Varanasi and Sarnath

After Mark rallied like a champ from his brief digestive bout with the help of Katy's healing hand, we ventured to Varanasi (also called Benares), the holiest city of the Hindu faith. Varanasi is almost beyond description. It is one of the oldest cities in the world, and daily life for its inhabitants has remained more or less the same for several thousand years. I literally found myself thinking that certain snapshots of life here that I witnessed could have been exactly the same in the time when the Buddha walked these streets. It is the city of Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction, and Hindus (82% of all Indians) come here to be cleansed by the Ganges (Ganga) River. If you die and are cremated here, you end the cycle of reincarnation. Katy and I both decided to stay alive, but we appreciated the intimate experience of death that is common and pronounced in this place. We found ourselves discussing how and why our Western culture tends to keep death and dying hidden away out of view and out of mind. Not in Varanasi. The bodies are cremated on the shores of the river over open flames.

It is challenging for the Western mind to reconcile how the people of Varanasi can treat the Ganges as their public bath, toilet, and sacrosanct spiritual water source, all in one. I suppose one way of viewing this is to realize that for these people, there simply is no separation of daily life and spiritual life. Mundane tasks such as brushing your teeth need not seem strangely juxtaposed to the most sacred and revered act of worship. Many faith traditions preach continuity of ordinary life and religious life, but this is the practice in action as no other.

Varanasi is dirty, really dirty. After walking the streets for an hour or two, your nose begins to run and you find yourself coughing from the inhilation of dirt, pollution, smoke, and animal (including human) debris everywhere. This is the condition of much of urban India, but it's particularly alarming in this place.

We also made a day trip from here to Sarnath, the location of the Buddha's first lecture after attaining enlightenment under the Bodhi tree. Despite this being the birthplace of Buddhism, only a couple percent of all Indians claim this spiritual tradition. If you've read the book, Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse, this is the "Deer Park", and looks just like what I pictured from his description in the novel. It was very cool to imagine monks and Hindu holy men gathered around, listening to this new philosophical breakthrough from a recently enlightened being. It is said that the message was so potent, several in the crowd realized nirvana upon the conclusion of his remarks hitting their ears. In other words, he described reality with such lucidity that it just plain made sense to his intimate audience of yogic practitioners.

written by

Katy and Mark Lewis on April 25, 2009 from Varanasi, India

from the travel blog: India and Nepal

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