Visiting Buddha #HogsAbroad in India

We went on a boat ride in the Ganges River this morning. The weather felt really nice on the water but it was about 5 in the morning so it wasn’t going to be very hot. The most shocking part of this trip was seeing the crematory fires. At first I thought that those people were burning significant religious herbs or something of the sort so imagine my shock when it was revealed that they were actually burning bodies.

I have a few unanswered questions about that. Is that considered a lowly job? Would those people be considered lower caste and “untouchable”? or is working at the crematory fires seen as an important job since those ashes will be scattered across the Ganges? I was beginning to wonder why we couldn’t smell anything. On various TV shows, burning flesh is always described as the worst smell ever. So it was interesting to find out that they burn certain herbs with the bodies to eliminate the smell. I was especially grateful for this.

Later that morning, we went to the temple where Buddha gave his first sermon. It was particularly intriguing to hear that the painting inside the temple took 4 years to paint. The paintings were extremely expansive and highly detailed.

An interesting tidbit that I learned was that the Chinese Buddha is actually completely unrelated to the Indian Buddha. In fact, the Chinese Buddha is just a symbol of good luck and holds no religious significance like the Indian Buddha. Our guide also revealed that the main teachings of Buddhism are nonviolence and human equality.

Next we went to the original place where Buddha gave his first sermon. I learned that a stupa is a solid structure that is just a symbol of Buddhism. Stupas can get bigger as people add more to it and it becomes more important. One big thing that was clarified for me was the use of the swastika or swastik (in Hindi). The swastika is a symbol of Lord Ganesh who was the removed of obstacles. The swastika essentially symbolized harmony. The original Hindu swastika has straight lines that form a cross in the center while the Nazi swastika is slanted and forms an ‘x’ at the center. This is an important distinction between the two but most people don’t know about this distinction or are recognize it quickly. It’s sad that Hitler stole such an important religious symbol and turned it into something so ugly and hateful.

Later that night we went to see the golden temple. This was a good idea in theory, but terrible in execution and logistics because we couldn’t go inside the temple. The alley ways were very dark, crowded, and narrow and all around the temple were high walls so we couldn’t see anything except for the very top of the roof. All of our belongings and cellphones were locked up in a locker. Our tour guide also revealed that the golden temple was a hot spot for terrorist attacks as it was an important religious site for Sikhs. He probably should have kept that nugget of knowledge to himself because it didn’t help anyone’s nerves.

After we saw the roof of the temple, we went to watched the aarti. The aarti was really nice to see, I have never seen anything quite like it. I would have loved it if our tour guides had told us what was happening and had taken the time to explain everything. I feel like I would have appreciated the aarti even more if I had a better understanding of what was happening. Walking back to the cars from the aarti was a whole different experience. The streets were very chaotic, crowded, and it was a bit of a sensory overload. Our tour guide was at the very front of the group while our group was towards the back of the big group. Thankfully one of the other tour guides had the idea to get a big red heart balloon and hold it up as some sort of Northern Star that we would be able to follow so we wouldn’t get lost. A few of us had to hold on to each other as we navigated through the crowded streets. Even though this was an overwhelming experience, it was interesting to see all of the night life and activities on the street.

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