Vyas | November, 2002

"O Ganga strange are your ways, you fill up the sea but dry up Bhavsagar - the sea of troubles of worldly life." - Ratnakar (Hindi poet)

	Manikarnika Ghat of Varanasi

The burning ghat is the learning ghat too
The Ganga at Varanasi situates itself in the thick of illumination and death all through the past to the present. The burning ghats are learning ghats too. Death precedes burning just as learning precedes illumination which burns the hollow heaps of ignorance arising from unexamined beliefs and false world-views.

The Manikarnika Ghat is held to be Lord Shiva's own burning ground - sacred and terrifying. Shamkaracharya sings the following hymn in praise of this burning ghat after he perfected his learning and could be said to have attained enlightenment:

"At the closing of their day, even the gods return, reborn, perhaps as animals or men. But those, O Mother Manikarnika, who mingle in your waters, are free forever, and in that secret place, behold themselves like Vishnu, glittering through the endless night."

There is a beautiful story about how Shamkaracharya attained enlightenment at the Manikarnika Ghat. We know that Shamkaracharya the astute Vedantin held that the individual soul and Universal Soul are identical, as a consequence of which all separateness, distinction and differences of the mundane world are unreal. Steeped in such thoughts he was proceeding to take a bath on the burning ghat. Lord Shiva, the story goes decided to test the spiritual status of Shamkaracharya whose dialectic had by then swept all opponents before him.

The test was designed to find out whether what Shamkaracharya theorized was actually practiced by him or not. Disguised as an ugly beggar Lord Shiva filled up his begging bowl with the Ganga water and appeared before Shamkaracharya jostling towards the river. The beggar came very close to Shamkaracharya and spread out his palms begging. "Get away from me, you dirty one", shouted Shamkaracharya.

The ugly beggar retorted, "What do you think of yourself O mendicant philosopher? Are you the body which shivers with hatred to others like me? How can you be a soul which contemplates no difference between the individual soul and the Universal Soul? Whether the water in my begging bowl is different from the water flowing in the Ganga?"

Shamkaracharya had no answer to these questions. Whatever remnants of ignorance that still lay in the mind of Shamkaracharya had clearly vanished at these searching questions, which compelled Shamkaracharya to realize within himself that in matters of life, theory without praxis is vacuous and utter hypocrisy. This learning at the burning ghat led Shamkaracharya to enlightenment.

Kabir was a great medieval saint poet

There is another story in which Kabir a great medieval saint poet is known to have snatched the opportunity of becoming a disciple of Ramananda - a great proponent of the way of devotion. This great orthodox devotee of Lord Rama used to go to take a holy dip in the Ganga, early in the morning. Kabir cherished a fear that his dubious parentage and low caste might stand in the way of his becoming a regular disciple of Ramananda, for in those days only people of high castes could be initiated into spiritual practice through religious learning. Kabir hit upon the idea of lying on the steps of the ghat which Ramananda passed through routinely. In the early morning hour Ramananda exclaimed, "Rama! Rama!!" having trampled upon the seemingly asleep body of Kabir. Thus taking "Rama" to be the mantra for his future spiritual life, Kabir was awakened from his pretentious as well as metaphorical sleep signifying ignorance. The prank played at the ghat by the ardent learner led to his enlightenment just as the prank played by the supreme teacher Shiva had earlier led and incomplete learner to shed his false pride and distinction between theory and praxis.


For more information, you may visit the following sites:

Ganga: www.cs.albany.edu/~amit/ganges.html
Bhavsagar: http://sahajayoga.ca/Presentation/Void.html
Hindi: http://www.webspawner.com/users/HINDI/
Varanasi: http://www.webspawner.com/users/HINDI/
Ghats: http://travel.indiamart.com/uttar-pradesh/varanasi/
Manikarnika Ghat: http://travel.indiamart.com/uttar-pradesh/varanasi/
Shiva: http://www.hindunet.org/god/Gods/shiva/
Shamkaracharya: http://www.creativity.co.uk/creativity/guhen/shankara.htm
Vishnu: http://www.hindunet.org/god/Gods/vishnu/
Vedantin: http://www.advaita-vedanta.org/avhp/creation.html
Kabir: http://www.cs.colostate.edu/~malaiya/kabir.html
Ramananda: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/8107/bios2.html
Rama: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/8107/bios2.html
Mantra: http://1stholistic.com/Spl_prayers/prayer_mantra-hindu.htm