Atman is Brahman

VARANASI, INDIA

The river Ganga flows by like it has for thousands of years, even before this great and ancient city which surrounds me appeared on its banks. The Ghats of Varanasi, India creep out from the entrails of the catacomb like Manikarnika district and disappear into the muddy flow of the holy water. Giver of life, embracer of the dead, lifeblood of India, the Ganga flows on. Varanasi, the holiest of all holy cities to over 850 million Hindus worldwide decays into the waters. It is a city both pulsing with life and crumbling at its foundations. The ultimate symbol of a country rooted firmly in its past while blossoming towards its future potential.

The eldest son of a deceased set of parents squats amongst the squalor and smoke. His best friend, maybe his uncle stands over him and produces a disposable straight razor, the type that looks like it belongs in an exacto-knife. The helper dips his dark russet hands into a bucket of Ganga water he has brought up from the riverbank. His palms look like buttery carmel contrasting with his dark sun baked forearms. He dumps the water over the head of the stoic son, grabs a handful of his dark black hair in his fist and begins to shave him.

The smell of burning bodies wafts past as I watch this ancient ritual unfold. A funeral prossession passes by un-noticing, focused on their own duties, the duty of burning their loved one on the Ghats and casting their ashes into the river. Once this task is completed it will guarantee the transcendence of their dead relative beyond the Karmic cycle of Samsara. It will elevate them directly to Moksha, to Nirvana. Placing the ashes of the dead in the river it is the ultimate and only shortcut to a utopian afterlife.

Hunks of thick black hair waft un-ceremoniously from the scalp of the grieving son as his head continues to be shaved. The river water is the only lubricant used to soften the cold burn of the razor as it removes the hair. Only one tuft of hair is left un-scathed in the center of the back of the skull, a hairstyle reserved for those who have lost two parents. It looks lonely and out of place like a single fir tree on a ridge that has been mowed down by hungry axes. The razor is cast aside amongst the dirt and trash where it will wait for the bare feet of untouchable children. This is one of the holiest sites in all of India and so it remains Indian through and through, trash is trash, nothing more. It lies in piles everywhere around the funeral pyres, the razor now hidden amongst it like countless others.

Varanasi, the city of compassion of love of history of shit. Shit is everywhere. People shit, dog shit, cow shit, monkey shit, goat shit, big shits, small shits, hard shits, soft shits. It lays in the open, it lays in the shadows, it cakes the walls in small patties which are collected and molded everyday so that they can dry in the sun and be used for firewood. The shit mingles with the trash in the heat of the day, it becomes stomped upon and ground into a fine pulp which atomizes and rises into the heat of the day like a fog for all to inhale. All is one in Varanasi, Atman in Brahman the world is illusion, we are all part of each other.

The grieving son picks his way down to the river bank weaving between funeral pyres which are already raging, sizzling bodies piled on top turning to holy ash. He finds his pile of wood, stacked like Lincoln Logs in a small depression which has been carved into the river clay. It has been the site of other funerals, thousands of them for thousands of years and one just yesterday. Today it is his pyre, he dumps rose wood chips and sweet oils over the wood and prepares to ignite the pile.

The publicness is suffocating. It seems strange, inconsiderate, distasteful to have such an intimate moment as the final rights of your loved ones laid bare and disclosed in the open. The ceremony, the goodbyes, the tears are there for all to see. The city goes about its business as it always has and always will. From birth to death, life happens amongst a tide of humanity here. Within sight of the funeral youngsters play an impromptu game of cricket, a pair of young lovers flirt hoping no one they know will see, women wash their clothes in the river, children do flips into the water and a con man ambles up to a group of shocked tourists ready to make his share. Life continues on as one life ends.

The son has disappeared momentarily into the chaos above the Ghats. He returns with a procession, his dead mother carried on their shoulders. She is draped in silks and covered in flowers. She is placed on the pile of wood. The son lights the pile with a flame that has been pulled from a sacred fire which has burned in Varanasi for over 2,000 years. According to legend it was lit by the patron Lord Shiva and has been the igniter for all cremations ever since. The small flames begin to lick upward slowly and timidly until they catch sweet oil and aggressively burst to life. The smoke is billowing, the soft wet body of a human being fighting to suffocate the flame. The flame expanding wildly, seeming to know that it has nowhere to go but grow.

The son watches as his dead mother is enveloped in flame. More logs are piled on top as he tends the fire diligently. At times the fire shifts or collapses, revealing the simmering corpse in its midst. Vital organs have burst through the stomach boiling and spitting, exposed to sunlight for the first time only to be met with flame. The logs are piled on again. Again concealing the shell of a human being.

A holy man pauses behind me as intrigued at the scene as I am. His long beard drops to his waist, ivory colored with yellowish strands flowing from his slightly darker mustache. He is dressed in bright orange, a walking stick in one hand. He has bare cracked feet with thick grissled toenails. His hair is wound about his head, the long dreadlocks twisted like a crown of disarray. He has walked here on a pilgrimage from the foothills of the Himalayas. It is the second time he has made this journey on foot. He draws energy from the vibrancy of the city.

The fire has begun to die down. Most of the body is gone but the head hangs out of one end of the fire, the silks which covered it long seared away, the teeth of the skull exposed behind charred lips. The son looks at the carcass of his mother. His duties are almost done. He raises a thick baseball bat sized pole over his head and pauses. Then with all his might he brings the bludgeon down upon the skull. Hot curd-like brains arc into the air as the skull cracks open. They splat into the ash, the earth and the fire with a sizzle. He has released her soul. It is free. He has done his duty as the eldest son. What remains of the body is flopped back onto the fire and a final wave of firewood is layered on top.

I think of the pride the son feels for doing this duty. For having the honor to burn his mother’s body here in Varanasi, for releasing her soul not only from her skull but from the endless cycle of re-birth. I watch as the fire dies down again. I watch as he gathers the ashes of his mother and carries them on a boat into the river. I watch as he dumps them over the side. I look at the children doing flips into the river and the intake for the cities water supply a kilometer farther downriver. I smile. We breath each others shit and drink each others bodies. Atman is Brahman.

AUTHORS NOTE: It is sacrilegious to take photos of the actual pyres at the Manikarnika burning Ghat. For this reason i abstained from shooting. Guess you will have to use your imagination.......