would unite few, and then to advance or recede till you get to a
number which will unite a bare majority. 3 Grey, 376, 384, 385. “The
fair question in this case is not that to which, and more, all will agree,
but whether there shall be addition to the question.” 1 Grey, 365.
Another exception to the rule of priority is when a motion has been
made to strike out, or agree to, a paragraph. Motions to amend it are
to be put to the question before a vote is taken on striking out or
agreeing to the whole paragraph.
But there are several questions which, being incidental to every
one, will take place of every one, privileged or not; to wit, a question
of order arising out of any other question must be decided before
that question. 2 Hats., 88.
A matter of privilege arising out of any question, or from a quarrel
between two members, or any other cause, supersedes the
consideration of the original question, and must be first disposed of.
2 Hats., 88.
Reading papers relative to the question before the House. This
question must be put before the principal one. 2 Hats., 88.
Leave asked to withdraw a motion. The rule of Parliament being
that a motion made and seconded is in the possession of the House,
and cannot be withdrawn without leave, the very terms of the rule
imply that leave may be given, and, consequently, may be asked and
put to the question.

SEC. XXXIV.—THE PREVIOUS QUESTION.

 When any question is before the House, any member may move a
previous question, “Whether that question (called the main question)
shall now be put?” If it pass in the affirmative, then the main
question is to be put immediately, and no man may speak anything
further to it, either to add or alter. Memor. in Hakew., 28; 4 Grey,
27.
The previous question being moved and seconded, the question
from the Chair shall be, “Shall the main question be now put?” and if
the nays prevail, the main question shall not then be put.
This kind of question is understood by Mr. Hatsell to have been
introduced in 1604. 2 Hats., 80. Sir Henry Vane introduced it. 2
Grey, 113, 114; 3 Grey, 384. When the question was put in this form,
“Shall the main question be put?” a determination in the negative
suppressed the main question during the session; but since the
words “now put” are used, they exclude it for the present only;
formerly, indeed, only till the present debate was over, 4 Grey, 43,
but now for that day and no longer. 2 Grey, 113, 114.
Before the question “Whether the main question shall now be
put?” any person might formerly have spoken to the main question,
because otherwise he would be precluded from speaking to it at all.
Mem. in Hakew., 28.
The proper occasion for the previous question is when a subject is
brought forward of a delicate nature as to high personages, &c., or
the discussion of which may call forth observations which might be
of injurious consequences. Then the previous question is proposed;
and in the modern usage, the discussion of the main question is
suspended, and the debate confined to the previous question. The
use of it has been extended abusively to other cases; but in these it
has been an embarrassing procedure; its uses would be as well
answered by other more simple parliamentary forms, and therefore
it should not be favored, but restricted within as narrow limits as
possible.
Whether a main question may be amended after the previous
question on it has been moved and seconded? 2 Hats., 88, says, if the
previous question has been moved and seconded, and also proposed
from the Chair, (by which he means stated by the Speaker for
debate,) it has been doubted whether an amendment can be
admitted to the main question. He thinks it may, after the previous
question moved and seconded; but not after it has been proposed
from the Chair. In this case, he thinks the friends to the amendment
must vote that the main question be not now put; and then move
their amended question, which being made new by the amendment,
is no longer the same which has been just suppressed, and therefore
may be proposed as a new one. But this proceeding certainly
endangers the main question, by dividing its friends, some of whom
may chose it unamended, rather than lose it altogether; while others
of them may vote, as Hatsell advises, that the main question be not
now put, with a view to move it again in an amended form. The
enemies of the main question, by this maneuver to the previous
question, get the enemies to the amendment added to them on the
first vote, and throw the friends of the main question under the
embarrassment of rallying again as they can. To support this
opinion, too, he makes the deciding circumstance, whether an
amendment may or may not be made, to be, that the previous
question has been proposed from the Chair. But, as the rule is that
the House is in possession of a question as soon as it is moved and
seconded, it cannot be more than possessed of it by its being also
proposed from the Chair. It may be said, indeed, that the object of
the previous question being to get rid of a question, which it is not
expedient should be discussed, this object may be defeated by
moving to amend; and in the discussion of that motion, involving the
subject of the main question. But so may the object of the previous
question be defeated, by moving the amended question, as Mr.
Hatsell proposes, after the decision against putting the original
question. He acknowledges, too, that the practice has been to admit
previous amendments, and only cites a few late instances to the
contrary. On the whole, I should think it best to decide it ab
inconvenienti, to wit: Which is most inconvenient, to put it in the
power of one side of the House to defeat a proposition by hastily
moving the previous question, and thus forcing the main question to
be put unamended; or to put it in the power of the other side to force
on, incidentally at least, a discussion which would be better avoided?
Perhaps the last is the least inconvenience; inasmuch as the Speaker,
by confining the discussion rigorously to the amendment only, may
prevent their going into the main question; and inasmuch also as so
great a proportion of the cases in which the previous question is
called for, are fair and proper subjects of public discussion, and
ought not to be obstructed by a formality introduced for questions of
a peculiar character.

SEC. XXXV.—AMENDMENTS.

On an amendment being moved, a member who has spoken to the

main question may speak again to the amendment. Scob., 23.
If an amendment be proposed inconsistent with one already
agreed to, it is a fit ground for its rejection by the House, but not
within the competence of the Speaker to suppress as if it were against
order. For were he permitted to draw questions of consistence within
the vortex of order, he might usurp a negative on important
modifications, and suppress, instead of subserving, the legislative
will.
Amendments may be made so as totally to alter the nature of the
proposition; and it is a way of getting rid of a proposition, by making
it bear a sense different from what it was intended by the movers, so
that they vote against it themselves. 2 Hats., 79; 4, 82, 84. A new bill
may be ingrafted, by way of amendment, on the words “Be it
enacted,” &c. 1 Grey, 190, 192.
If it be proposed to amend by leaving out certain words, it may be
moved, as an amendment to this amendment, to leave out a part of
the words of the amendment, which is equivalent to leaving them in
the bill. 2 Hats., 80, 9. The parliamentary question is, always,
whether the words shall stand part of the bill.
When it is proposed to amend by inserting a paragraph, or part of
one, the friends of the paragraph may make it as perfect as they can
by amendments before the question is put for inserting it. If it be
received, it cannot be amended afterward, in the same stage, because
the House has, on a vote, agreed to it in that form. In like manner, if
it is proposed to amend by striking out a paragraph, the friends of
the paragraph are first to make it as perfect as they can by
amendments, before the question is put for striking it out. If on the
question it be retained, it cannot be amended afterward, because a
vote against striking out is equivalent to a vote agreeing to it in that
form.
 When it is moved to amend by striking out certain words and
inserting others, the manner of stating the question is first to read
the whole passage to be amended as it stands at present, then the
words proposed to be struck out, next those to be inserted, and lastly
the whole passage as it will be when amended. And the question, if
desired, is then to be divided, and put first on striking out. If carried,
it is next on inserting the words proposed. If that be lost, it may be
moved to insert others. 2 Hats., 80, 7.
A motion is made to amend by striking out certain words and
inserting others in their place, which is negatived. Then it is moved
to strike out the same words and to insert others of a tenor entirely
different from those first proposed. It is negatived. Then it is moved
to strike out the same words and insert nothing, which is agreed to.
All this is admissible, because to strike out and insert A is one
proposition. To strike out and insert B is a different proposition. And
to strike out and insert nothing is still different. And the rejection of
one proposition does not preclude the offering a different one. Nor
would it change the case were the first motion divided by putting the
question first on striking out, and that negatived; for, as putting the
whole motion to the question at once would not have precluded, the
putting the half of it cannot do it.
[The practice in the United States Senate in this respect is now
fixed by the 31st rule, as follows: If the question in debate contains
several points, any Senator may have the same divided; but on a
motion to strike out and insert, it shall not be in order to move for a
division of the question; but the rejection of a motion to strike out
and insert one proposition shall not prevent a motion to strike out
and insert a different proposition, nor prevent a subsequent motion
simply to strike out; nor shall the rejection of a motion simply to
strike out prevent a subsequent motion to strike out and insert.]
But if it had been carried affirmatively to strike out the words and
to insert A, it could not afterward be permitted to strike out A and
insert B. The mover of B should have notified, while the insertion of
A was under debate, that he would move to insert B; in which case
those who preferred it would join in rejecting A.
After A is inserted, however, it may be moved to strike out a
portion of the original paragraph, comprehending A, provided the
coherence to be struck out be so substantial as to make this
effectively a different proposition; for then it is resolved into the
common case of striking out a paragraph after amending it. Nor does
anything forbid a new insertion, instead of A and its coherence.
In Senate, January 25, 1798 a motion to postpone until the second
Tuesday in February some amendments proposed to the
Constitution; the words “until the second Tuesday in February,” were
struck out by way of amendment. Then it was moved to add, “until
the first day of June.” Objected that it was not in order, as the
question should be first put on the longest time; therefore, after a
shorter time decided against, a longer cannot be put to question. It
was answered that this rule takes place only in filling blanks for time.
But when a specific time stands part of a motion, that may be struck
out as well as any other part of the motion; and when struck out, a
motion may be received to insert any other. In fact, it is not until they
are struck out, and a blank for the time thereby produced, that the
rule can begin to operate, by receiving all the propositions for
different times, and putting the questions successively on the
longest. Otherwise it would be in the power of the mover, by
inserting originally a short time, to preclude the possibility of a
longer; for till the short time is struck out, you cannot insert a longer;
and if, after it is struck out, you cannot do it, then it cannot be done
at all. Suppose the first motion had been made to amend by striking
out “the second Tuesday in February,” and inserting instead thereof
“the first of June,” it would have been regular, then, to divide the
question, by proposing first the question to strike out and then that
to insert. Now this is precisely the effect of the present proceeding;
only, instead of one motion and two questions, there are two motions
and two questions to effect it—the motions being divided as well as
the question.
When the matter contained in two bills might be better put into
one, the manner is to reject the one, and incorporate its matter into
another bill by way of amendment. So if the matter of one bill would
be better distributed into two, any part may be struck out by way of
amendment, and put into a new bill. If a section is to be transposed,
a question must be put on striking it out where it stands and another
for inserting it in the place desired.
A bill passed by the one House with blanks. These may be filled up
by the other by way of amendments, returned to the first as such, and
passed. 3 Hats., 83.
The number prefixed to the section of a bill, being merely a
marginal indication, and no part of the text of the bill, the Clerk
regulates that—the House or committee is only to amend the text.

SEC. XXXVI.—DIVISION OF THE QUESTION.

If a question contains more parts than one, it may be divided into

two or more questions. Mem. in Hakew., 29. But not as the right of
an individual member, but with the consent of the House. For who is
to decide whether a question is complicated or not—where it is
complicated—into how many propositions it may be divided? The
fact is that the only mode of separating a complicated question is by
moving amendments to it; and these must be decided by the House,
on a question, unless the House orders it to be divided; as, on the
question, December 2, 1640, making void the election of the knights
for Worcester, on a motion it was resolved to make two questions of
it, to wit, one on each knight. 2 Hats., 85, 86. So, wherever there are
several names in a question, they may be divided and put one by one.
9 Grey, 444. So, 1729, April 17, on an objection that a question was
complicated, it was separated by amendment. 2 Hats., 79.
The soundness of these observations will be evident from the
embarrassments produced by the twelfth rule of the Senate, which
says, “if the question in debate contains several points, any member
may have the same divided.”
1798, May 30, the alien bill in quasi-committee. To a section and
proviso in the original, had been added two new provisos by way of
amendment. On a motion to strike out the section as amended, the
question was desired to be divided. To do this it must be put first on
striking out either the former proviso, or some distinct member of
the section. But when nothing remains but the last member of the
section and the provisos, they cannot be divided so as to put the last
member to question by itself; for the provisos might thus be left
standing alone as exceptions to a rule when the rule is taken away; or
the new provisos might be left to a second question, after having
been decided on once before at the same reading, which is contrary
to rule. But the question must be on striking out the last member of
the section as amended. This sweeps away the exceptions with the
rule, and relieves from inconsistence. A question to be divisible must
comprehend points so distinct and entire that one of them being
taken away, the other may stand entire. But a proviso or exception,
without an enacting clause, does not contain an entire point or
proposition.
May 31.—The same bill being before the Senate. There was a
proviso that the bill should not extend—1. To any foreign minister;
nor, 2. To any person to whom the President should give a passport;
nor, 3. To any alien merchant conforming himself to such regulations
as the President shall prescribe; and a division of the question into
its simplest elements was called for. It was divided into four parts,
the 4th taking in the words “conforming himself,” &c. It was objected
that the words “any alien merchant,” could not be separated from
their modifying words, “conforming,” &c., because these words, if left
by themselves, contain no substantive idea, will make no sense. But
admitting that the divisions of a paragraph into separate questions
must be so made as that each part may stand by itself, yet the House
having, on the question, retained the two first divisions, the words
“any alien merchant” may be struck out, and their modifying words
will then attach themselves to the preceding description of persons,
and become a modification of that description.
When a question is divided, after the question on the 1st member,
the 2d is open to debate and amendment; because it is a known rule
that a person may rise and speak at any time before the question has
been completely decided, by putting the negative as well as the
affirmative side. But the question is not completely put when the
vote has been taken on the first member only. One-half of the
question, both affirmative and negative, remains still to be put. See
Execut. Jour., June 25, 1795. The same decision by President Adams.

SEC. XXXVII.—COEXISTING QUESTIONS.

It may be asked whether the House can be in possession of two

motions or propositions at the same time? so that, one of them being
decided, the other goes to question without being moved anew? The
answer must be special. When a question is interrupted by a vote of