Varanasi: India's city where people come to die
bbc.com
bbc.com
If you go there it’s also worth paying a boatman to row you to the opposite bank, which is a very different place to the center of Varanasi.
If you want to see a similar but also very different settlement on the Ganges, Rishikesh is also amazing, I liked it more than Varanasi. There’s more access to nature and it has a comparable spiritual heartbeat. The Beatles wrote the White Album in an ashram (now deserted and half reclaimed by jungle) just on the outskirts. Shiva watches the mighty, unpredictable river that becomes calm and docile by the time it reaches Varanasi.
Just a heads-up - some of the buildings that make these twisting alleyways are being torn down to make larger walkway towards the Kashi-Vishwanatha.
https://thewire.in/politics/kashi-vishwanath-corridor-up-bjp
https://www.firstpost.com/india/varanasi-locals-unhappy-with...
I don't understand how people can do that to family.
A look at daily life in the city of Benares (another name of Varanasi), India, one of the most religious places in the country.
It's streaming free on Prime (https://smile.amazon.com/Forest-Bliss-Robert-Gardner/dp/B01M...)
The point of spiritual training is to become free from any form of conditioning (not cultural only, natural instincts like disgust and fear too). Of course you don't need the actual ability to mess with burning corpses, surely it is useless from the practical point of view but the fact you feel bad about it means you are conditioned, an unconscious complex (a samskara - a building block of karma) in your psyche controls you and the goal is to annihilate all of these so you can experience and do anything blissfully, without giving a fuck. The result is a "now I can do anything, feel and think whatever and whenever I choose so I am free" achievement, it also means dissolution of duality and realization of union with the divine.
A simple experiment that i often use to show people the power of mental conditioning is to lay down a picture of their favourite/personal god/deity and ask them to deliberately step on it with their foot (extra points if they do it with shoes on!). Almost everybody recoils and will not do it and the ones who attempt it (out of a sense of "need to win the argument in the heat of the moment", a classic example of ego temporarily overcoming conditioning) still feel bad about it for days afterwards until they do a "good deed" to balance away "the sin". It is illuminating when you think about it and brings home the point that "everything is in your head".
But here is a very visually stunning documentary on Varanasi and features Aghori sadhus to get a better insight into their mindset...
https://womennewsnetwork.net/2007/11/05/nothing-to-go-back-t...
I can't imagine living in such a situation. One day, you're a fine and valued member of society. And then your (often much older) husband dies, and it is all gone. You have nothing, and you are worth nothing to the rest of society, because you aren't even allowed to earn anything.
If you want the read the un-biased facts and stories for pre-British and pre-Mugoul India then I would highly recommended: "India as they Saw" book which is collection of snippets from travel journal from foreign visitors to India during that time period.
And imagine the life of priests (pundits) there. Some of them are in this business from the time they are young, then all through their life. Some funeral directors in US may see less people in a year than they may see in a week. Just amazing. Sorry to have just gone on...
In America we have an odd relationship with the inevitable. Sometimes people get a terminal diagnosis, and sometimes they fight it. Two of my former passengers (I have a few I stay in touch with) were recently witnesses to some rather terrible death experiences related to cancer. One was the passenger's daughter-in-law's mother (breast cancer -> metastatic cancer), the other was the passenger's mother (uterine cancer -> metastatic cancer). I drove the one passenger's mother to her first cancer surgery, 4 years ago. She was a fighter until the very end, and only spent a few days on hospice care.
My mom's 95 year old friend has been waiting to die for a few years -- she'd had a stroke 7 years ago, and can't speak coherently. Mom and the other caretaker told the woman's doctors that the 95 year old has absolutely no desire to prolong her suffering, but the doctors kept treating her like an 85-year-old with plenty of life ahead of her. Patients are worth more that way, I think.
Commenting on the 95 year old's predicament, my brother said sometimes it's best if one's ticker just stops ticking, and not trying too hard to keep it going (with stents and pacemakers and the like).
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When you got woken up at night by the nurses feeding him via a nasal tube was a bit grim.
He survived Qing, Khivan khanate, Russian empire, commies, many of his children, and two of his wives, one of whom was 15 years younger than him. Nothing of modern era ever delighted him. I think, for like 30 years, he sat and waited for his days to end.
Boredom frightens me as much as death, if not more
The Khivan khanate thing sticks out at me. I lived a year in central asia, I'd love to hear more.
Khiva was still at least nominally a vassal, but somewhat independent state. A decade after they arrived, Russia finally annexed it completely, but only to be toppled itself by communists just few years later.
At the point of failure, his heart was at 10%, lungs at 20%, kidney on dialysis, swelling in body, GI bleeding, but conscious and tired.
All were treatable but only after surgery which nobody was sure he could endure.
When things got bad, there was no option but surgery. He passed away shortly after emergency surgery.
The grandchildren witnessed and were there to take care of him. They witnessed the parents taking care of him. They witnessed family coming together and LIVING. They were part of a tradition that needs to live on. Because deep inside it nurtures a thing called care and love. In community.
The sick and dying exist and persist to nurture a calmness in our communities and it is essential in an era when time is moving faster than life.
There is a saying that goes like "Curse be he who witnesses his parents reach old age but does not take care of them." Not everyone is fortunate to witness that."
There's absolutely a need for many Americans (and perhaps other Westerners) to re-examine approaches to death, and judgment about when it's best to prolonging life and when it's best to avoid intervening.
But that reckoning may not be as thoughtful as it needs to be if it's all about thresholds of individual capability; it may need to be nested in a larger conversation about what makes life valuable as age may diminish that capability.
I keep trying to tell people Woking is the Vienna of the South East.
All those Middle aged tennis fans and delegates really lower the age profile :-)
Provocation cannot be a foundation for intellectual exploration. Intellectual exploration always begins with your desire to know and understand things you "do not know or understand". If you come to a debate with opinions already formed then it transforms from being a debate on points to a fight of opinions. With the former, you leave with a better understanding (or not) but with the latter you leave with nothing but the opinion you started with coupled with wasted time and energy.
To me, they are more of celebrities than real saints.
They don't even live the life of austerity. They live luxorious lives. They have indirect access to hundreds of acres of lands and money. They like to stay in limelight.
Before you go and judge him just take that into the account. Ask yourself, what have you done for other people? Even if he has some sort of a capitalist agenda, at least his main motive in the public context is to be helpful to others.
How do you decide if some saint is real saint or just a fraud (in the sense he doesn't mean what he preaches)? What is the test?
These kind of saints live like rich people. They have access to loads of money. Saint like Ramdev has access to hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of acres of lands. They buy hundreds of acres of lands from government at 75-80% discounts. What kind of austerity and spirituality can they preach? To me, any saint who likes to stay in limelight, lives in palace like ashram, uses PR to bolster his image, hangs with celebrities is nothing but a thug.
I don't understand how you can assume stuff like this when it is not even the least bit true. Neither Sadguru nor Ravi Shankar have ever claimed to be a Saint/Sanyasi.
If you are not a Hindu then it is understandable to get confused with these terminologies. So I'll assume you aren't and explain the meanings behind these words in the context of Hinduism.
> Saint like Ramdev has access to hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of acres of lands. They buy hundreds of acres of lands from government at 75-80% discounts. What kind of austerity and spirituality can they preach?
Now let us address issue of Ramdev as he is a Saint/Sanyasi (in the context of Hinduism). A Sanyasi, in Hinduism, is one who has given up material desires for himself but can be involved in the society he resides in. A Sanyasi is not barred from working towards public good in Hinduism. There are plenty of examples of this in Hindu scriptures:
Lord Krishna is himself referred to in the Mahabharata as the greatest Sanyasi. Wasn't he married? Wasn't he the King of Dwaraka? Did he not fight multiple wars? And was he not himself involved in the Mahabharata war? Why then did he refer to himself as the greatest Sanyasi while narrating the Gita to Arjuna? He was a Sanyasi because even though he was involved in the materialistic life he remained detached from it. Saṃnyāsa is a state of mind that is achieved by being detached mentally from the materialistic life rather than physically.
On the other hand, what you are talking about exists and it has a specific word in Sanskrit: It is called "Vairāgya". Do not confuse Vairāgya with Saṃnyāsa (or Sanyasa).
The biggest problem is that people try to interpret Hindu scriptures through Western concepts and completely misunderstand the true meaning behind those words. Worst yet, if they come from another religion they try to compare and contrast Hinduism with meanings defined in their own Religious texts. It is natural to do so because the human brain always tends to find similarities to familiarise itself with the unknown. If you lookup the meaning of Sanyasi in English the nearest word would be Saint. Lookup meaning of Vairāgyi and it will be Saint as well. Now how is that a fault of Sanskrit if there are not enough English words to express these different words succinctly?
You can learn about the differences between Sanyasi, Guru and Saint here (the top answer explains it really well): https://www.quora.com/What-is-difference-between-Sadhu-Saint...
Sadguru himself explains what the difference is between a Guru and a Saint in English: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Deh7k-ohE-I
Now you may have problems with them running a business. However, Hindu scriptures don't prohibit it in any manner. In the Ancient days, Sanyasis themselves ran Universities and took donations (called Guru Dakshina) from Kings and in return imparted education to their heirs. The Vairāgyis, which you were referring to as Saints, were actually few and far between even in those Ancient times.
So no. A Sanyasi is not barred from running a business or holding a political office as long as he does it for the greater good and not for personal benefits. Sanyasis in the past have even taken up weapons to fight and protect people. You can read up on "Nath Siddhas" or "Mahants", who in the 12th Century, fought battles with Mongols and Persian invaders and it continued all the way till the British rule over India until Gandhi started the non-violent movement. If you travel around India, especially in villages in Uttar Pradesh, you'll get to hear stories about these Warrior Saints. Many of these stories remain undocumented to this day and remain as folklore.
Not just that. There are instances of Sanyasis having ruled Kingdoms as well. Vidyaranya was a Saint who was entrusted with ruling the Kingdom of Vijayanagara (present day Hampi, Karnataka, India) during the Navratri festival by the Empire's founders (Harihara Raya I and Bukka Raya I).
Hinduism is pretty vast and intricate with lots of historic events due to it being the oldest surviving religion. Having surface level understanding of it will only take you so far.
> How do you decide if some saint is real saint or just a fraud (in the sense he doesn't mean what he preaches)? What is the test?
A fraud is one who misinterprets and misrepresents scriptures. It is as simple as that. Ram Rahim, Osho and Asharam fall in that category. They exploit by twisting the meaning in scriptures to their advantage. The test is quite simple: you have public access to Hindu scriptures. Just check if what they claim can be validated against the scriptures. If they can't then obviously they are twisting it for their own gains. It is as simple as that.
Frauds exist in all Religions. Some frauds do it for illicit gains, some for meeting political objectives, some for forced conversions and some for terrorism. The fault lies with the people who support them blindly without comparing and contrasting with their own scriptures. A majority of the time it is blind following rather than conscious reasoning that is the cause for all such issues.
The tech-delusional HN crowd will never learn to appreciate this wisdom. For most, seeing an elephant deity is enough to trigger full-blown ignorance.