Varanasi: City of Life and Death
We had a contact at the Hare Krishna ashram in the city, and this would be our lodging during our sojourn in Varanasi. We were greeted by clear-eyed, smiling monks, unfailing sweet-spirited and eager to invite us to prasad, vegetarian meals offered to anyone willing to stop in at the ashram. Prasad, delicious food served without meat or garlic and onions (too stimulating to the passions), translates as ‘mercy’, and the artfully arranged repast is first offered to God before the monks divvy it up among themselves and their guests. Viewing food a manifestation of divine mercy is utterly beautiful, and surely the hungry and malnourished that were fed by these monks understood this metaphor profoundly.
One day I drifted into a small bedroom where about seven monks were seated on a bed. They were reading the Bhagavad-Gita and the eldest among them seemed to be giving an exegesis on it. They made me feel welcome, and immediately switched the discussion from Hindi to English. They were eager to field my questions about Hare Krishna, and answered them eloquently. One particular monk, probably about 25 years old but with the demeanor of a child, had genuine bliss and peace written on his face. He explained that the highest pleasure possible was the pleasure of communing with the Lord through chanting. In fact, chanting the names of the Lord was all one needed to do in this life. The monks, bald except for a swash of hair on the back of their heads, had chosen to lead lives of complete abstinence, renouncing sex, meat, and any form of psychotropic substance, even tea.
The young monk with child-like purity explained that all earthly pleasures are inconsequential when compared to the ‘supreme pleasure’, the overwhelming joy felt in ‘Krishna consciousness’. He affirmed that even those with the worst karma, people born with severe handicaps or subjected to intense suffering and trauma throughout their lives, could still find such ultimate bliss through the practice of chanting in praise of Krishna. This supreme joy did not come immediately, but required extensive dedication and spiritual disciplines, for some devotees even requiring decades. Similar to the Christian concept of Grace, the joy bestowed by Lord Krishna would come only when the devotee surrendered himself and his ego completely. He taught me the chant, which I immediately recognized as the refrain in the Beatles’ “My Sweet Lord.”
We walked to the Ganges River at night to witness the cremation ceremonies. The Ganges is the most sacred rivers for Hindus, and they believe that those who die in Varanasi are granted moksha, release from the wheel of rebirth and death. If you die at Varanasi, you have shed the karmic shackles chaining you to incarnation. Down at the ghats, ancient stone steps leading into the river and built by past kings, we witnessed the construction and ignition of a funeral pyre. The fire is tended by a caste of Sudras (a.k.a ‘untouchables’) known as the Doma, and they are the only ones ritually permitted to handle human corpses. The Doma, who themselves sleep on the cremation grounds, maintain an ‘eternal fire’, tended day and night and which allegedly has been burning for over a thousand years. Some corpses are forbidden to be cremated, including young children, pregnant women, murder victims, snake-bite victims, and lepers. These corpses, as well as those who could not afford a proper cremation ceremony, are thrown into the Ganges, weighted down with stones in the hope that they remain submerged.
The Ganges, despite contamination from human remains and all forms of waste, is considered so holy that a mere bath in its waters can cleanse a lifetime’s worth of sins from the soul. The ghats teem not only with bathing sadhus, dreadlocked wandering holy men, but also with regular Hindus who make pilgrimages to Varanasi to refresh their spirit in the waters of ‘mother Ganga’. Eager for any forgiveness of sins, I subdued the screaming voice of hygienic reason and plunged in the river from the stone steps. As I had been instructed to do, as I submerged my body I prayed that the remainder of my life and my family’s lives be happy and peaceful. Call it psychological, but I did feel good afterward. I felt clear and cleansed as I walked up the ghats, wet and shivering in the cool of the early morning.
I noticed that across the wide river, there was nothing except a deserted flood plain and a small community of rickety lean-tos. Our self-appointed guide, a local street kid and hustler with a good heart, explained that those people were a band of Aghori ascetics, perhaps the most bizarre and feared religious sect in all of India, if not the world. The Aghori, who eschew clothing, wear long dreadlocks, and smear their naked bodies with human ashes, can be distinguished from other sadhus by their carrying of human bones, usually a skullcap used as an alms bowl and drinking cup. Rejected by mainstream Hindu society, the Aghori destroy any lines of support from community or family and spend their lives alone on the fringes of society. Sleeping in charnel grounds across North India, they engage in cannibalism of corpses, necrophilia, the eating of human feces, and the consumption of stupefying amounts of cannabis and alcohol.
I did not believe these claims at first (everybody in India was a vegetarian for God’s sake!), but the locals with whom I inquired confirmed these claims about the Aghori. One shopkeeper I befriended, even claimed that his own guruji, spiritual teacher, practiced cannibalism. While this guru was a vegetarian 99.9% of his life, a few times a year he ritualistically cut up a corpse into 108 pieces and consumed a small morsel of the flesh. My first instinct was to write off the Aghori as the mentally ill who had no safety net from family or society; however, the people in Varanasi not only feared the Aghori, they respected them.
Indeed, the true Aghori approach to enlightenment is balls-to-the-fucking-wall, seeking the inner light in absolute darkness. By consuming and embracing filth, death, and decay, the Aghori sever attachment to the world and their own bodies. Their practices make them acutely aware that their own flesh and blood will one day rot and then vanish. They claim that embracing filth and conquering the fear of impurity allows them to fully realize the illusion of duality. In other words, nothing is pure and nothing is impure if your mind is focused on God. If you can still realize God while immersed in the most hideous, you have conquered all fear and are close to enlightenment.
**
Walking through the chaotic ghats mid-morning, a young man making yogurt lassis eagerly summoned me to his stall: Welcome, friend! Bhang lassi?? He realized I didn’t know what he was talking about, and he tried again: My friend, marijuana lassi?? It was 10 am, and I had the whole day free to walk along the ghats and ancient streets—why not? Gleefully, the man mixed together the potion: yogurt made from the street cows’ milk, rosewater, mint, and greenish dough that contained cannabis. He mixed the drink to a bright green color, and I paid him the equivalent of about $1.50.
About half an hour later, the brew hit me like a ton of bricks. I suddenly felt heavy and deliciously relaxed, like that feeling when you are on the threshold of sleep. Whoa, this is strong weed…I summoned the courage to get out of my seat, and I walked through the maze-like streets of the Old City, feeling peaceful and content. After about two hours, I hit the peak and was effectively stoned beyond function. My travel-buddy from the US googled ‘bhang lassi’, and announced to me, high as fuck, that it actually was not cannabis that I had consumed, but some Indian drug that was far more exotic. What the fuck! That was certainly not what I wanted to hear in this state, and I began to get paranoid. To make matters worse, none of the locals seemed to know what was in the bhang lassi, the only information they could provide being was that it was usually taken at a festival in honor of Shiva and that it made the user ‘fly’. What the fuck!
Eventually, I came back to Earth, and I tracked down the man who had sold me the concoction.
Hello, friend! Another bhang lassi??
No, not tonight. Would you please tell me what exactly is in the Bhang Lassi?
Yes, very simple: yogurt, water, rosewater…and a secret mixture of herbals.
He listed off the ‘herbals’, and the only ones I recognized were marijuana and opium. Fucking great—I got drugged. At least all of the ingredients were allegedly plants, but I will never know.
**
The emotions of death permeate the atmosphere of Varanasi. Walking along the ghats at night, almost completely abandoned at this hour, I heard chilling and beautiful music emanating from a broken building where sadhus and the homeless slept. The music was simple, only drums and a voice, but it cut to my soul and was indescribably melancholic. The wails of the singer seem to tap into the suffering and anguish of countless past lives, the anguish of separation from your mother and your beloved countless times through the abyss of samsara.
Arriving at the ghats at sunset the next day to hear the daily puja, this same wave of sorrow and recognition of death flowed through my heart. I sat above the ghats in an ancient tower and listened to the chanting of Vedic hymns accompanied by percussion from hundreds of drums and bells, and it occurred to me that this entire city was built thousands of years ago to address this sad, universal fate that humans still don’t understand. Remembering the burning bodies on the ghats from the night before, the somber chanting and music reminded me that I myself, as well as my loved ones, are also approaching that final destination. The music conveyed the pain and incomprehensibility of the soul’s journey through samsara, the endless suffering through infinite lifetimes. But there was also the knowledge of the glorious beauty of the voyage—the love, compassion, and joy that are ultimately inextricable from the darkness. Here was one of the few times in my life that I felt the Sublime, grasping the sheer miracle that is my life.
