The Maha Kumbh Mela happens once every 12 years, and just happenend to fall during my first trip to India. Based around bathing in the Ganges River, the event attracts somewhere between 50 and 80 million people and lasts for nearly 2 months (people are coming and leaving throughout this period). Pilgrims from all over come to cleanse their past karma by taking a dip in the holy river on certain auspicious days, known as bathing days. On February 10th, the main bathing day, it is estimated that as many as 30 million people took the holy dip, which may have been the most people gathered in one day in history. One main aspect of the gathering is the various camps set up by different gurus and spiritual organizations. Just about every major guru from India is represented, either by devotees or in person, and so walking through the streets is like an expose of all the different teachers and teachings. This aspect of Hinduism is quite overwhelming, especially as an outsider, because oftentimes, there might only be a small piece of common ground that they can find between themselves to agree upon. The congregation is so vast that it can be seen from outer space.
When I bought my ticket to India, sometime last August or September, I knew I wanted to stop by the gathering, just to see it, and so I left my stuff at the Tibetan Monastery where I stayed in Sarnath, packed a light bag, and hit the road. Let me just take this opportunity to say that the train situation in India is really out of control sometimes and it's not always something you can count on. Figuring it would be the easiest way, I walked to the station in Sarnath and bought a 55 rupee ($1) ticket for Allahabad, where the Kumbh Mela was taking place. The train was about an hour late, and when it arrived, the thing was bursting at the seams with people. Every car was overflowing, to the point were the guys in the doorways had to practically hang out the opening the entire time.
Sure, some people managed to squeeze themselves in, it sort of depended on where you were standing. Knowing the train would only stop for a few minutes, I ran up to the different doorways and tried my best to push through, but it was impossible, especially since the young men guarding the doors refused to let me in. Even the thought of making it on was unsettling, and after having ridden in general class overnight from Kolkatta to Bodhgaya, standing the entire way with 10 people crammed into the nook in front of the bathrooms, I wasn't keen on reliving the nightmare.
Fairly discouraged about having wasted so much time, I walked back into town and caught an auto-rickshaw to the bus station in Varanasi and then a bus to Allahabad, each for a hundred rupees. The bus couldn't make it into town, the last stretch of road leading up was blocked to most traffic and the buses were at a standstill, so everyone got off and I started walking. I walked for several kilometers before deciding to have another auto-rickshaw take me the rest of the way, at least to the entrance of the giant plain that was filled with streets and tents, and millions of people.
It took me another couple of hours of walking to find the Rainbow Gathering camp, where I spent the night curled up on the ground with a thin blanket and plenty of chills. I woke up yesterday, knowing that if I stayed another night there, I'd get sick, so I walked around long enough to see most of the spectacle, took some photos, and then headed back to Varanasi. I would be willing to guess that from the time the bus dropped me off to the time when I found another bus back to Varanasi, I put in around 15 miles by foot. I ended up running into a couple of friends there that I met at Sadhana Forest down south, so it was really nice to see some familiar faces. The rainbow camp was was on the outskirts of the gathering and a pretty basic set-up, with about 40-50 young people from various western countries coming together in the evenings to drink chai, play the guitar, and share experiences from the day. Besides it being a nice refuge for a weary westerner at the Mela, it wasn't anything I wanted to stick around for.
Although I don't consider myself a Hindu, I enjoy many of the yogic practices that come from the vedas and could be considered to be a part of Hinduism. Buddhism was something of an offshoot of Hinduism, as the Buddha himself was a Hindu, but rejected the idea that only certain classes were allowed access to the divine, through the Brahmins. Instead, he gave everyone the key to finding liberation, and pointed us in the right direction, within. When you take away all the different gods and rituals of Hinduism, the basic message is the same, purify the mind through concentration and meritorious deeds and one will be free from the bondage of desire and aversion. The main difference, that I can see, is the use of language to convey truths. Since we know that language can never be truth, but only point to it, we may allow ourselves to not take the choice of language too seriously and instead, try to connect with that which is being pointed to.
In Hinduism, once the mind is purified, the natural state of divinity shines through. God is seen as residing in everyone and everything, so in order to see that, we need to stop identifying with the small self, or the ego. In Buddhism, descriptions of gods and divinity aren't essential to the teachings. When the Buddha was asked about such things, he would say that it didn't matter, that it shouldn't effect one's efforts toward liberation. He feared, for good reason, that when these celestial matters were spelled out, religion turns to ritual and one no longer sees the need to practice, and only resorts to worship.
In Buddhism, today, there is also worship happening, and many people would rather pay respect to the Buddha by offerings and rituals than by following his teachings. These things can be seen as being cultural implementations around the religion, which is otherwise not much of a religion at all. Either way, I will continue to explore the differences and similarities between Hinduism and Buddhism in hopes to further connect myself, as a Buddhist, to the non-Buddhist world. I also intend to connect the many dots that exist between Buddhism and Christianity, and work toward developing a unifying perspective on the world's religions.
From my own experience, the more I back myself into a corner with my beliefs, the worse I feel. It can be easy to identify with one's own views, and then separate oneself from others who don't share it. The point of all the religions can be seen to be some form of love, so it doesn't make sense to create boundaries that lead to judgment, hatred, and intolerance. No, I don't think that there should be one path or practice for the whole world, we need to celebrate our diversity. But within our different paths, we would do well to discover our unity and to find respect, compassion, and appreciation for one another and our different views.
With this spirit, I wanted to get a taste for a massive Hindu gathering, such as the Mela, and find this connection with those who seem, on the outside, to be of a different world. What I found, besides lots of color, red dots on foreheads, naked saddhus and wandering ascetics, was that these all were just people. That basic human to human connection is possible regardless of language, cultural, or religious differences. One of the most difficult things is to see some of the beggars, lining the main street, lying out in the sun, many lepers with missing limbs, crying and screaming in agony and misery, and shaking to the point of near convulsion. To see these people, often young people, in such horrible states of suffering is shocking. The reaction is to reject these people, as being sub-human, some sort of mutant freaks. The practice, therefore, is to see them as equals, as humans who were dealt a hand that just makes you sick to think about. Can we see these people as reflections of that same divinity we know is within us? Can we learn to be compassionate and loving, even in the face of something so ugly and frightening?
Sometimes, where we are is different from where we want to be, so the first step is to have a vision and then what follows is continual practice. We are all conditioned to react and behave in certain ways, there is no reason to feel bad about this or to blame anyone. Instead, we can hold a vision for a unity between ourselves and others, even if those others seem to be so different from ourselves. It's going to take practice, but I have trust that I will dissolve these boundaries and be able to truly acknowledge every form of human life as being equally valuable.
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