Death Along the Ganges River | The Story of God

less than 1m read

·Nov 11, 2024

Bodies have been cremated on the banks of the River Ganges for hundreds of years, bathed in the waters of their holy river, wrapped in linen, and placed on a wooden pyre. The dead are consumed by flame. Swami Barista, a monk and a doctor, is my guide to death and the afterlife in Hinduism. But the one place he can't take me is the cremation ground itself.

"Okay, this is the holiest crematorium, correct? In the holiest city, on the holiest river, right in the world?"

"Right."

"Okay, can anybody come and watch?"

"In a way, yes, but from far. It is not proper to go there and watch. From far, you can watch, but you can't come to the crematorium."

"Right, uh, it's a secret place."

"You can, however, get very close to a body before it's burned. Mourners carry them down this lane to the Ganges all day long, seven days a week. In Varanasi, life and death mingle freely."

[Music]

"So, Swami, I see these funerals. We've seen two or three pass by, and the people following seem to be joyously chanting rather than sadly wailing. Why is that?"

"They are facilitating the soul's journey further. And in a way, it's a matter of joy. One grief is there, having lost the near one, yeah, but that person has moved on to a better way of getting on with his or her life."

Fourier coefficients for sine terms

Extremely Rare White Lions Caught on Camera | Short Film Showcase

View All

Dian's Active Conservation | Dian Fossey: Secrets in the Mist

[music playing] WOMAN 1: For her time, Dian was very exceptional. Women wanted to get married and have kids. Setting up Karisoke, and studying the gorillas, and living that whole kind of life was completely not how she was brought up. She was not raised …

Describing populations | Ecology and natural systems | High school biology | Khan Academy

As you might imagine from the title in this video, we’re going to do a little bit of describing populations. So the first question is: what is a population? You can view it as a group of individuals from the same species living in the same general area. …

Meta Analysis: What is Facebook's Future? (w/ Divya Narendra @SumZeroInc)

Take a look at this. This is the one-year stock price chart for Meta, the world’s biggest social media company. As you can see, it doesn’t look so good at the time of recording, down 44% year-to-date. But if you look at, say, revenue or net income or free…

Worked example: differentiating polar functions | AP Calculus BC | Khan Academy

Let r be the function given by r if theta is equal to three theta sine theta for theta is between zero and two pi, including zero and two pi. The graph of r in polar coordinates consists of two loops, as shown in the figure above. So let’s think about wh…

Alkane with isopropyl group | Organic chemistry | Khan Academy

Let’s try to name this molecule right over here. The first thing we want to do is identify the longest chain of carbons. So let’s see; it could be one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, or let’s see, maybe it’s one, two, three, four, five, six, s…

The Harsh Bottom of the World | Continent 7: Antarctica

I think it’s important for people to know about what’s happening in Antarctica, not only just that the science that goes on down there, but what that science is actually trying to tell us about the future of this planet. Most of the research is really foc…

Death Along the Ganges River | The Story of God

More Articles