Dreams and Mirrors

There is a sacred river in Nepal that connects to the Ganges in India. Hindus try to visit this river at least  once in their lifetime to bathe and purify their karma. It is believed that dying on site--either in Varanasi, India or the temple complex of Pashupatinath, Nepal--leads directly to moksa, liberation.

Pashupatinath, the temple complex at the Nepali end of the river, a 30 min walk away from school, is on a hill full of trees, monkeys, stupas, caves, retreat huts and winding stairways. Walking here is like being transported back into the middle ages, ruined fortresses and temples with carved beings portruding out of the rock: dragons, serpents and Ganesha elephants powdered in red with flowers strewed along the floor. A lonesome bell rings through the night amid the rock stupa carvings. A candle carrying fellow emerges and disappears high in the hill behind another temple mound. Creeper trees with sadhus reciting at their shadow. Walking down to the river one follows the smoke signals produced by funeral priers. From the bridge you can see six different mounds of bodies being burned with oils, wood and hay along the ghat, a small gathering of family members keeping watch over the night. "It might be the same everywhere" says Roberto in light of death, "but here it's so open, visible, public.." Sadhus are said to meditate in Pashupatinath on the impurity of the body, impermanence and suffering--to develop renunciation for this life and to attain freedom from the endless cycle of rebirth. Every night puja ceremonies are performed on the stairs leading down to the river. Voice, sitar and tabla create devotional songs to the enormous Shiva statue that overlooks the place, people clapping, singing and dancing along, their faces light by the fire of the funeral priers. I came to this ceremony on full moon last year with my friend Angie, thinking it was the most surreal concert I had ever gone to. I now know that the full moon concert actually takes place higher on the hill, with classical indian music filling a small temple with painted krishna murals and trees.

Roberto and I went to the old people's home at the banks of the river today. It is run by Mother Teresa of Calcutta nuns in beautifully glimmering white saris that give palliative care as people sitting folded 3 times upon themselves (nepali style) await their time of death. There are basically 2 hallways with 25 beds each packed along the wall. All of their possessions are bundled up on their pillows. Cookies and empty wrapping papers--residual joys it seems--are hid under the mattress against the mentally ill, dwarf looking stout fellow with disparate eyes and ritual paint on his face that wobbles along the corridors stealing every piece of food he finds. Air damp with waste, people are transported out into the courtyard, mattresses and floors are washed, sheets changed, the old ladies bathed and fed. I've grown fond of a blind woman, her face a wrinkled landscape, tiny like a 10 year old child, that sat naked in the washroom ooo--hhh and aaaaa-hhing as water trickled down her face onto her naked body. I've been asked to feed her a couple of times, so I help her out am-am-am-AHing as to a child as the spoon makes its way to her lips. She swooshes the rice and dhaal in her toothless mouth and spits half of it out after a second, then firmly holds the spoon in her mouth once it's been replenished, only to spit out half the food again. An italian fellow shaves a man nearby saying "I get more pleasure out of this than he does perhaps, simply because I help him. The touch, the freshness of a shaved face, feeling a little alive again. If I give, I enjoy doubly. We think we need things. We need almost nothing. It makes one more happy to share than to acquire. But people don't believe that. We live off love."

At the end of the corridor, the very last bed in view, a woman lies limp from age and sickness. Her eyes move a little bit about, her mouth dry, head shaved like everybody else. She has a catheter for peeing and her sheets are dirty in poo. A nun asks for help to bathe this woman with a towel. We take off the clothes, wipe her body down and anoint her with oil and baby powder, taking care not to rub her sores. She can only whimper and moan. What a jail her body has become.. What a prison of sores and pain.. to think that our bodies do this to us.

All that I possess and use

Is like the fleeting vision of a dream.

It fades into the realms of memory;

And fading, will be seen no more. 

(Shantideva)

The people on the street seem different after going to such place. The separation between youth and age is not so different. Beautiful, tall, straight people contain the outline of their frail selves in the bones that these old women fold so many times over. In their age they are also beautiful, but all sense of pride just seems to melt away. I watch the mirror and practice looking at the outline of my dream.