Remembering Varanasi...and remembering death

Earlier today I set the picture of the Ganges ,that Palden had posted, as my desktop wallpaper and consequently have been reflecting on the time we spent there.

As a westerner in a foreign country I felt that I should have been more surprised by India...but I wasn't really. It all seemed familiar, different, but still familiar. I remember picturing what it would be like months before we even left...and what I pictured was what Varanasi was. In considering all the places we traveled, I recall feeling very at home in Varanasi, moreso even than Bodhgaya.

There was something very familiar about many things in Varanasi...about the way that the fog drifted in from the Ganges to completely immerse our hotel and the way that the air seemed to have a substance to it...it could be felt against your skin and it could be parted as you waved your hand through it...it even had a taste and a odor to it...not bad, but a moistness. I never recall seeing a sunrise or sunset in Varansai. The sky simply seemed to gradually lighten and change from dark grey to white to pink in the morning and in the evening darken slowly over the similarly mysterious color of the Ganges.

There was even something familiar in the meandering and maze-like back roads in which one had to carefully watch foot placement in order to stay upright. I don't even remember what they were made out of...perhaps a puzzle of stone and dirt and gravel. For one who has always had problems not getting lost, I never got lost on those back roads, and I had no fear of venturing out after dark.

The flames and acrid smoke of the burning ghats did not shock me...it seemed perfectly normal to stand there and observe the fate that will be mine someday. Fire cleanses, and I am not afraid of death...I am afraid of not living life, of not accomplishing what I came here to do...I am afraid of regret...

Varanasi seemed very alive to me; old, ancient even, but very much alive. I would like to return there someday...and in the meantime I will live my life so when my time comes I will have no regrets...I will be ready...just as I hope those individuals were...those bodies being consumed by flames. I hope that they were ready for death when their time came

...that was what struck me most about the burning ghats, not that those people were dead...but that they had been alive...they had been alive when we got on the plane...when we arrived in India...and perhaps they never knew that their time was coming to an end...

Life is uncertain, and thus one must always be ready, one must always be prepared, and one must live each day remembering that uncertainty....one must live every day remembering death...not to make you afraid or paranoid...but so you will be ready...so you will have no regrets.