The Road to Salvation: The Goal

Morning duly dawned. Amongst a series of nightmares that night, I had also dreamt that I would forget the flowers I had bought for the temple down in Kagbeni. Customarily you find stalls selling garlands and flowers for temple offerings outside Hindu temples, but at this height there are few flowers of the sort standardly used. I dressed in my new bought outfit, sorted out what I needed to take and set off downstairs for the motorbike lift, realising after we had set off that I had indeed left the flowers in a glass back in my room! So far, so good.

The long flights of steps were waiting for me beyond the arched portal, lined with colourfully dressed sadhus, who spend their life either wandering the roads or hanging out at temples like this one, living off the proceeds of the offerings they get from the temple visitors. Dragging myself up flight after flight, gasping for air and stopping to rest regularly, I must have made an odd spectacle, as much though because, as usual, I was the one obviously foreign looking devotee clearly intent on making puja. This has ever been my experience, and it’s something I always find a horrible challenge, to be so conspicuous, attracting the interest of all the other manifestly Hindu worshippers. I have had it at just about every temple I’ve ever visited, and particularly difficult to arrive, resplendent in a saree as I was at the ancient Krishna temple at Guruvayur, Kerala, India, to be denied entrance by the Brahmin priests officiating because of being a foreigner. Then, perforce, having to make my puja at a red plastic chair cum mocked up altar outside the entrance, all under the curious a gaze of hundreds of other visitors coming and going.

I made it to the top more rapidly than anticipated, still in one piece, and even managed to pick a small bunch of wild flowers along the way, to replace those left back in my room. At the top you entered under another archway into the main precincts of the temple, where old gnarled trees grew everywhere and a fast flowing stream coursed through. Smaller temples and Buddhist shrines were visible here and there, but the main temple dedicated to Shree Vishnu lay further at the top. And so into the temple courtyard itself, already by then full of devotees preparing for their own pujas, or stripping off to bathe in the large cisterns of spring water, itself supposed to guarantee mukti. Two girls invited me to join them in bathing, but I politely declined. People are generally very interested in and welcoming of foreign devotees when they see you are serious and respectful of their faith. There were fonts of water gushing out at one end of the courtyard, so I threw water over my head from these instead of bathing, before removing my shoes (a must to enter Hindu sacred places) and entering the inner sanctum and the small temple to Shree Vishnu. This, finally, was the height and goal of my journey on the Road to Salvation!

There are formal pujas to Hindu divinities officiated by Brahmins, which might be communal, or individual if contracted by a worshipper or family. When I had made my two hour long Rudrabishek puja to Shiva at Varanasi, I had hired three Brahmins to conduct the formal offices and guide me in what was required. The problem with being a foreigner not brought up in the Hindu tradition is that you lack the necessary knowledge of the ritual formalities required and the order of them. Most people I have found are very tolerant and accommodating and forgive your ignorance, but I am aware that it could also be a cause for offence, so I do try to be careful and respectful. That said, I also believe that small private ceremonies of the kind many people like to conduct, including the lighting of small lamps, burning incense sticks and offering of flowers and fruits, is still acceptable. This I did here, amongst the many who were engaged in their own private ceremonies in different parts of the temple’s small quadrangle.

The upper hatch of the door to the main shrine had been opened, revealing the elaborately dressed statue of the deity inside, with an attendant alongside who received the small wildflower bouquet from me as my offering. In the eclectic Hindu traditions, there is an implicit belief that these divine representations contain the essence of whichever god or goddess they represent, and engaging with a process whereby you look at it, perhaps also touch it if this is allowed, is called ‘Darshan’, which loosely means that you have apprehended the deity and It has you in a kind of mutual acknowledgement: to see and be seen. Although not the same, the closest to this might be something like the Christian communion, wherein Christians believe that by imbibing the sanctified wine and eating the host, they have mystically connected with God. The point is this: these are rituals which engage with the deeper unconscious of the devotee and the experience is a combination of a process of belief by the rational mind, underpinned by transcendent or mystical irrational feelings/experiences that give it that essential sense of authenticity and legitimacy. I have written about what the concept of faith means and how it is experienced elsewhere.

And so it was over. I emerged from the inner temple, collected my few belongings, put my shoes back on and then prepared to leave. Just below the main Vishnu temple there was a smaller temple dedicated to Shiva, and so I went there too, as I count myself more a devotee of Shiva. But in the end my own belief is that these divine representations are simply that: different ways that human beings conceptualise something beyond conception, often guided by ancient traditions that can be traced many hundreds of years back in time, as the main Hindu traditions can be. It’s all as the famous Sioux ‘Medicine Man’ Black Elk, who converted to Catholicism as an older man, said when questioned about his beliefs: ‘they are simply different expressions of the same Sacred Reality”.

Walking back down the long flights of steps, I then had to run the gauntlet of the many colourfully dressed sadhus lining the way. I had brought a certain amount of smaller denomination money with me, but hadn’t counted on how many there were. No matter, it transpired that change could be given, as I learned when one pulled out a thick packet of notes to oblige me. They operate in some ways rather like a syndicate and appear to share resources. Although I have certainly heard enough stories of rich sadhus on the make, I should also point out that many are quite authentic and content to live a relatively simple and often hard life walking the roads and begging for food. One man I saw had lost both his hands at some point in his life, therefore I imagine that a life of sanctified mendicancy was pretty much all that was left to him to survive and retain his dignity. Sadhus, as far as I am aware are, however, mainly associated with the ancient Shivaite tradition, but clearly see nothing contradictory to their hanging out at temples dedicated to other divinities. Shivaite sadhus are also well known for their pursuit of siddhis (occult powers) and their smoking of hashish as part of their own ritual means of communion. There was certainly enough hashish being smoked here too!

So I strolled back through the little town, past the Bob Marley Hotel and back to Shambhala, finished my packing and bundled myself and my luggage into another beat up old car, to be driven back down to warmer climes and more hospitable altitudes in the village of Kagbeni, where two nights at the oddly named Yac Donalds hotel and restaurant awaited.