A Pornography of Death, The Prestige

A Pornography of Death,  The Prestige


Pornography, to write about prostitutes, originally from the Ancient Greek porne (prositute) + graphein (to write); compare hagiography, to write about the holy, or hagios.

 From Christopher Nolan’s movie, The Prestige, about rivaling illusionists, we learn that a proper illusion has three elements: the Pledge, the Turn, and the Prestige.

The Pledge shows us something ordinary, a small bird for example. The Turn, likewise, makes the Pledge disappear. However, the true stamp of an illusion is the Prestige, in which the Pledge is brought back, but with a twist, something better, a bigger bird.

Mãyã, in Sanskrit, means “illusion” or “magic.” It is neither good, nor evil, neither black, nor white magic, but merely just an illusion. The Buddha taught that life and reality is just such an illusion, the product of Queen Mãyã’s sleight of hand. Much like the Faerie Queen Mab that haunts the dreams of Romeo’s star-crossed mind, deluding him of reason and rhyme, Mãyã weaves a web of illusion across our world-weary lids, causing us to believe in a world that doesn’t really exist.

Varanasi is the city where people come to die. It is the city of prostituting Death and proffering lies.

Varanasi is the city of illusions dispelled. It is the City of the Dead.

The Pledge was shown to me this morning. A confounded trip along the Ganges, sparking annoyance in me, bringing to question, “have I really even learned anything this entire trip?”

The Turn made India disappear from my eyes when I went to the  Varanasi Mall next door to my hotel. Suddenly, before my eyes, I was back to the “reality” of shopping malls and McDonald’s. I had been filtered through the masses at the Taj Mahal, and now, the Turn had made it all disappear. “My India” as my friend said, was over, and I was missing it. Indeed, but, it wasn’t.

Like a frustrated John, I went back to my pimp, demanding satisfaction. I went out to the waiting rickshaws in front of the hotel, and having argued with a group of them who were all pushing and shoving each other to get my fare, I settled on an honest-looking man with bloodshot eyes and a bit of a turban.

“Why are you going to the Ganges now?”

“For the Pooja.”

“You want to go on the boat again?”

“I’m not sure,” I hesitated, remembering the morning, and I wasn’t sure.

After meandering through an inexhaustible tangle of traffic, my driver took me then through what was the most intricate labyrinth of backstreets I have ever seen in any city. Rickshaws are not allowed to go up to the main ghats where the Pooja is being performed, but he knew a secret passage. We went through the thickest of the thick part of old town. This was not the tourist way to say the least. For a moment, the paranoia set in that I was going to be taken to a backstreet and robbed of what little I had and my camera. I felt a bit uneasy, feeling less like a seasoned traveler and more like a nervous tourist, but it soon passed.

We pulled over and he said, “Follow me,” and off he went like the White Rabbit down the rabbit hole of even more labyrinthine walkways, his mock turban my only marker of him in the crowd, trying to keep pace with his incredible fleet feet. Then, suddenly, we walked out onto the Kedar Ghat, which is next to the “holy man” academy that I had seen earlier and the state-run crematorium.

The sun had set by now, and the river seemed empty, devoid of the thousands of boats from the morning. I was a bit confused.

He summoned a young man from the bottom of the ghat to come up. He asked if I wanted to go on the boat.

“How much?” I asked quite briskly.

“You come down, I show you, tell you the price on the boat.”

“I’m not stepping on the boat til you give me a price.”

I think it was apparent from my tone, this was not bargaining time.

“Six hundred.”

“O.K.”

My rickshaw driver said he would wait for the two hours on the ghat and take me back. I agreed.

The middleman passed me over to my ferryman. A tall, gaunt man of about my age, probably younger, though aged harder by life, features carved from his face with a silent expression of having seen life from a different angle than I could ever imagine. Crimson and white paste on his forehead, suggesting his caste, mostly likely quite low.

For the next two hours, every sense of orientation about what I had seen and experienced from the morning was transformed into an alternate universe. The Prestige.

It had all been given back, India in her most bizarre, most challenging, most magical, most haunting, most elusive and illusive.

To experience India at the fullest is likened I image to having your skull cut open under local anesthesia and every pre-conceived idea or concept that you ever had about what is possible, plausible, practical, or potential is scraped cleanly out of your mind, your brain replaced, emptied, and your skull screwed back on. Something like that.

For the evening ride, going upstream past the smaller crematorium, we were nearly alone on the pitch black Ganges, the only light was the burning of the funeral pyres.

“One hundred bodies each hour. Small child, no pyre. Poor, no pyre. A “no-touch,” no pyre. All day, all night.”

We sat there bobbing on the water, the chugging of a diesel engine in the background from a dredging pump. What had disgusted me this morning about watching Death as a spectacle suddenly changed quite dramatically. I watched as one body after another was brought down the ghat and placed on a fire in turn.

We then headed downstream.

Approaching the Dasaswamedh (ten-horse sacrifice) Ghat, which is the main one, was a spectacle that I cannot begin to describe, the Pooja. But, we passed on by, for now.

We went down to the other crematorium, the one where people pay privately. Here, the corpses are brought down wrapped in gilded garments and swathed in white. The undertaker undresses the garments and carefully the body is placed upon the pyre. Many people are around the pyre, chanting, but not crying. I hear someone in a boat near ours explaining that this is seen as Moksha, or release. It is not a Time of sadness, but of joy. A celebration of Life, not mourning for Death.

When the body has been burned, the undertaker takes the skull from the ashes and breaks it open, releasing the Soul. The ashes are left, and the family and friends turn their backs to the Ashes. The ashes don’t matter, they are the past. The Soul has been released.

“The city will sweep away all of the ashes in the morning...” Meanwhile, monkeys and stray dogs are scampering around the various piles of ashes.

We then head back upstream, back to the ongoing Pooja.

In an incredible display of lights, music, and incense, the final Pooja of Diwali takes place. It is a full-on celebration of Life. It is mesmerizing, beautiful, and pure serenity. We sit for about a half an hour with the other boats, nearly all of them filled with Indians and very few tourists. The exact opposite of this mornings macabre fleet of spectators.

As the Pooja festival winds down, we head back upstream to the Kedar Ghat, where my driver is waiting.

My personal Charon docks the dinghy and disappears into the shadows after I have paid him. I go back up to the maze of backstreets with my driver, whose name I still don’t know. He smiles back at me with bettel-stained teeth and bids me to follow.

We get back to the rickshaw and in another serpentine ride, we manage our way back to a restaurant I found out about yesterday. I ask him to drop me off there and we agree that he will take me to Sarnath tomorrow. He does not ask for the 300 rupees tonight for the 4 hours he spent with me as a promise that he will show up in the morning. I bid him farewell, still not knowing his name.

Tomorrow, I go to Sarnath, to Vulture Peak, where the Buddha began to teach, having won out over the battle against Mãyã, realizing that all that we have taken for granted, all that we thought we knew, all that has been Pledged to us as reality, can be taken from us in a flash, stripping us of any remaining vestiges of preconditioned thought, Turning into Ashes, revealing the Prestige of Life in the indifferent face of Death.

And So, He Left

In 1895, Jiddhu Krishnamurti, usually known simply as Krishnamurti, or by "K" amongst friends was born into a Telagu-speaking, orthodox Brahmin family in the vicinity of Chennai (formerly Madras), the capital city of the Tamil Nadu province in southern India. Krishnamurti had a delicate disposition and was an interminable dreamer, losing himself in his thoughts and daydreams on a regular basis, often to the annoyance of others.

Krishnamurti had a gift though. He was an eloquent speaker and yet also a profound listener. This gift was not lost on the people he met. As a fourteen year-old boy, Krishnamurti was "discovered" by C.W. Leadbeater, a close associate of Mrs. Annie Besant, the sitting President of the American-founded Theosophical Society (1875), which had moved headquarters to Adyar. The Society was a comparative religion organization which followed the occult teaching of Madame Blavatsky, (whose writing played a significant part in Joyce's Finnegans Wake, albeit mockingly).

The purpose of the Society was to prepare the world for a World Teacher, an incarnation of the Maitreya, or "Buddha of the Future," a Boddhisattva. Unlike the historical Buddha, who achieved Nirvana in his lifetime, the Boddhisattva is enlightened, but chooses to remain in the cycle of life and death, remaining as a teacher for others. Nirvana being literally an "extinguishing" of the cycle of rebirths, or Samsara, like a candle that had been re-lit, but is blown out for good, Nirvana leads to the void, Sunnyata, neither good nor evil, beyond both of them.

Krishnamurti was the "chosen" One for the Society, he was the World Teacher, the Boddhisattva, the Maitreya. As such, he was groomed for the position and duty, fulfilling it quite easily and the Theosophical Society grew exponentially under the promise of a New Hope. Krishnamurti was indeed the incarnation of Lord Krishna himself, as the name implied, meaning literally, the "embodiment of Krishna." Like the Historical Buddha, Siddhartha, however, his goal was not attained. He had no inner peace.

At the age of 29, Krishnamurti called a general assembly of the Theosophical Society Order of the Star in the East, of which he was the head. By this time, Krishnamurti had gained an international reputation as truly the World Teacher, the eastern Messiah had come.

With anticipation, the audience awaited Krishnamurti's announcement, hoping that he would finally accept the designation of the World Teacher, once and for all. The Society would flourish, would become the World Religion.

Standing stoically in front of all of his friends, colleagues, devotees, students, and mentors, Krishnamurti made his announcement. He disbanded the Theosophical Society, denouncing all organized religion as conduits to corruption and promoting FEAR. Fear for Krishnamurti was the source of all suffering, causing even the desire that the Buddha had taught to release. With fear, people are paralyzed. With fear, anger arises. With fear, competition becomes acrid and destructive, not constructive. With fear, children could not learn.

Krishnamurti left the Order, and it disbanded. For the next 50 years, Krishnamurti divided his time between Ojai, Californian and India, giving informal talks and taking any questions about any topic, to which he would speak to, without fear, independent of any organization or religion.

His favorite audience was with children, to which he dedicated a great deal of his energy to speaking out against the futility of using fear as an instrument of education. Instead, he listened to the children.

And so, he left.

You May Leave if You Wish

There are four traditional varnas, or castes initiated by the Vedic system: brãhmin (priestly), kshatriya (warrior/princely), vaishya (merchant), and the shudra (laborer). Being a religious-based culture, the Aryans were at the behest of the brãhmins and their Vedic religion, which centered around devotions, oblations, and sacrifices to a number of deities.

Siddhartha Gautama was a noble kshatriya, destined to be a great king, greater than his father. However, the prophecy of a mendicant holy man said otherwise, namely that he would be a teacher, which highly disappointed his father's ambitions for his royal offspring. This could not be so.

Siddhartha thus lived a princely life, without sorrow, without suffering, a kept man with all the luxuries of the world at his feet, so long as he remained within the confines of the illustrious palace, which itself was purged of suffering, sickness, and even old age by order of the king. Siddhartha lived a charmed life.

Upon breaking the curfew of bliss imposed upon him by his father, Siddhartha set out to see what was beyond the gates of paradise, disobeying his father, as children often do. Siddhartha saw, in succession, a sick man, a dying man, a corpse being cremated, and a wandering ascetic. Siddhartha left his home, his wealth, a wife and child, knowing that they would all be taken care of, even without him.

Having wandered for many years, gaining recognition of mystical powers of concentration and spiritual awareness, Siddhartha, whose name means "the one who has attained his goal" had not yet attained his goal. He was still hungry, his heart, soul, and mind full of desire. Desire for what? Desire...

In deep, profound meditation, Siddhartha experienced the dissolution of Mãyã, or cosmic illusion, and saw the universe for what it was, he gazed upon the void, and he saw... Upon awakening from this meditation, he soon became known as the Buddha, the "one who has awakened." But to what, and from what?

The Buddha, as with Socrates (who was to come a century later) and Jesus (another four centuries after Socrates), did not write, but he spent the last 45 years of his life fulfilling the prophecy of his destiny, he became a teacher. However, as with many great teachers, he did not want blind devotion, he wanted self-actualization and self-discipline, which could only be done by, you guessed it, your-self.

The deer park at Sarnath and Vulture Peak were to become two well-known classrooms for the teachings of the Buddha, from the Buddha himself. Wary of zealot devotees, the Buddha insisted that his words alone were not enough, you, yourself had to do the hard work.

To reach the state of Enlightenment, it was necessary to do only one thing, to rid yourself of material desire, the hunger for external relief of suffering. Suffering was none other than this thirst, desire to be satiated, because slaking the thirst was transitory, ephemeral. It would come back, with greater longing than before if one had not taken care of one's self, the atman, the soul, first.

To live then, without suffering, to become enlightened, was up to the individual, no deity would help, no deus ex machina, no easier and softer way would work. Right thought, right action, right speech and a deliberate choice of living the Middle Way, devoid of extremes and desires, could open the pathway towards enlightenment, but you have to walk the path alone.

To such a call, many decried, "It's too much to ask. I cannot do this! You, the Buddha, must save me. Tell me an easier way."

To this, the Buddha is said to have responded, "You May Leave if You Wish."