Basketball at Midnight

This is to let you know that I have moved on to the foot of the Himalayas, in Rishikesh, “Yoga Capital of the World.”  It is also on the Ganga, and for some reason has drawn many different Ashrams, which you can think of as an encampment of meditation and philosophy led by a spiritual leader.  I briefly mentioned the one in Pune, Maharastra, which catered mostly to western tourists, charged some exhorbitant entrance fee (at the time of the book writing, I think it was $200), administered an HIV test, and then preached the benefits of drugs and sex to reach enlightenment.  The Ashrams here seem to be a little more …. legitimate…. but not all without their Karma-Cola aspect.  Rishikesh itself have little ancient-historical religious significance, and is far less important to Hinduism than Hardiwar, about 30 km to the south, where the Ganga flows from the last Himalayan foothill onto the plains of North-Central India.  It has modern-historical significance because the Beatles came to an Ashram here and hung out for a few months (before allegedly becoming disillusioned with the Guru’s womanizing). 

It is also the gateway to the Ganga’s Himalayan origin, and I plan to look into making the 3-day trek to the source, although it may be that I need to have proof of Typhoid immunization, which I don’t carry in my wallet. 

The rest of the post will respond to a couple interesting comments on the last few posts.  Andrea commented on the proliferation of big-boobed stone goddesses in the posted photos.  I have two additional points of interest about these goddesses.  While Barbie is constantly derided for not having enough room for a liver (if she were a real woman), some of these goddesses, I am convinced, would also not be able to have their kidneys or the bottom two ribs!  The other interesting note is a comment on sandstone, which many of the temples were carved from.  If you touch it enough over time then the oils from your fingers end up polishing it.  So the heads of the gods are often polished from the priests taking blessings from them every day.  The boobs of the goddesses are often also shiny in the same way.

Jeff also commented that past karma is meaningless compared to the present, and that if all my karma is washed away but nothing changes, I may never have had karma to begin with.  With this, I’m not sure I agree, and it may come down to a difference in understanding between Buddhist and Hindu karma….  I’m not sure why past karma would have a continued influence on your attitude and actions in the present.  My perception of it is that it is the accumulated balance of whether your past choices have been ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ (I’ll skip the questions about who determines the scale), and that a net positive karma at the end of a set of lives allows you to transcend the cycle of reincarnation (samsara) and attain Moksha/Nirvana (very different in themselves, but both separate from samsara). 

Come to think of it, that understanding would not account for the attainment of enlightenment, as it is called, which potentially would be a separate sidestepping of the samsara-cycle through a realization that there really is no karma (and thus, universal right or wrong, or accountability for past actions).  Am I getting somewhere here, Jeff? If that is the case (in Buddhism), I wonder if there is an analogue in Hinduism.  Maybe I should join an Asrama to find out.

My previous rejection of bathing in the Ganga and cleansing my bad karma to attain Moksha (Hindu Paradise, compared to Nirvana, Buddhist Annihilation) is peculiarly close, as I reflected a bit later, to a criticism of a choice-based Grace, as found in the modern western religions (Christianity and Islam)- that is, if there is an ultimate Grace that washes away all of your sins assuming that you ‘choose’ to believe the correct religion, and no amount of wonderfulness on the part of those who chose ‘incorrectly’ will ever lead to such Grace, then it comes down that all choice (except for one) is meaningless and it doesn’t matter what is done as long as the choice of singular belief is correct.  To me, that’s just like choosing to wash in the Ganga and cleanse any/all bad karma from the past, and I feel there’s a philosophical problem with that (at least for a choice-monger like me). 

For those still reading, you might find it interesting that, if there is universal grace (or universal moksha, or universal nirvana, or any other thing that affects all people equally), I feel my argument falls apart.  There is no other-worldly accountability for specific choices and actions, and the consequences (or lack of them) are merely what happens to you physically and how your interpret that psychologically.  That is, for me, the essence of living, for then one is to make their own choices based on their own personal beliefs and values, and they will judge themselves (or forgive themselves) based on the same and deal with what physically happens to them based on their understanding and perceptions of their own choices.  Reading that over again, it seems a bit heavy.  I’m not sure how to explain it better.  I guess the idea I have is that the existence of an afterlife, or a next-life, should have no bearing on the present (that sound a bit like Jeff’s comment), and that our choices, the external (not-us) reaction to those choices, and the internal perception of both the choice and the reaction form the basis of …. of….  everything? 

Well, that’s perhaps enough ranting for the time….  This was going to be a very short post, initially.

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