Pilgrimage to Varanasi (Avimukta):The never forsaken territory.

Slowly an image began to form in my mind’s eye of what the city of Varanasi, India might appear to look and feel like before I set eyes and foot upon it. The impressions I had of Varanasi were so many that combining them all to fit into a meaningful collage of stories and myths, which were by themselves so old that ancient was not even a close approximation, for finding a fitting description of this ancient of ancient cities existing forever next to the Ganges River reflecting the same timelessness as the stars in heavens directly above this ancient of cities. And as these images all began to form a picture in my mind’s eye they sometimes would come in dreams, sometimes in a moment of reflecting on ancient India and even Shiva and Parvarti would come to mind as the two Hindu gods who had once established their home in this scared of all sacred places on earth. And now in the not too distant future, 108 days to be exact from the beginning of this writing, an asura, sitting quietly in disguise pretending to be a deva, was awaiting amrita to be poured from the golden pot (kumba) that would allow the gods live an immortal life. However, the asura was caught in his disguise by Surya and Chandra when Vishnu disguised as the beautiful Mohini immediately beheaded him with his sudarsan cakra. The amrita, the sacred liquid churned from the milky ocean, giving immortality to all who drank it, reached the asura’s throat only making his head become immortal. He would wait eternally for the chance to devour the golden rays of the sun during a lunar eclipse for his revenge of being denied immortality. His head would be known as Rahu the dragon eater, and the trunk of his body forming the dragon’s tail would be known as Ketu. These two parts of the asura’s body would eventually form the north and south nodes of the moon forming an axis of eternal tension between what is desired and what is remembered.

This then is a brief of introduction of when the dragon head of Rahu appears once again to consume the sun and this time plunge the city of Varanasi into darkness. But Shiva will appear floating high in the heavens and bestow boons on all his devotees doing their oblations in the Ganges River. Shiva will rise in the heavens with his brilliant pillar of light (sthanu) penetrating the three worlds and forever reminding his devotees he will always be with them and never forsake them in times of darkness and despair.

This mythical representation of a full solar eclipse, which takes place as of this writing in 108 days, and if coincidence upon coincidence isn’t enough to remind one of the powers of Shiva, there are 108 names for Shiva so each day before the full solar eclipse one of Shiva’s names will be recited as a gesture to his honored place in Varanasi; his first as of this writing being, Aashutosh, (The one who fulfills wishes instantly). It is my wish to be in Varansi to receive a boon from Shiva. Writing about some place without actually seeing it, hearing the chants or being filled with the smells coming from countless cremation pyres, Ganges River water and more varieties of incense thought possible to answer all the uncertainties that would make Varanasi be forever seared upon the deepest recesses of mind so that no matter how hard one tried Varanasi could never be erased from memory unless the very universe itself were to vanish, never to breath thoughts or suspend starlight in the vastness of eternity, seems like an impossible task.

For all the pundits who have provided their insights for the reasons Varanasi remains the preferred place to release a human soul on this planet there has to be some explanation for this to be so. As a pilgrim who has already climbed the sacred mountain of Lingaparvata in Southern Laos in 2006 to honor Lord Shiva, a trip to Varanasi fulfills a quest to be in the presence of a celestial awakening the likes of which will not happen again in this century. And if starlight and star lore are married forever in a twilight language known only by a few shamans whose dismembered bodies were able to fly away to those distant stars to hear that language of the gods then that language will be heard again when the most auspicious of relationships takes place in the heavens and on earth over the sacred city of Varanasi on July 22, 2009.

So what might this language of the gods being trying to talk about?

References:

The “Asokan” Pillar
Reading: John Irwin, “Asokan Pillars: A Reassessment of the Evidence: Parts I-IV,” Burlington Magazine: Part I, (Nov 1973), pp. 706-20; and Part IV, (Nov 1976), pp. 734-53. Optional: Part 2, (Dec. 1974), pp. 712-27; and Part 3, (Oct 1975), pp. 631-43.