Encountering the Sacred Everywhere
Reverend Janet Parsons
Gloucester UU Church
March 10, 2019
On my very first morning in India, I found myself in a tour bus bouncing down the highway from the Varanasi airport to the hotel. Suddenly the tour guide called our attention to a Jeep that we were about to pass. Lashed to the top of the Jeep was something resting on two long poles, covered by a bright orange blanket. “There is a body,” he told us. “The relatives are driving the body to the Ganges to be cremated.” And in that moment I understood that this would be a trip like no other, that all aspects of life were going to be made visible, that nothing would be hidden or kept separate. For here was sacred cargo, tied on to the roof of a Jeep.
The next morning before daylight we drove to the banks of the Ganges River – the Ganga – in Varanasi. There in the bluish early light we mingled with groups of pilgrims from all over India, as well as local groups of friends and neighbors, who make it a practice each morning to walk to the Ganges, chanting and ringing bells as they walk. We heard them approaching before we could see them. We joined in the procession. Upon reaching the river, standing on the top of the steep steps leading down to the water, we watched as people performed ritual baths and made offerings of marigolds to the river, for the river is herself a Goddess – Mother Ganga, Ganga-ji. Holy men, some naked and covered with ashes, wandered among the crowds, or sat on bare wooden platforms and offered blessings and prayers for visitors. Monkeys scampered along the rooftops. Cows and goats and dogs moved among the crowds. We stepped carefully, avoiding the trash and the animal droppings in the streets, gawking at the snake charmers. All along the ghats – the jetties – people engaged in rituals: bathing, drinking the water, boarding boats to scatter ashes, chanting and singing. Everywhere we looked people carried out these sacred activities, in the most profane and chaotic environment one could imagine.
A river worshipped as a goddess. A river born high in the Himalayas struggling with profound pollution, as it passes through cities with inadequate sewage systems and then ironically, is asked to absorb the sacred rituals of humans: returning their dead to the river. A people so worshipful of their river goddess that they do not believe that the pollution can harm them.
That night we returned to the river to watch the evening aarti ceremony. Five funeral pyres burned in the twilight along the bank of the river, with a temple behind it containing the sacred fire that is used to light the pyres. Only men are allowed to participate in the cremation rituals, and the oldest son of the deceased must take the lead. The riverbank is dark brown, lifeless and muddy, strewn with ashy heaps of completed cremations, actively burning fires, pyres ready to light covered with orange blankets. Heaps of discarded marigolds adorned the muddy bank, attracting cows who are allowed to eat them. Discarded orange blankets, smoke, flames in the gathering dusk. A cow nursing her calf in the mud in the midst of the pyres. Once again, right before our eyes, the cycle of life – new life in the middle of death. As death could not be separated from life in that place, neither could the holiness of the activity be separated from the ugliness of the surroundings. The Ganga – the river of life – has a place for all, and asks us to take our places.
Kneeling in the boat, I accepted a little plate containing marigold blossoms and a candle, and made my offering to Mother Ganga – thanking my parents for making this journey possible, and offering my hope that the river will regain her health. I watched my little candle join all the other tiny points of light bobbing on the dark water, floating away between the boats on the current, and wondered where it would end up. I made an offering to the goddess. And I added more trash to the river.
India asks us, over and over, in every moment, to encounter the sacred wherever we are, in everything we do. India asks us to question what is sacred, and what is profane. We ask where the line is between them; when does the offering turn into trash?
Varanasi, called Benares by the British during their occupation, is perhaps the oldest continuously inhabited place on earth. It is here that we discover India’s age, and the age of one of its principal religions: Hinduism. It is a holy city, choked by pilgrims, with cows wandering through busy intersections. It is a relentlessly modernizing city, choked with traffic: cars, the tiny buses called tuk-tuks, bicycle rickshaws, people talking on their cell phones, horns honking incessantly. And yet, in the midst of all this, we found out that there are perhaps 100,000 small neighborhood shrines dotted throughout the city: little temples containing a statue of a god or goddess, which are loving cared for by passersby throughout the day. People leave marigold blossoms or garlands, and food, and clean the god or goddess inside with water. The temples create little points of color in the streets – tiled or stuccoed and painted brightly, they stand out amidst the dull brick of the larger buildings.
The presence of the tiny temples reminds us that Hinduism is a lived religion, made up of a huge pantheon of gods and goddesses, whose followers worship them with rituals all throughout the day. Religion is part of the fabric of the culture; it is not relegated to an hour on Sunday morning, a time set aside. Religion is not something to be dissected, subjected to analyzing how many angels are dancing on the head of a pin. Religion is not separated, sealed away inside hushed and sacred buildings. Rather, religion is practiced. It is woven into everything that people do, all day, every day, from the neighborhood groups ringing bells and chanting on their predawn walks to the river, to the evening aarti ceremonies; priests chanting and waving fire, with thousands of people lining the ghats, and many more watching on the river in boats. What we participated in and observed was simply an ordinary day. In his reflection Atul Gawande described a similar experience, as did Mary Oliver.
We drove to the Deer Park, to Sarnath, one of the holiest sites in the Buddhist tradition. Sarnath is where the Buddha travelled to preach his first sermon after attaining enlightenment. I expected a peaceful setting, contemplative, perhaps wooded, with actual deer. We arrived in a giant parking lot, more reminiscent of an amusement park than a pilgrimage site. Throngs of people in all directions, stalls selling trinkets, people with hands outstretched, babies on hips. Holiness and ordinary life, once again side by side.
Inside the excavations of the monastery, we discovered the tranquility we sought – the stupa, or brick mound, where the Buddha’s remains were laid to rest, and later mistakenly excavated and poured into the Ganga. We watch as a group of pilgrims in white robes circle the base of the stupa where the Buddha’s remains were discovered. A sense of peace is restored. The devotion of people from all over Asia is palpable, and calming for the observers.
We approach a second stupa: this one built on the site of the Buddha’s first sermon. Luckily the British excavated this second stupa by removing bricks from the top and proceeding down to the bottom without destroying it. Inside they found a plaque commemorating the site, and so they rebuilt it. Walking around the stupa is peaceful and serene. Marigold blossoms are tucked in among the ancient bricks. Tiny bits of gold foil are visible – pilgrims from Thailand bring gold foil that they rub onto holy sites. The authorities now forbid this, but somehow it reappears.
We returned to the parking lot, somehow restored by what we had experienced. Again, I reflected on the nature of the holy: what makes something sacred. Here, the known presence of the Buddha, along with the simple actions and intentions of the Asian pilgrims created that sense of a place apart, a holy place.
Perhaps no pilgrimage will ever feel as holy as our two visits to the Mahabodhi Temple, constructed on the site where the Buddha attained enlightenment. Originally the temple was erected simply to commemorate the site, but as the Buddhist tradition matured, more and more it became a place to honor and worship the Buddha himself, not simply his enlightenment and teachings. We walked behind the temple to see the Bodhi Tree – a fourth generation offshoot of the original, imported from an offshoot living in Sri Lanka and planted on the site of the original in 1880. We paused there, crowded among the pilgrims, for meditation. I offered a metta meditation – for myself, for family, for the congregation, and of course, for all beings, as we did a few minutes ago. It is said that following his enlightenment, the Buddha remained for seven days, contemplating what to do with his life – whether to return home or to teach. He paused to meditate in many different locations, and seven were marked with signs where people pause to reflect. Garlands of marigold blossoms were everywhere – yellow and orange, red and white. The open areas around the temple were crowded with small wooden pallets, covered with tarps. We assumed they were for the pilgrims to sleep, but in fact it was for them to perform their devotions – prostrations.
The experience is a swirl of sound and color and motion – the way I would imagine being inside of a kaleidoscope. All the senses are involved. Again, the question: what makes a place sacred? Is it the events being commemorated? Or is it the activity of the people coming to venerate? Is it the building, or the tree, or the intention?
Just as it grew dark we returned to the Mahabodhi Temple to experience it at night. Under the full moon we joined thousands of pilgrims chanting, circling the temple carrying candles, prostrating themselves on the small pallets we had seen earlier, singing. It was an orderly mob scene – people moving in unison – rivers of pilgrims, spreading out in different directions, lit by candles and strings of bright lights of many different colors. We paused on a terrace behind the temple and Bodhi tree to absorb the scene, with the lighted temple and the full moon before us. It was reverent and chaotic, serene and noisy. Thousands of people gathered, with many practices, many languages, many voices, but with one intention.
In our opening words earlier, Stephen Shick called a sacred place one where we gather and recite words of welcome. That simple act, that intentional welcome, creates a sacred space. What makes something sacred for you?
We have used different words this morning to describe what makes a place sacred: welcome, separation, intention, devotion. I offer you one more: life-giving. Why is a river considered to be a goddess? Because she springs to life in the mountains and carries water, and silt during annual floods, for the farmers’ fields. Life-giving: I asked why cows are considered sacred. “Because they give us so much,” was the response. Cows sustain, offering milk, and fuel.
So often in Western culture we believe that holiness means to be separated, to be set apart. Religious people often live in community, sometimes not interacting with secular society. We worship in sanctuaries, often with stained glass that heightens the separation with life outside. We have cemeteries for our dead, and quiet, almost private rituals to mourn them.
In the wake of my visit to India I think differently about where we find holiness, and what is sacred. I see it now more in intention: in carrying out the wishes of loved ones, in caring for holy places among us, in pilgrimages and public acts of devotion as I witnessed daily.
I invite you to think differently about the sacred as well. Perhaps you have a well-developed sense of what a sacred space means to you: the ocean, perhaps, or the woods, or this sanctuary. Begin to think of sacred activity as well, and ask yourselves: what do you do with devotion? With intention? How do you participate?
As I watched sacred activity being carried out in some very profane situations, I better grasped what Atul Gawande said about the rituals on the Ganges that he led for his father. While he didn’t believe in the supernatural, he came to understand that by carrying out such activities, by engaging, by acting with intention and devotion, he was taking his place in the great river of time and life that carries us all. I understand that more now – the act of participating provides continuity for our humanity. The continuity is sacred, and it is secured and carried forward by our devotion and our involvement.
My wish for us all is that we find ways to connect with the holy, to take our places, and to sense the importance of our place in the great river of life.
“Pray God,” said the poet, “(That) I remember this.”
May it be so,
Amen.
