Burning Ghats

We went to the Burning Ghats today. River Ganges. The ash was carried on the wind and sprinkled my zen (meditation shawl) as the fires burned high and bright. And inside me something was burned away. Something just simply melted away from the intensity of impermanence before my eyes.

There is no way to share with you the feeling of being cramped into stretches and stretches of crooked narrow alleyways as bodies wrapped in gold, white or red cloth are carried by, pallbearers signing and bumping into you as they pass. Incense burning and covering the acrid smell of soot and coal and urine in the streets.

There is something revealed that has to do with valuing this precious life, being less attached to the beauty of our bodies and more interested in interior wealth. There is something having to do with being able to fearlessly pray for these beings who have recently passed, while standing in the cremation grounds on the Ganges and in the alleyways that lead to them.

Bodies carried to the Ganges are purified in its waters and then burned as pujaris pray to release their consciousness to a higher level of being. There we were, 25 meditators, Tibetan sadhus as we were called in the streets, praying at the Burning Ghats, adding to the prayers already being said, praying that they reach the heights of their process and beyond.

(PS: For the person less experienced with Tibetan Buddhism or Hindu Saddhus, we are not the equivalent of Hindu Saddhus, but they are considered holy men on a fast track to enlightement, which sort of fits. At leat the fast track part)