Tag Archives: Varanasi

Mike’s Story: Just getting started

21 June, 2017 Mike Holliday (Santosh) 5 Comments

Many people are interested to hear my stories. I’m one of these lucky fellows who have had the pleasures of travel and the leisure for philosophy. I’ve spent about half of the past ten years in India following pilgrim routes and spiritual places; I didn’t intent to, that’s just the way it happened. I’ve spent considerable time in various destinations around the world that have some connection to healing, spirituality and indigenous cultures.

I consider Varanasi India to be my home and I hope to one day own some kind of home/workshop there some day. Sanjay is my brother, his family – my family. I’m the beloved outcaste brother. This is not a negative designation, but rather the reality of the foreign values and western corruption I have brought into their home. I don’t even write corruption in a negative way; but the individuality, lack of traditional values and other things are a corruption of the traditional life still represented so strongly in Varanasi.

Varanasi is not just a spiritual city. Varanasi also has a strong culture of arts and entertainment. Worldly enjoyment and deep spirituality in one place makes it the epitome of Tantra. Dark and light are equally present in everything here. Looking at many of the spiritual practices that go one here; one might even think that the light, the pure, the sattvic is better represented in the worldly enjoyments (bogha) than the worship (yagya).

Varanasi is famous for many other things beyond culture and spirituality: garbage, shit, pollution, corruption, poverty, mystery, cheating; it all goes on here. Everywhere Varanasi gives off a dark and disgusting image on first look; everyone looks so poor, just covered in pieces of cloth that have never been stitched together. Tourist often ask: “What’s the difference between a holy man and a bum?” Only when we see more deeply within ourselves can we see within others. If you have a holy man within you; you will find one.

The places we choose to live tell a lot about a person. Home and happiness are closely connected. I’m happy in Varanasi. I love all this filth that keeps people away. We don’t need to clean India, or clean Varanasi, or even clean Ganga; the filth keeps the image conscious people away.

I haven’t had a home in Canada for many years. Even when I did have a steady apartment I was constantly on the road somewhere living out of my car, my tent, or hotel rooms. I’ve spent time all over Canada in the mountains, forests, prairies; small towns and cities; on the rivers, the ocean, and some of the massive lakes we have in this country.

I’ve traveled hard, I’ve dug deep to find my inner will power; I’ve pushed hard, broken too many bones, explored every kind of fear and too many emotions and too much pain in every way. I’ve cried like a baby in the face of the most trivial fear. I’ve never conquered my fears; not once. When they come, I feel every bit of them, but what choice do we have but to keep going in life.

Many people think I’m crazy, many others think I am freer than most, living the good life. I think many people imagine their two-week vacations and assume my life follows that pattern. Most don’t know what to think: I’ve been years wandering foreign lands; I’ve become as foreign as the lands I’ve been traveling; an outcaste in my own land.

And I have to argue against being any more free than the next person. We are all free; we just need to cultivate the awareness to recognize it. The limitations of our bodies and minds and our place in time and space are incredible. All of nature limits us in the ways we think we are free, and we are free where we think we are limited. But if there was no nature and thus no limitations what would there be?

Many modern people don’t believe in anything higher than nature. I have no difficulty in believing that nature has tremendous power, but if there is only nature, it becomes impossible to express freedom. Nature is well represented by the movement of the planets that are, from our perspective, in perpetual motion due to the complex balance of various natural laws that are the domain of the modern science.

I come at life as a skeptic, doubting everything and always asking: why? I’ve always been this way. I want to know for myself. You could say that besides the question, “who am I?”, the next main question I’ve spent my life on is: “how am I free.” I can assure you I have not found any evidence of freedom in the material world. I’m sure scientist would agree that we are, for the most part, just carrying out the activity of the natural laws. Hormones triggered in the spring become more dormant in the fall. Our attachments and repulsion are merely chemical and electrical signals in our bodies responding to chemical and electrical signals in the world.

So why am I writing this now? Why not wait until I’m an old man and can avoid the criticism of self-indulgence? Who am I to write some story of my life? I’m certainly no one special. I have not achieved anything that is particularly noteworthy; unless you count my joy of living. And perhaps this is enough these days when so many people are unhappy and feel trapped in their situation; unable to do what they think they really want to do.

Perhaps I’m at a turning point in life. I feel secure in my spiritual life. It’s not something that comes and goes; there is no struggle to maintain a spiritual outlook despite living in the Canadian cities again. I can safely mingle with the material world without it dragging back into its oblivion. There is actually nothing spiritually negative about the material world, it’s the distraction it causes, making us oblivious to our true nature; bringing our awareness up to the surface of things and making us think that “image is everything” (as one young man recently pointed out to me). As long as we can maintain awareness of that true nature then matter is just another extension of consciousness; a power, or a means for consciousness to express itself.

Anyways, you get my point. I’ve done nothing, yet people are amazed. I have nothing, yet people a jealous and want what I have. Everything I have is inside of me; I can offer with my words and my presence; but what people take from this has little to do with me. I don’t take it personally: neither the praise nor the criticism. Whatever they get from me was already there inside the person; it didn’t really come from me. At best, I’m a signpost; at worse I’m a distraction.

In any case, lets go back to 2007 when I found myself buried in debt and facing a work lay-off with a Canadian winter quickly approaching. I thought about several options: wintering in the back country, throwing away whatever I had left on a week or two in Cuba, living out of my car and perhaps heading to the southern USA. At some point I decided on Cuba and actually made it all the way to the travel agency before suddenly changing my mind for India in the moments I waited for the agent to get off the phone.

I had already managed an Indian restaurant, loosely followed Buddhism, and had dreamt of going to Asia, so, why not? I gave myself five weeks to prepare. These days, five weeks preparation for a trip would feel like a lifetime, but for my first really foreign travel it seemed like an insanely short timeline.

Anyways, I was fed up with Canadian culture and society, and I certainly felt like I had more to offer than the physical effort of my construction job. The romance I was involved in was completely dysfunctional from the very beginning, and the truth is that I didn’t know either what I wanted, or what I had to give. Life was pretty much lived without vision. I was mostly too exhausted from work and worry that I didn‘t even have a concept of awareness. Chronic pain was still a serious issue for me then. At the time, I felt more like a passive agent only able to react to what life threw at me. But I can see how it all arose from me. It helped me to forge this sense of personal identity that I am now projecting onto the page and use daily in subtle ways to fulfill all my material and social ambitions. Life is not actually as complex as we make it out to be: our egos are useful in the material world; even the most out of balance ego completes its task. Like children, we don’t have to worry about the many things mother is taking care of, yet we do worry all the time.

So, off I went to India in 2007. It really did blow my mind. It shattered my dreams and made me realize just how small my vision of myself was compared to what it could be (or compared to who I really am). How small was my vision of life?

“When a yogi walks; behind him is nothing, before him is the infinite.”

How often do we hear people say, “I’m only human,” and then insist on their free will? Can we choose for ourselves or can’t we? Are we free or are we bound? Are we personally responsible, or are our actions the result fixed laws of the universe?

Thank god Indian logic allows us to accept both propositions. We are free. We are bound. We are free, but due to incorrect knowledge, we have, as it seems, chosen to be bound. Too much freedom can be a dangerous thing.

Philosophy

Materialism vs Tradition Cultures: An Optimistic Perspective

24 March, 2015 Mike Holliday (Santosh) Leave a comment

One of the richest men of India graced the evening aarti (ceremony) in Varanasi one evening. Not unlike Obamas visit to India, several private planes landed in the days before his arrival to ensure he would have all the comforts to which he’s accustomed, as well as the security preparations to keep him safe. Aarti time was even changed to fit his schedule. Of course, he was also giving some money to repair some damaged ghats and beautify the city.

Varanasi is famous for it’s discomforts, unappealing poverty, illness, garbage, shit, decomposition, and stench, to say nothing about the ease by which terrorism can be done here. Kings like this man have to worry about that kind of thing though it may be nothing to us. The filth of this city gets inside of all new comers, especially those most sure of themselves. Standing before the fires that consume over 10 000 bodies a year can have it’s effect. Doubt is sure to arise in the mind of the firmest ego. In this regard, I can understand why someone with the means would take all precaution: I’m sure he has no more time for doubt than he does for illness.

I asked one Varanasi man what he thought of this; being visited by such a king? “Go away man, we don’t need your money and show. They just come and disrupt our lives, demand special favours, just so they can show how great they are. Go away from here.” Time and again I hear this kind of attitude in Varanasi. Whenever there’s some initiative to clean the place up, or fix it or preserve it I’m usually just reminded that Varanasi people don’t want change. While the cities of India are surging ahead with change, most people in Varanasi are happy doing things like they’ve always done them. Let them fix things, let them push their initiative, as soon as they go things will go back to they way they’ve always been.

I can see the argument for such conservatisms in India much more clearly than I can in Canada. The family and community structures are much more intact here. Their lives are like iron, hard, but solid and dependable from birth to death. Family is their insurance, the community is their support.

The caste system is often spoken of in deplorable terms, but if you think in terms of structuring a community, you need all four castes to work together. An of course, the outcome of any cohesive group is that there will be people who don’t belong (outcastes and foreigners). A self-sustaining community needs a diversity of castes: labourers to build and maintain infrastructure, farmers and merchants to supply our goods, teachers and knowledge seekers to preserve and promote wisdom, as well as leaders and protectors to facilitate the smooth harmonious flow of people and goods. The outcastes forever challenge us. Those who think differently, act differently, have different norms, languages, gods. As much as their ways challenge us as individuals, they pose even greater challenge to the community.

What we’re seeing is a breaking down of the social structure in India. The west went thru this after World War II. By the time the 60’s rolled around everyone was freely completing their desires without fear of social recrimination. But of course there are still strong social taboos here that still make it necessary to underground to complete ones desires. The growth of urbanization along with massive need for itinerant works who leave their families and villages to find work where they can. To the western eye who sees them with their wife and children along with, a brother and his family it might seem as though family is still abundantly present, but from the Indian perspective this is the first stage of a broken family; broken home.

This is all old news in the west, but over the years of coming to India I’ve seen the changes that I have been a part of. As a foreigner, I’m an outcast here, if it was not for the weight of the currency from my home country, it’s likely I would be treated as more of an outcast than a king, but because of the weight of my western currency I am given the power of a king. As tourist outcasts we all arrive with this power. With this power we can change the society to suit our own needs just as the richest man in India did when he came to Varanasi. Of course, compared to him, you and I are poor people, our advantage is numbers and long durable work. In other words, our comforts were not flown in for us alone, but over the years of so many of us coming and bringing our own values with us we have gotten out way. We can have a croissant with jam for breakfast along with a cappuccino and a cigarette in any mildly touristic town in India, even if the locals have never found a taste for it.

We have created small unsustainable economies in the tourist sectors. The people, the real rulers of the land, are relying on us outcaste tourist for their prosperity. We’re nice enough rulers, we give good tips and are generally pleasant enough as people, but we’re still outcastes; we don’t belong as a part of their society. So whenever we bring our good ideas and insist that others adopt them, we are introducing foreign elements into the culture. We might not insist on the supremacy of our values without words or actions, but this supremacy shines with the power of our currency and the sophistication of our lifestyle.

Many people are of course overwhelmed buy the shine of modern sophistication and pride exuded by western people. Imagine yourself a villager, still no electricity or running water, never a day in school (learned from the land), some ox cart road for so many miles before there’s even a decent road, maybe watched TV a couple of times on the way thru the village to make trade. Then bring into the picture a shiny young American with a 300mm zoom lens and a million dollar smile.

“Oh maharaja, what can I ever do to get some of what you have?”

The funny thing is that for the passed 1000 years Hindustan (Hindu India) has had what would be considered outcaste rulers (the Persians followed by the Mughals). Perhaps this division between government and society helped to give Hindu society strength, because now that they’ve had over 50 years of self rule, traditional Hindu society is facing it’s most daunting challenge: materialism. They were fine so long as they were in opposition to the outcastes, but now that we’ve come back as friends offering the material comforts so long denied to the typical Hindustani they have no shame in dropping their traditions. But these traditions are what have held the people (the society) together through all the changes and upheavals of rulers and empires.

All ancient traditions are the same in this long-term view of things. It’s not a conservative resistance to change, it’s rather an understanding that the truth of a place (or a person) lies beyond all the changes. So let them come, they will go too. It will look like change has happened, but in the end everything will be just as it’s always been.

War and materialism will leave its mark on every society (every person even), but behind the marks of suffering and the cloaks of prosperity lies the same wisdom that cannot be lost for it’s preserved in every heart, in this way traditional culture, traditional society remains preserved and ready to support people thru the changes of war and materialism. The change is merely the appearance, the truth is that the same heart is beating now as has been beating since the beginning.

Travel

Varanasi: First Impression 2008

22 December, 2008 Mike Holliday (Santosh) Leave a comment

I just spent five days inhaling the smoke from the fires of dead people. Less than 100 paces from where I was staying is the burning ghat along the Ganges river. Over three hundred people a day are turned to ash there. I saw as many as 12 fires going at once. I rented a boat for an hour and the boatman explained that babies, pregnant women, and holy men are never burnt, their bodies are tied to a rock and they’re dumped in the river. It’s not uncommon for then to break free of their rock and find their way back to shore where, as I soon found out, the dogs and the birds have a feast until the next morning when a dalit (an untouchable) comes along and dumps them back in the middle of the river. The alleyways of the old city that hug the ghats which hug the river are narrow and filled with market stalls, cows, goats, many people, and processions of chanting funeral goers with bodies on their shoulders.

Varanasi is the holiest city in India. It’s also most likely the drug capital of India. Everything is available here: opium, hashish, and bhang (pot) are the most popular, though I was told that the man I nearly punched-out was most likely high on heroin.

Varanasi is like a resort town. Tourists everywhere, merchants happily trying to sell their wares, and helpful english speaking locals everywhere to ensure us tourists don’t get too lost in the alleyways of the old city. You can lie under an unbrella and get an aruvedic massage for Rs400, sit on the steps and enjoy a “special lassi” (keeping in mind that I said it was the drug capital), or just stroll around enjoying the many mini-festivals and the beautiful, unpretentious women.

Varanasi was indeed a lovely resort town of death.

Travel

India 2010-2011

16 June, 0201 Mike Holliday (Santosh) Leave a comment

Every year I get a little deeper into the country and come to understand the culture even more. This year I made huge strides in learning Hindi: reading, writing, grammar. My pronunciation still causes a great deal of confusion, but at least I can communicate with the locals a little bit beyond getting my necessities met.

Other than my requisite stay in Varanasi, this trip was all about Madhya Pradesh, the middle province where the Narmada river begins on the eastern border in the town of Amarkantak and gathers momentum as it heads west through the marble canyons near Jabalpur, before settling into a lazier pace as it goes through the Holy towns of Omkareshwar and Maheshwar. About 100km before it finds the Arabian Sea it enters the province of Gugarat.

From Varanasi I went straight south by bus to get to Amarkantak. There were a few small water falls nearby Varanasi, but as the bus climbed the mountains, natural beauty gave way to coal mining and power generation. In one particularly polluted town that tasted lie coal dust, I was told that there were ten coal power plants within 40km. My morning chai even had the undrinkable taste of coal. Several of the people I met here or on the buses near here were engineers enjoying the prosperous employment provided by all the smoldering black diamonds.

As the I continued south, the air began to clear and the people began to look healthier. Prosperity gave way to poverty. This is mostly tribal lands: jungle and farm. Huge, ranch-style mud houses with simple line work and dots painted on the outsides (tell-tale indications of tribal people); beautifully simple. I made my way thru Ambikapur, from the bus stand to the train station, surprising all the locals in this quiet city. I suspect that stopping for a night or two would have rewarded me richly, but Shiva Ratri was approaching quickly and I wanted to be in a suitable Shiva town (I was thinking I would get to Puri after a brief stop in Amarkantak). The driver of the shared auto who took me to the train station after I’d walked a few km refused my money and sped away singing what I think was a Bollywood love song.

Waiting for the train I encountered some rare racism: teasing and jokes that I could not understand but made me uncomfortable enough to move to the end of the platform. A couple boys who witnessed it cautiously approached me for conversation and quickly became close friends and guides for the next 14 hours. One boy was shy and from a low cast, and the other had just graduated from collage and was working as a pharmaceutical rep. Both were very cool. I got off the train one stop before they did and found myself a cozy place on the floor of the train station to sleep until morning and slept through until almost ten before catching one more bus to Amarkantak.

In Amarkantak I quickly learned the difference between asking for a “Sasta Hotel” (a cheap hotel) and a “sasta Kamra” (cheap room). Sasta Hotel is about Rs600/night ($15.00), and a sasta kamra is about Rs100/night ($2.50). The cheap room was a dung floor thoroughfare for rats with spiders in every corner and a thin mat on the floor for sleeping; perfect. The Phalhari Ashram was up the hill and had a beautiful view of the Ancient temples across the river (Sri Shankyacharyia, 1100AD) and the white spires of the new temples in the forground. All around me were huge Mango trees that were just starting to consider offering us (and the monkeys) fresh mangos.

The ashram in Amarkantak was nice and simple: a thin mat on a dirt floor, two meals a day and chai in the morning. The rooms all had rats passing through, but for Shivarthri someone apparently supplied them with poison and they began falling from the ceiling as if to beg for mercy. They were offered none. The foreign presence was small here, just myself; Mark, the Bhakti German fellow; and a hippy Alaskan guy with his daughter. Taj, the international gangster came later.

Taj had stories to tell, many stories about his upbringing in Kashmir, his immigration to Canada, his adventures around the world. He was in his early fifties and in the process of assessing his life. He was a doubter and a cynic when it came to religion and spirituality. He had no use for either and he enjoyed spouting his opinion in the ashram, to devotees and even to Babas. The Phalhari baba who ran the ashram wasn’t much different so the two of them became quick friends. Baba was a great manager and had completed 12 years of intense tapas eating only fruit while practicing yoga and tantra. He certainly didn’t recommend such a lifestyle, it was very hard on his body.

I stayed here for a few weeks listening to Taj’s stories and practicing intense yoga and meditation in my room. Baba spoke no (or very little English) so there was no instruction and he led no practices. As an ashram, it was merely a place to stay.

For Shivarathri I was given access to a private Puja in the main temple that went on for over three hours. It was he most intense puja I’ve ever witnessed. I’m certain that they recited an entire Purana with the speed of an auctioneer. When I left, my mind was swimming; I was high from the intensity of it all and I’d felt as though only a few minutes had passed. I wondered if I’d been lulled into some kind of trance. It was beautiful.

Taj and I left together catching buses and trains to haphazardly make our way to Maheshwar.