Pashupatinath Temple, Nepal (Continued)

Add as a preferred source on Google

This is the moment when everything halts, all desires for health and wealth fade away, all pain and agony in the mind disappears, and the life in us wakes up. This is the realm of Shiva Pashupatinath, the only question of what the value of this life is echoes in the mind.

The limits of existence awaken in the mind, we are born, we will die, we owe nothing, we belong no where, we have come and we have to go, the only constant is Lord Pashupatinath; our only reality and hope in our transition to the next world. The arti rises and the faces of the Lord glow within the dark misty interior. Its a moment of tranquil existence where, neither death nor birth matter. Life will cease, transition will happen and the soul will depart.

This hard truth fades away as one steps out of the temple. The landscape around Pashupatinath temple is dotted with smaller shrines of Lord Shiva along the river side. As one looks through all the shrines on the opposite side of the Bhagmati river, the thought that runs through the mind is the repetition of births we take and continuously toil through our many lives, tirelessly living with no apparent purpose. At every stage we come face to face with the Lord as we go from one life to another, rather aimlessly.

As one walks down to the river, to take her blessings and purify oneself, a small linga beckons us to come its way. Here one can worship the Lord, a small abhishekam with the river water, praying for a fruitful life to be granted at this little shrine out in the open. At the end of this small ritual, a lamp is lit, a flame of enlightenment as it burns, sails down the Bagmati.

With a heavy heart and a torn mind, the steps lead back to our familiar worlds that lie ahead of us. With the vision of the Lord, His all pervading self, deeply engraved in us, one can't stop but think about the value of life. As one journeys back to the grind, Pashupatinath Temple leaves an uneasy void, that we are missing the presence of a greater reality, one before which all else is just nothing.