Wander

We took some time to do some exploring in the small city where we are staying. It began with something really crazy. A drive to the top of one of the mountains that surrounds Surkhet valley where we are staying. 

To the Right is the mountain we drove up. The picture is taken from the roof of the small hotel /hostel we are staying in.

At first the road was they typical bad road that I have come to expect in this rural western Nepali region but as we went further and further up the mountain the road went from typical bad to unbelievably bad to "are we sure this is even meant for a car?" kind of bad. 

When we finally arrived at the summit, I took a minute to get my stomach out of my throat, then proceeded to hike around and see the sights. There were some small shops, and by shops I mean small huts with a few things for sale in them. 

It is a sheer drop from the top of this part of the mountain to the valley floor. When the updrafts are right thrill seeking hang gliders will launch from up here.

A short trail around the top gave us great views of Surkhet Valley which has become the new district and provincial capital so there have been a lot of construction and improvement projects in the works which means the roads are a mess, only short sections are paved.

We explored around the summit area for a while and began the stomach wrenching drive 

back down to the base of the mountain. After a short drive and time for recovery we made to a Hindu temple and worship area. The Deuti Bajai Mandir is the most well known Temple in Surkhet. There is a specially dedicated area for offerings to be made by the foot impressions of Shiva on a rock. 

This Shrine complex to Shiva (inside) is a hub of Hindu worship and religious activity at certain times of the year.

I am not sure what people offer to Shiva but I can tell you the flies really appreciated the offerings.There was one priestess there helping people with their offerings. There were also to women who were washing out one of the shrines. I suppose even the gods need baths 

once in a while. It is interesting that there are candles lit on the side of the shrine symbolic of prayers like Catholics do, and there are bells towards the front for prayers like the Buddhists. It seems that religious activity is religious activity no matter where you go. It is like... pick a religion, light a candle, say the right words and hope someone is listening.

After the Hindu temple we took a stroll through a park which was really a welcome change from the hustle and bustle of the dusty roads and angry horns of vehicles trying to tell you to get out of the way so they could get by. It was about as close to zen as I have come on this trip.

Bulbul Lake is one of the bright spots in this dusty city. It was recently cleaned and renovated and now seems to be a hub for teens to hang out.

We walked around appreciated a few moments of quiet and serenity and headed out for the last part of our excursion. The site we were headed to next is perhaps one of the oldest if not thee oldest touristy site in Surkhet. A little slice of history is what I really love.

This Buddhist temple or perhaps shrine is better is called Kakre Bihar. It is a Hindu-Buddhist Temple Near Birendranagar city where we are staying. Kakre Bihar has a shaped like the seed of a cucumber so it is called Kakre bihar. The Nepali word 

for cucumber is Kakro. The stones of what remains are strewn around the site and you can see by walking around that they are recreating the intricate designs of the broken stones so that each piece can be replicated and replaced.

This temple is believed to be built on 12th century by a famous king who fell in love with the Surkhet Valley. It was destroyed by an earthquake in 1866. Form what I can tell reconstruction this has been a very long process beginning back in the 1980s.

There is a somber beauty that surrounds this place. Almost like walking through a graveyard that even though it looks like it is falling apart you know there is some very old even ancient significance and presence to it. I wonder what it was like 500 years ago to walk the steps to this temple. I wonder how people felt as they approached its imposing size. Perhaps like the Europeans as they approach the Gothic Cathedrals of the middle ages - and still today. 

I suppose this is what religions do. They build massive and impressive structures hoping these structures will impress the God or gods they revere and honor. Religion wants to remind you how small you are compared to the greatness of the deity to which it points. They tell you this is where you have to go to worship your god so that when you get there you can't help but think how small you are when thinking about this god.

What would be really impressive is if one of those gods or God lived as a human so that they knew what it was like to suffer and experience pain and loss rather than just imposing their will all the time. Is that too much to ask? Hmmmm

Just a Meandering Thought...

RISHIKESH

Rishikesh is a holy area along the Ganges River several miles from Hari Dwar. It became famous in the West after the Beetles went there in (‘67?). They met with a guru and stayed in one of the Ashrams here by the river.

A couple make an offering to the River goddess Gunga. They put flowers purchased at a shop owned by one of the Ashrams place them in the jar of water scooped out of the river, then pour both back to the river.

An Ashram is a Hindu Monastery. The place the Beetles visited is no longer in existence, well… it is there but it is a hotel now. When that Guru died people stopped coming to that Ashram and it fell into disrepair until it was purchased by the hotel.

This is a Temple inside an Ashram near the river bank.

If you want to visit an Ashram there is certainly no shortages of them in Rishikesh. Rishikesh has one of the highest concentrations of Ashrams in India. Almost every building here is in some way part of an Ashram or is owned by an Ashram. Some have sprawling complexes where entire families will live, they are not just for meditative monks.

Men and idols under a Bodhi tree, the same tree under which Siddhartha was sitting when he attained enlightenment and became Buddha.

There are also many places in Rishikesh that teach how to read Sanskrit, the holy language for Hindus. All of Hinduism's holy scriptures are written in Sanskrit. It is a dead language but the holy men of Hinduism only read the scriptures in Sanskrit.

A guru reading the Sanskrit scriptures who whoever will sit for a while and listen.

There are many places where I saw very old men sitting by the Ganges and reading the Vedas or the Gitas in what looked like very old books. These men are thought of as very holy men. The two holy locations in the area are Hari Dwar, which I have already written on, and Rishikesh. These two places each have their specialty. Hari Dwar is holy because of the mythological stories about its origin. It is the place where you go to perform holy rituals.

Rishikesh may be the place where people go for Hindu learning, but since it is on the River, thousands of people will come here to wash their sins away in the river.

The area in and around Rishikesh is where the ancient Brahmin priests would go to get away from the world to meditate for long periods of time. It was during the middle of the first millennium b.c. roughly when the Upanishads were written. Today Rishikesh is a center of learning and study and gaining holy knowledge. Hari Dwar is the place do holy rituals, Rishikesh is the place you go to gain holy knowledge. Hence all the Ashrams where you sit under guru and learn the holy scriptures, and all the places where you can learn Sanskrit.

One of the most prominent features of Rishikesh is the huge suspension bridge that spans the entire breadth of the Ganges river. Whenever you see pictures of Rishikesh you will see pictures of the bridge. This bridge is about the width of your average sidewalk. Yet you will have four of five or ten people trying to walk in the same space, and believe it or not while walking across the bridge myself, a motorcycle went right past me.

The entire month of July is the pilgrimage month and the holy pilgrimage color is orange. It has something to do with the color of the sunset and how the color symbolizes the going down into the river and then coming up as a newly washed person. Just as the color of the sky when the sun is setting and rising. So many people were bathing it was extremely crowded. A lot of people have a lot that they need to cleanse in the their soul. I am not sure they find what they are looking for though. The Hindu scriptures say nothing of absolution. Each of these people will come back and do the same thing next year with no sense of certainty that they are getting what they came here for.

WASHED

As we walked along the bridge that crossed the Ganges river we were able to see the full breadth of activity that surrounds the Ganges myths. People will travel thousands of miles for the chance to dip in the Ganges at this specific place on the river. This river is holy to them; not just because it has the cleansing effect of their souls, but because the river is an actual goddess. When they step into the river they are immersing themselves in the goddess Gunga. They wash themselves with the goddess Gunga who takes their sins, also called bad Karma, with her down the river.

A man begging on the side of the road on our way to the river

Much of the Hindu beliefs and traditions center around the role that the Ganges plays. As I watched I tried to get my mind around the fact that people have been coming to this river to wash away their sins for centuries even millennia. I wondered to myself:

• What are these people thinking as they step into the river?
• What are they thinking as they throw water over their shoulders?
• As they strip down to their underwear and wade into the cold mountain waters do they think about what it feels like to be completely surrounded by a deity?
• Do they genuinely believe that this river is a goddess or do they wash simply wash out of tradition?

The poor and homeless walk side by side with those who are well off. Both equally need to wash in the River.

There was a man there who had set up a tarp tied to a tree. This is where he would live during the pilgrimage season. Typically he is naked but at the time we were walking by he had a towel wrapped around him. He is thought of a more holy because he walks around naked and goes into the river naked. He sets up a make shift home next to a goddess, so that he can be close to her, and wades into her naked so that he can be closer to her than anyone else. For this, he is holy.

• I wonder what people are searching for.
• I wonder if they find it.
• I wonder when they lay their heads on their pillow or their mat at night if what they think to themselves.
• Are they grateful for the chance to step into the river… the goddess?
• Are they grateful and fulfilled for having their sins washed away?

In Christianity people are forgiven of sin by God. For the Hindu the goddess does not forgive sins she simply washes them away. It speaks to the relational nature of Christianity and the pantheistic and ritualistic nature of Hinduism. An unfortunate aspect of the lure of the Ganges is that the Ganges is also a good place for to make money. Not only are there a lot of beggars hoping to capitalize on people's generosity while they are in a religious mood, but there are countless venders selling items from containers to bring home the mystical waters of the Ganges the people selling henna tattoos.

These stores and shops are just a few of the hundreds of shops and vendors that can be seen along the river. So simply put out a blanket and lay out holy trinkets.

There are those who are simply there to make some money off those who are aware of their need to do good and take advantage of the giving mood that many are in as they go through their rituals. Ironically, a place that is set aside for religious devotion, is also a place that many as a time to make a buck, (or a rupee). And when they see white people they see dollar signs.

When you see women using their children as a means to tug on the hearts strings of visitors to compel them to give them some money it is difficult to understand the feelings that well up. Is it sadness or anger? Unfortunately, many times the money you give them does not actually go to them. Often they are part of a ring of people who are forced to do this by one a few others.

As I think about how sad it is, I am forced to acknowledge that churches or perhaps more accurately, Christian religious leaders in the U.S. do the same thing. The only reason it does not seem as sad is because the people they prey on are not trying to get their next meal. Some of the great works of serving the poorest of the poor have been done by devotees of religion, I think of Mother Theresa as one example. But some of the worst atrocities have also been done in the name of religion, the example everyone knows is the Crusades, but historically the Muslims were every bit as barbaric as the Christians. Definitely not a high point for either religion, or its leaders.

I was also struck at the dichotomy that I observed here. In one place set back from the river there were a couple of really nice hotels, and about a twenty minute drive from the river there were several really nice hotels. These hotels exist for the rich to come in from all over the world to wash in the Ganges, and then leave once they are “clean”. But to get to the Ganges they have to pass by the thousands who are stuck in dwellings that are nothing more than sheets of plastic that barely keep out the rain.

I thought that the Ganges was a place where people would go to have some kind of profound personal religious experience, but what I saw was a lot of families who had come to make a day out of coming to the Ganges. It was a family affair for many. Others were there to make some money. Still others were there out of tradition. But for whatever the reason, everyone was there to get something from the river. Everyone there had some kind of need that they expected the river could meet. For one a clean soul, for another, the people who would have money which could meet their physical needs.

GRAVEYARD

On Saturday we drove up and down… but mostly up these very windy roads through very steep mountains, which are actually the foothills of the Himalayas going as high as 10,000 feet here.

One of the many twisty and windy roads on our way into the mountains... ahem... foothills.

In some places the drop offs down the side of the road were at least 1,000 feet… and there are NO guardrails.

As I mentioned in my previous post “OFF” cows and monkeys were common sights, and in the little villages we would pass through men carrying heavy loads was also a common sight. The first place we stopped on our Saturday outing was a British graveyard.

This is a portion of the road we walked to get to the graveyard. They built spaces in the retaining wall for trees to continue to grow rather than cut them down. The root systems gives stability to the soil during the rainy season.

Land is precious in India. Hindu’s do not bury their dead because they believe it defiles the land. Instead they burn dead bodies or simply send them down the holy rivers. In order for the British to get a plot of land where it was okay for them to bury their dead it had to be land no one else wanted or land that was useful for little else. Hence this British Cemetery, which is actually in Landour (part of Musoorie) is on the side of a very steep mountain slope. Most of the soldiers who were buried here died of Malaria around the time of WWI; some, however, were from well before that time.

The picture to the right may give you a small idea as to the slope that we were on. The grave on he left is a more prominent one that was close to the wall and a little easier to get a picture of.

The gate was locked (see pics below) and apparently we were not supposed to be inside but the wall broken down around the side which gave us the opportunity to get a closer look. Dehra dun was a British hill station for many years until the independence in 1947. This brought a strong British cultural influence to the region; it is why we have tea time here at the college.

The stones that you see in these pictures were only about three feet long. Maybe the Brits were a lot shorter in those days, but I think that because of the degree of the slope they simply could not make full length coffins.

British soldiers and officers were stationed in Dehra dun and many officers had homes in the foothills towns like Musoorie where we went for our Saturday excursion. Musoorie started as a place where British soldiers would recover from war wounds and sicknesses but eventually it grew into a community and a popular vacation place for officers. There is also a military school here somewhere though we did not see it. That being said, when British soldiers died, the closest place where they could be buried was here.

A slightly different angle. It is eery to think that the person who was buried here was laid to rest so far from his homeland. He may have living relatives who have never visited his grave or even know that he is here. It was a quiet, beautiful, and lonely place.

This photo to me is a depiction of the Indian culture and the Cross. The culture is closed and and locked to anything outside of Indian culture...

...but the Cross is at work in ways that none of us can really understand. Jesus is already inside the gates. The gates of Hell can not prevail, nor can the gates of culture or politics.

These two pictures give a good illustration of the attitude towards Christianity here. Some are closed to the idea, others think anything is possible. What you focus on will determine what you see.

Just a Meandering Thought...


After the Graveyard we had lunch and then went to the FALLS (the last portion of our day off) which will be in the next post.

CLASS

On Friday, at 10:30am, after morning tea (a leftover tradition from the when the British ruled) one of the professors asked me if I would be willing to take his class which meets at 11:40am. and two classes next week. I thought about it for like a second and said sure. Needless to say there was little time to spare. But for those of you reading this who have ever been in a class that I have taught you know that sometimes I do pretty well when I wing it. The class is called “Basic Christian Spirituality”. Knowing that people in India have a very different view of spirituality than Americans do, to assume they are thinking the same thing I am when talking about spirituality could make for a very confusing class.

I began by asking them about their religious background. Many had come from other religious backgrounds and I asked them to share with me and the class some aspects of spirituality from their own background. I had a Buddhist, a few Sikhs, and many Hindus share. About a third had a Christian background. I made a list of some of the “spiritual” aspects of each of these religions and then demonstrated how Christianity has many things in common. Things like:

• There is a Holy Book or holy Scriptures.
• There is an ultimate reality
• There is some form of divine figure or figures (though for Sikhs they are gurus who are treated like gods)
• There are good works you are supposed to do

What we discovered as a class however, was there is one big difference between Christianity and these other religions. That one difference (there are many things but one big one) is the person of Jesus.

• There are no gods in the other religions who claim to love their people to the point of dying for them.
• There are no gods who became human so that they could die for their people.
• There are no gods who died and rose from the dead to forgive sins.
• Sins are not forgiven by gods in these religions instead they are worked off by suffering or through good works.

The other religions represented by those in the class state that the way to experience ultimate reality in their expressed form is through human effort; by outweighing you bad deeds with your good deeds. But according to Christianity, human effort is not enough. The only way to get to God is through God, not through our own work. Ephesians 2:8-9 tells us that we are saved by grace, and not by works, otherwise people would boast about how much they had done in comparison to others. I told the class, now that we understand the similarities between these religions we can begin to look at what makes Christianity different. And really the person of Jesus is the big difference.

One thing you may notice from the pictures is that it is all guys in one and mostly girls in another. Indian society is still very gender conscious. So most women have the same access to education but they separate men and women in their classes. Men sit on one side women on the other. This is the case in most places in India. They guy to the extreme right of the first photo is the professor of the class. He graduated from GCTS (where I am now) four years ago.

SACRED part 2 of 2

As the first millennium b.c. progressed the Vedic culture settled into the Ganges River basin and developed a more stationary, agriculturally based society. The more mobile nomadic society of their ancestors had faded and the Vedic people were living in one place for longer periods of time. Clans fought with one another and annexed land from neighboring clans creating larger and larger kingdoms.

The Vedic religion continued to go through changes as well. Since the society was more stationary Brahmans, holy men of the priestly caste, were making their homes in the forests where they would meditate and contemplate reality and the meaning of life. The fourth and final of the Hindu Shruti texts was written by these hermit holy men as they practiced their religious meditations.

If you have not read “SACRED part 1” what you essentially need to know is that there are two kinds of Hindu texts: “Shruti” which means “revealed” i.e. from a divine source, and “Smrti” which means “remembered”. There are four Shruti collections of texts; I talked about the first three in "SACRED part 1." The fourth of the Shruti texts is called the Upanishads.

The Upanishads reflect the wider cultural shift taking place in the region being written roughly between 800 and 300 b.c. In the Upanishads there is a distinct turn away from many of the Vedic ideas and practices which mirror the shift in the wider culture. The hermit-sages who composed the Upanishads sought something more-ultimate, eternal salvation. Thus they spoke about and believed in a single, eternal, impersonal, divine force that animates and permeates the entire cosmos - Brahman.

The word "Upanishad" comes from a Sanskrit term that means "to sit near." It refers to a student sitting near a teacher and learning directly through questions and answers. The Upanishads hold that since everything is Brahman, the individual is also Brahman. Individuals think that the things that make them who they are, such as one's relationships, or appearance, or even thoughts, are real. The Upanishads hold that these are merely elaborate illusions (sounds a little like Platonic dualism).

If one wishes to realize the ultimate, then one must detach oneself from all of these unreal things through ascetic meditation. One must go off and meditate on the reality of Brahman, which begins with meditation on the self, which is in essence the same as Brahman. In doing this you can be free from desire. If you think that sounds like Buddhism you are about to find out why.

And so it was that with the societal changes came the emergence of clan leaders and even kings who ruled over large areas of land and many people. One particular king, King Suddhodana, ruler of the Sakya tribe, which straddled present day India and Nepal, had a son whom he loved very much. His son was born around 560b.c. When his son had grown up he decided to venture outside of the protective walls of the palace where he lived to see what life was really like. He saw four things that changed his life, the fourth thing he saw is what was crucial. The fourth thing he saw was a person, a hermit actually. One of these priestly seers of the Brahman caste who lived out in the wilds where he would meditate. This hermit-sage had found the Hindu prince and talked with him about contemplation, meditation and the meaning of life. He returned to his palace home but at the age of 29 he left it all and headed for the wilderness himself. This prince’s name was Siddhartha Gautama; he would later become known as Buddha.

Buddhism did not do so well at first. Then Alexander the Great showed up...

SACRED Part 1 of 2

As the political and social life shifted to the east and south and the economy shifted from semi-nomadic tribes to agricultural and cattle raising kingdoms the religious life of the people went through some changes as well. Many of these changes can be traced through their sacred texts.

The sacred texts of Hinduism are an enormous collection of oral and written scriptures that include myths, rituals, philosophical perspectives, devotional poems and songs, local histories, and more. There are two basic categories within this vast collection: Shruti (revealed) and Smrti (remembered). The word Shruti is from the Sanskrit meaning “heard” suggesting that they are not from the mind of man but “revealed” or “heard” from a divine source. There are four sacred Shruti texts: the Vedas, the Brahmanas, the Aranyakas and the Upanishads.

The Shruti Texts:
The earliest set of Shruti texts are the Vedas. The word veda comes from the Sanskrit word vid, meaning to know. Not unlike the Greek root from which we get gnosis - "knowledge." In early Hinduism seers, known as risis, “heard” the Vedas and developed them into a range of oral traditions. The Vedas were never intended to be texts, they were always intended to be experienced through the dynamic activation of voice giving them life and texture. The Vedas were composed over a period of time from about 1700 b.c. to around 1000 b.c. There are four sets of Vedic texts which lumped together are often called Samhitas.

1. The Rig Veda - mainly composed of songs of praise to various Vedic gods who are personifications of natural forces like the Sun, the storm or rain, harvest, and so on.
2. The Yajur Veda - deals with sacrificial formulas recited as rituals were being performed.
   
3. The Sama Veda - The word sama meaning melody shows us that these Vedas are melodies and hymns sung to the gods to request basic necessities.
4. The Atharva Veda - Contains perhaps hundreds of magic formulas

When the Vedas had been around for a while some members of the higher caste who were seen as priests, began to collect the Vedas. As they did they developed what amounted to commentary to help explain the Vedas. The Brahmana - the second group of sacred texts are commentaries attached to the Vedas that explain the rituals of the Vedas. In fact the word brahmana means the utterance of a Brahman (Brahman is one who is of the priestly caste). Again this reinforces the idea that these were intended to be spoken instead of written. They were considered sacred because it was the Brahmans who were speaking them. From around 900 b.c. to around 700 b.c. the Vedas were gathered together into Samhitas, which means - “collections” that the Brahmans then attempted to explain through the Brahmanas.

The third group of sacred wisdom which was eventually written down is the Aranyakas which is Sanskrit for “Forest Book”. The Aranyakasa developed later than the Brahmanas but held a similar function. Composed in India about 700 to 600b.c. the Aranyakas are different from the Brahmanas in that they develop ideas on secret rites to be carried out only by certain persons, and they are more philosophical in nature. They were intended to be studied only by properly trained individuals. These individuals were either studied hermits who had withdrawn into the forest and no longer took part in Vedic rituals (hence "Forest Book") or pupils who were given instruction by their teachers in the seclusion of their huts in tucked away places.

These first three groups of sacred writings outline the religious life and practice of the culture. These practices were intended to be performed by a priestly caste of people while the common person learned about them by listening to the priests not by reading scripture on their own. There was a strong communal aspect to the religion. As the society - and culture with it - moved east and south and settled along the Ganges River Basin some Brahmans began to settle in the forests and other secluded places. Think of them as the Druids of ancient India. With this move came a gradual shift away from the rituals and the hymns to a more contemplative practice and form to Hinduism. This is reflected in the sacred literature which demonstrates a move towards commenting on and contemplating the the purpose and meaning of life.

In part 2 I will trace the connection between this slow cultural shift, the writing of the fourth group of sacred texts - the Upanisads, and how this impacted the culture and paved the way for Buddhism.