Varanasi. City lights. The closest alt lucialternative I accidentally fell in love and took it for his own. Became his. How did this happen, I do not know. Why also do the. But I know that my heart beats faster when stepping down its narrow alt lucialternative streets that we face zardijo when the crowds from the old market place to spend most of stairs alt lucialternative leading down to the river Ganges and reputation. Or in that place I find peace, enlightenment, alt lucialternative moksho, like many job seekers, which for millennia flock in this holiest Hindu city in search of salvation? Not really. Yet I believe the record that I discovered a few days ago in a book that is already sleep in Varanasi effective than practicing yoga anywhere else.
Eight years ago I first laid my foot on the beloved soil. Varanasi. Benares. Kashi. Three names one place, giving rise to expectations of mysticism and magic. Are you this first contact impressed? Not at all. Hotel room full of mice, which were boredom by hiding my luggage and shoes. Monkeys that were shackles on the grill windows and through them growl with angry teeth. Streets full of excrement and a wide range of moisture, which is incredibly confusing mixture of slime and odor. Massive alt lucialternative bulls and water buffalo as to escape from the Immemorial, before whom I frightened jump to the side when they nonchalantly past the punches pressed together buildings. However gekoti, green lizards, which reigned on the walls of bathrooms and rooms. Lepers, beggars and annoying merchants that they offer everything from silk but to opium. And last but not least, the main 'atrakcija'-corpses by Funeral processions and relatives on a stretcher leading to the Ganges, where they are burned at the stake and shake the ashes in the holy river. No, first impressions of the city did not convince me. But slowly, slowly, I thawed. In three days I began to feel the majesty of the old walls, the mysticism of the Ganges, friendly people who are suddenly no longer seemed intrusive, but warm and full of laughter and jokes. When I am in a week leaving town, I knew that I want to go back.
Varanasi is the oldest zoos settlement in the world. Aryans on the banks of the Ganges arrived around 1000 BC, but the space was previously a century, perhaps even millennia, inhabited by Dravid, Indian aborigines. Only you have cultivated a cult of fertility and worshiped the goddess mother and Pašupatija, lord of the beast, which is the prototype of today's god Shiva. The Aryans brought with them the Vedas, the ancient texts that form the basis of Indian philosophy and culture. But the cult Pašupatija was so strong that it could not eradicate, so they adopted in their pantheon of gods. Shiva, as it soon became known, is quite different from all the other Aryan deities, sprinkled with ashes, wrapped in snakes walking alt lucialternative around accompanied by sinister demons, smokes marijuana and lives in sežigališčih and cemeteries. Yet with its popularity soon took the supreme throne in heaven, and one of the three main branches of Hinduism, šivaizmu, still considered to be the supreme God. They say it's just a meeting dravidske and Aryan culture in Benares to blame for the emergence of modern Hinduism.
The importance of Varanasi is due to the Ganges, which is supposed to have the power of purification of sins. Ritual washing in its waters erases all sins and die and be burnt on its banks means the highway to heaven. Reincarnation, a circle of constant birth and death, alt lucialternative is hereby terminated without additional efforts, yoga or serving penance. The Whole Gang of the world, but Varanasi is the most sacred. That is why the city flooded every day with clustered pilgrims who seek purification with sadhus, holy men who are looking for moksho, and the old and the sick, who calmly awaiting death, at the moment when they Shiva whispers Tarak mantra and frees them.
If we want to understand the mystical significance of the Ganges, alt lucialternative we need to know the background of Hindu philosophy. The universe alt lucialternative is a combination of the two principles, male and female, consciousness and energy, and life could not exist without their interaction. Shiva as immersed in eternal meditation yoga at the top of the mountain fog wrapped presents consciousness, male principle, Shakti, alt lucialternative the female energy is the one that represents the power, motion and matter. Ganga is a symbol of Shakti, the embodiment of the universal female principle,'s mother. Maa Ganga. Initially, the goddess Ganga in heaven, but King Bhagirath alt lucialternative was asked to come to Earth to deliverance of his relatives who were caught in limbo. Ganga king would be happy to accommodate, but she knew that with his power destroyed the Earth, it would be in the waterfall coming down from the sky. Help is stepped Shiva, who intercepted her fall with her hair, from which the river can slowly leaked to the peaks of the Himalayas and from them towards the Bay of Bengal. On the way he met at Varanasi, indicating that the mythological tradition, the city existed here even before its arrival. Ever since Vedic times onwards on its banks every day unfolds beautiful Ganga Aarti ceremony where priests in a circular motion to honor his beloved fire goddess.
Three years after my first visit I went back. Before that I was a few months traveling around South Ind.
