Rishikesh, India
9 March 2003
The holy city of Varanasi, India, on the Ganges, the home of Goddess Shiva. Photo by Michael Seto
A bather washing away their sins in the holy Ganges. Photo by Michael Seto
The 'dom' lifted the green bamboo stave, two inches thick and some six feet long, longer than his wiry frame. His stringy muscles flexed under his dark chocolate skin. THWAPPCRACK! The supple green bamboo pole snapped into the burning wood pile. Sparks and embers flew off in all directions. He shoved violently on one end, pushing large blackened log back into the heat of the fire.
My eyes darted from top to bottom of the scene, trying to take it all in, despite some itching and watering from the smoke. Standing behind a rail just fifteen feet from the flames, I held up my arm to shield my face from the radiating heat. Trying to discern the unfamiliar smell in the air. Around me, 'untouchables' sat amongst cords of wood piled high into the air next to a over sized scale - similar to the scales of justice...
I arrived in Varanasi, India a couple days ago and found a decent room in the Puja Hotel ('puja' also is the act of prayer especially in the Ganges River, just yards from the hotel.) Varanasi, formerly Benares, sits on the river Ganges and means 'eternal city' in Hindi - its the 'Mother Ganges.' Each year, thousands (and I mean THOUSANDS) come to bath in the waters in this holy spot. One dunking supposedly washes away all the sins committed to now. Dying here means instant transport to heaven, do not pass go, do not collect $200!
The old city, which abuts the riverfront on the West bank, consists of a warren of narrow passageways and alleys, some just four feet wide. Shopfronts, residences, hotels, and restaurants all mix together in the atmospheric neighborhood. Cows meander the cobbled streets, stopping to munch on organic trash piled in every corner, and then leave viscous evidence of their own passing.
Wandering around, I keep my eye focused on the ground, like a monk, lest I slip through some slimy trash or cow patties, which the Indian kids seem to ignore, running around barefoot without a care! Once a cow stood astride the narrow road, I helplessly I stood behind it, till some little kid came along, slapped the cows side, and then it sauntered away. Whew!
Ghats, or steps to the water, line the riverfront, the Dasaswamedh Ghat being one of the most popular for bathing in the Ganges; and every morning, in the rising sun, pilgrims and locals alike drift to the waterfront and descend the stairs into the water. Boatmen beckon passersby to take a ride.
Wandering along the ghats one morning, I stumbled onto a group of pilgrims, from all parts of India and the world, gathered under a tent listening to a guru of some type. I watched and snapped photos for a couple hours. Then they all rose and went to a section of the river screened off by a stage set up in the water. There, they undertook all kinds of ceremony and prostrations and in small groups of family and friends, entered the water.
My eyes followed a group of young women, resplendent in their brilliant saris, as they settled down by the water. Some clutched ropes set into the slippery steps, worn by countless soles and coated with moss. They dipped their hands and sprinkled the water over themselves, working slowly deeper into the water. Laughs and giggles and splashing as they immersed themselves repeatedly, their wrapped saris clinging to them like the red stripe holds a candy cane.
Fascinated and so moved by the bliss of this group, I unceremoniously set down my camera, stripped down to my shorts (unzipping my high-tech pants!) and slowly walked into the water. The cold grabbed my toes and ankles as I swam in, refreshed from the 85 degree air. I clamped my nose and mouth and eyes and dipped myself fully into Mother Ganges.
The Ganges ranks as one of the most polluted waterways in the world, with raw sewage pouring in from the city of Varanasi. Considered septic (no oxygen left suspended in the water) with astronomical bacteria counts, one can easily get sick from injecting the 'holy' waters. Dead cows often float by along with human cadavers.
Immediately after my dip, I ran back to my hotel, showered and soaped my body, shampooed my hair, put in eye drops and brushed my teeth. I ended up with just a mild rash which went away after three days...
Before Varanasi, I spent a few days in Bodhgaya, where Buddha (formerly Indian prince Siddartha Gautama) attained enlightenment after seven days of meditating under the Bodhi Tree. There I wandered about the Mahabodhi Temple all day, trying to get a bit of my own enlightenment through osmosis!
Several Buddhist countries have constructed elaborate monasteries for their own monks to live in while at Bodhgaya, and you can wander from Tibet to Thailand in a couple hundred meters. The other facilities for 'tourists' lack a bit, but most don't linger too long here.
I searched for a Vipassana meditation class, taking a rickshaw a couple miles outside of town to this known Dhamma school, but alas, the teacher was away and no courses were on offer then. In fact, I arrived a few days after several festivals and important Tibeten events (their new year) so most of the monasteries and such were winding down from that.
Instead, I made a nightly pilgrimage to the temple, removed my shoes (a requirement) and circumambulated the temple three times in walking meditation. Around me, groups of monks chanted, sporting the classic crimson and orange robes. Other groups in white sat in prayer: Japanese, Thai, Chinese, Vietnamese, groups from all over came to pay homage to the primogenitor of their philosophy/religion.
As chants also played over the modern PA system, I sat in seiza (where both legs are folded under you and you sit on your ankles) since I cannot manage lotus and pondered the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path to Enlightenment, etc. I also wondered, 'what the heck am I doing? I don't FEEL anything!' So I sat and sat and sat. Well, it took me a while, but I realized you can't force these things. Its a step by step process for most and half and hour of meditating where Buddha sat doesn't always do it. No shortcuts!
Leaving the tranquility of the temple grounds, one immediately falls under siege of the touts outside the gate, selling incense, toys, beads, prayer flags and all the other accouterments of religion. Its the same everywhere in India and I felt more used to the noise and fury of it all, ignoring it more easily. (Maybe this meditation stuff does help!)
I drifted off after a couple days, and hoped onto a local train to Varanasi, tired of my valiant but seeming futile effort to find my Buddha nature. Better luck next time!
Everywhere in Varanasi, wander these ascetics who renounce all possessions seek enlightenment through 'Sadhana.' These men (only men) are known as sadhus; though to uninformed eyes they look like homeless guys, and act like them since their renunciation of possessions means they must beg for money, I mean 'alms,' to get through the day. After a couple days, I tired of handing out 2-3 Rupees to each guy (about 10 cents).
Clad usually in orange robes, they look like a band of Fanta mascots, except for the scraggly beards and the yellow or red paint exhibited on their foreheads. For years they pursue daily meditation and mortification of the flesh to reach a state of nirvana, supposedly. Wandering around here you feel like you stepped into central casting for some Rudyard Kipling movie.
Many of the sadhus seem to swear by 'catalysts' to help them in the search for nirvana, smoking prodigious amounts of hashish and offering some to every passerby. I turned down these generous teachers, never sure what actually passed around posing as hash.
One Austrian backpacker went berserk in my hotel, howling obscenities and incoherent phrases. He dashed out and ended up fighting some Indian policemen. Without any travel companions to look after him, the hotel folks generously collected him screaming back to the hotel. I awoke one morning and in the lobby found him buck naked, smeared in his own feces and yelling at the poor Indian innkeepers, who stood with bamboo staffs to protect themselves.
Finally, a few days later, another Austrian who checked in was enlisted to try and talk this guy 'down' or get in touch with the embassy for assistance. I left later that day, not knowing what happened, but impressed on not sharing every joint passed my direction.
After a week in Varanasi, tired of relaxing on the rooftop and watching the river flow by, I headed north to the state of Himachal Pradesh and the headwaters of the Ganges in Haridwar and Rishikesh, about 300 miles from Varanasi.
Rishikesh bills itself as the Yoga Capital of the World, where the Beatles found their guru and the banks of the Ganges are lined with ashrams where one take undertake all kinds of meditation and yoga courses. Haridwar, an hour further downstream, offers much more stringent courses which require silence and prayer and thus most foreigners end up in Rishikesh.
Settling into the cute little Green Hotel, I wondered how I would find a suitable course. But as the Zen saying goes, "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear" I ran into a woman who suggested the course in the back of the same Green Hotel I resided at.
Popping in for the evening class at 5:30, I found about a dozen other western backpackers being led by Pankaj, the 28-year old instructor. Fluent in English and very knowledgeable in physiology, Pankaj led the group in some vigorous asanas, aimed more at intermediate practitioners, though a beginner could endure most of his course.
Unlike the more aerobic version typically found in US health clubs, we worked on Iyengar yoga, with the focus on the correct assumption of each asana, held for several minutes. Pankaj wandered the room, correcting us sometimes with a gentle nudge or by leaping on our backs to help in a stretch (like 'child's pose').
He exhorted us with contradictory and seemingly impossible and incomprehensible instructions, "hit the thigh, pull the knee up, expand the chest, open the shoulders, close the hands, move through your pelvis, tuck under the sacrum, elongate the vertebrae." It resembled a sadomasochistic game of 'Twister.'
We stood on our heads, our shoulders, our hands, contorted into impossible shapes, all now candidates for Cirque de Soleil. Each day after class, I staggered to my room and luxuriated in the hot shower, from a bucket, of course! Afterwards, a meal of pasta or thali at one of the local restaurants before retiring at ten o'clock.
With no alcohol and a strict veggie diet for the past few weeks, I feel great! These holy cities in India forbid meat and alcohol, though not super strict, I have not yet found any booze or even eggs around here!
After morning yoga, I spend the day walking along the banks of the river; or lying upon one of the rocks, shaped like a lounge chair, reading. I saunter up to a cafe overlooking the town and dine on veggie chow mein, or a latte and a piece of homemade apple pie. Then I'd wander around more, taking in the peaceful Himalayan foothills amidst the soothing sound of the water.
The week passed quickly and with belt several notches tighter, and buns of steel, and able to grab my ankles and touch my face to my shins, I left for Dehli, where my own sadhana would end and I will live large with my Mom for the next ten days, aboard the Palace on Wheels through Rajastan.
I stood transfixed still watching the fire; something eluding the grasp of my brain. I flashed back to my time in the gulf when we rampaged through Kuwait on the heels of the Iraqi army, torched tanks and trucks lining the road, evidence of the relentless air war waged on the occupiers of Kuwait. The Iraqi soldiers...
It hit me. The log this guy kept pushing back into the fire was no log at all. The sticks he smashed with the bamboo were no sticks at all. The log was the blackened torso of a cadaver, being cremated at the Manikarnika Ghat, the most auspicious place for cremation on the Ganges in Varanasi. He was breaking the arm bones and pushing the corpse back into the heart of the fire. Deep down, I knew this all along, but sometimes the mind takes a moment to grasp what seems so unacceptable, a human body being burned on an open fire.
Suddenly fully awake, no outside sign of my change in awareness to betray my insight and initial horror. I now looked closer, searing (pardon the pun) the image into my memory. This was someones father, mother, brother, sister, loved one. Indeed, several relatives, normally a son, stood nearby, having ceremonially started the fire and circumambulated the body. Eventually, the ashes would be scattered into Mother Ganges. Ashes to ashes.
My clothes, my backpack, my camera, my family, my friends, my possessions...my LIFE, all went up in smoke. What remains when we pass on from this world I wondered? If this pyre represents my final physical destiny, of what importance ultimately are all the superficial trappings I've so eagerly pursued and sold my soul to gain? If death comes down to this, what is truly of worth to me in life?
I don't know the answers yet to these questions, but in retrospect, spending the past few weeks by myself, wandering in the steps of Siddartha, amongst others in Sadhana, and whilst contorted in Asana; I feel a few steps closer to an answer.
