86. the life cycle
lovely food in plantain leaves. They thronged around me, touched my feet, begging
me to take their food, or at least a morsel of it. “It is thought to be supremely mer-
itorious to give a sannyasihis first food,” said Vifvananda. “Have you already prom-
ised anyone that you would honor him or her?” He asked this in slow, but good En-
glish. I had not known before that he could speak English at all. I told him, in
English, that I had promised his host. “Then you have to accept his offering. That
settles it.”
The Swami’s host had a large tray of dainties ready for me and placed it at my
feet. I sat down and ate, for this corpse was hungry—and very, very thirsty.
I withdrew for the few hours left of this night and slept as befits the dead. The
sun was high when I woke. Vifvananda was sitting beside me and was chewing betel.
He smiled when I greeted him. “Take your bath first, Agehananda Maharaj, then we
shall talk.”
There was tea and there were laddus and jalebis (two Indian sweets) when I came
back from my bath. “What will you do now, Agehananda?” he asked. What ought
I to do, Maharaj?” “It is for you to decide, for as I said, it is your own choice whether
you take the traditional directives literally or not. You may set out on a pilgrimage
to the seven holy places or you may walk through Bharat (India) or you may stay
here. I would only suggest that you spend another week here meditating. Would you
avoid the cremation ground for a while?” There was not really any challenge in
these words, but there was a mild implication. I said, “My mind is made up, Maharaj.
I wanted to leave this morning, to walk through Bharat. But now as you ask me to,
I shall stay on for a week and meditate.” “It is very good,” he nodded. “You will be
a literal sannyasi,” he added with a faint smile.
I meditated on the roof of the AnnapurnaTemple during the next seven days,
and on the cremation grounds on the ManikarnikaGhat during the six nights in be-
tween, sitting about thirty yards from the spot where I had died. There is the out-
ward cremation ground; it has to be transferred into one ’s mind—the sannyasi’s
mind is the hypostasized cremation ground. The physical crematorium is but a sym-
bol for the inner one. Without the inner, the physical cremation is of no avail—
without the inner cremation, it is like a horror play on the stage. As a material loca-
tion, the cremation ground is a farce like all places of burial, but informed by
transference into an object of meditation on the inane universal evanescence as well
as into a simile for the mind wherein the desires have been burnt up, it is a thing of
hallowed beauty and great purity.
After a week, I went to take leave of Swami Vifvananda Bharati. I told him I was