Musical fountain in china with audio of bhagavad gita

Hinduism

© Franz Lemmens/SuperStock

First Encounter

The plane that you have taken to Benares circles in preparation for landing at the Varanasi

airport. Looking down from your window seat, you can see the blue-white Ganges River, quite

wide here. Everything else is a thousand shades of brown. Beyond the coffee-colored city, the

beige fields spread out, seemingly forever.

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At the small airport, a dignified customs inspector with a turban and a white beard asks, “Why

have you come to India?” Before you can think of an appropriate response, he answers his own

question. “I know,” he says with a smile and a wave of the hand. “You people who come to

Benares are all the same.” He shakes his head from side to side. “You have come for

spirituality.” After pausing briefly, he adds, “Haven’t you!” It sounds more like a statement than

a question. It takes you a second to understand his quick pronunciation of that unexpected

word—spirituality. In a way, he is right. You have come for that. You nod in agreement. He

smiles again, writes something down on his form, and lets you through.

As you take the small black taxi to your hotel, you realize that you have just accepted—willingly

or not—the ancient role that the customs inspector has bestowed upon you. You are now just one

more pilgrim who has come to Mother India for her most famous product: religious insight. You

are now a Seeker.

After unpacking at your hotel, you walk out into the streets. It is dusk. Pedicab drivers ring their

bells to ask if you want a ride, but you want to walk, to see the life of the streets. Little shops sell

tea, and others sell vegetarian foods made of potatoes, wheat, beans, and curried vegetables.

Children play in front of their parents’ stores. Down the street you see a “gent’s tailor” shop, as a

thin cow wanders past, chewing on what looks like a paper bag. Another shop sells books and

notepaper, and others sell saris and bolts of cloth. From somewhere comes a smell like jasmine.

As night falls, the stores are lit by dim bulbs and fluorescent lights, and vendors illuminate their

stalls with bright Coleman lanterns. Because you will be rising long before dawn the next day to

go down to the Ganges, you soon return to your hotel. You fall asleep quickly.

The telephone rings, waking you out of a dream. The man at the front desk notifies you that it is

four a.m. Being somewhat groggy, you have to remind yourself that you are in Benares. You get

up and dress quickly.

At the front of the hotel you wake a driver sleeping in his pedicab. You negotiate the fare, climb

onto the seat, and head off to the main crossing of town, near the river, as the sky begins to

lighten. The pedicab drops you near the ghats (the stairs that descend to the river), which are

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already full of people, many going down to the river to bathe at dawn. Some are having

sandalwood paste applied to their foreheads as a sign of devotion, and others are carrying brass

jugs to collect Ganges water.

As you descend to the river, boat owners call to you. You decide to join the passengers in the

boat of a man resembling a Victorian patriarch, with a white handlebar mustache. Off you go,

moving slowly upstream. Laughing children jump up and down in the water as men and women

wade waist-deep and face the rising sun to pray. Upstream, professional launderers beat clothes

on the rocks and lay them out on the stones of the riverbank to dry.

The boat turns back downstream, passing the stairs where you first descended to the river. In the

bright morning light you see large umbrellas, under which teachers sit cross-legged, some with

disciples around them. Who, you wonder, are these teachers? The area near the shore is crammed

with people and boats. On a nearby boat, people shout, Ganga Ma ki Jai—“Victory to Mother

Ganges!”

The boat continues downstream. On the shore, smoke rises from small pyres, where bodies

wrapped in red and white cloth are being cremated. The boatman warns, “No photos here,

please.” The boat pulls in to shore downstream of the pyres, and everyone gets off. Walking up

the stairs, you see small groups of people quietly watching the cremations. At the pyres, a man

tends the fires with a bamboo pole, and a dog wanders nearby.

Later, as you make your way back to the center of town, you notice a pedicab with a covered

body tied onto the back. It cycles past women sitting beside the road, selling plastic bracelets and

colored powders. The pedicab must be on its way to the pyres, you think. The blend of opposites

fills your mind; on the banks of the very same river, laundry is washed and bodies are burned; in

the streets, life and death appear side by side—yet no one seems to notice the contrasts. Here, the

two are one.

The Origins of Hinduism

Looking at a map of India (Figure 3.1, p. 76) you can see that this subcontinent, shaped like a

diamond, is isolated. Two sides face the sea, while the north is bounded by the steep Himalaya

Mountains. There are few mountain passes, and the only easy land entry is via the narrow

corridor in the northwest, in the vicinity of the Indus River, where Pakistan now lies. It is the

relative isolation of India that has helped create a culture that is rare and fascinating.

Figure 3.1 India, Bali, and the area of Hindu influence.

India’s climate, except in the mountain regions, is generally warm for most of the year, allowing

people to live outdoors much of the time. Indeed, some people may even claim that the climate

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