yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

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."

More Articles

View All
Khan Academy India Talent Search 2016
Hi, I’m Sal Khan, founder of the Khan Academy, and I just want to let you know about our India Talent search. As you might know, Khan Academy is a not-for-profit with a mission of providing a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere. To us, that m…
How We're Redefining the kg
What do I have to push, sub-basement? Woman: Sub-basement. [Buzzing safety alarm] I’m at the National Institute of Standards & Technology in Washington D.C. and I’m going to the sub-basement. It’s getting dark down here. We’re going to find out how t…
Win Without Trying (A Taoist simile about losing your flow)
Competitions can be nerve-wracking. The more we live up to the day on which we are supposed to shine, the more anxiety builds up. What if I perform badly? What if something goes wrong? An Olympic swimmer trains thousands of hours just to get that medal. A…
North Carolina's Nuclear Incident | The Strange Truth
[Music] Bomb number one was literally a Washington Monument right in the middle of a tobacco field, tail up in the air. The parachute that had deployed was strewn amongst the branches. We found that the weapon was in sufficiently safe condition to transpo…
Why Snatch Blocks are AWESOME (How Pulleys Work) - Smarter Every Day 228
Hey, it’s me, Destin. Welcome back to Smarter Every Day. It’s time for the pulley episode. These are like my favorite things in the whole world. I bought this one; it looks like it goes to a boat or something like that. Pulleys are one of these things tha…
When Magma Meets Water | Breakthrough
Today, Jeff and Robert will use the lava oven to find out what happens to liquid rock when it collides with liquid water. They begin by melting 800 lb of basalt rock. The start out is crushed in gravel, and when we see it later and dump it out, it’ll be l…