Varanasi to Sarnath

Old pilgrims’ path 

Footsteps in time

Absence and presence

End and beginning.

 

Varuna finds Ganga

Debris, penance, prayer

Leaves, thoughts, twigs, feelings

Dust, memories.

 

Maps of mind

Lines on surfaces

Randomness is,

Within Order

Earth and water

Space, grace, unity

Clay, Ganga Ma

 

Fellow agnosic*

Come,

Walk with me.

(* Agnosia: Blindness of the Mind)

                                       — Shakti Maira

Pilgrims’ Path Series (2001)

  Most of these paintings are voices from the old pilgrims’ path from Varanasi to Sarnath. I walk this path, over and again. The earth seems to carry memories of old footsteps (the Buddha walked this path, I am told. I am shown a grove of trees near Raj Ghat where J. Krishnamurti felt Shakyamuni’s vibrations). Walking the path, looking down, I see fallen leaves, broken twigs, kicked and crushed stones, ruts, and gullies. I am reminded of a failing life, a falling life, of the Buddha’s First Noble Truth. The first sermon: the turning of the wheel.

  The path meanders through villages, past temples and crosses the River Varuna just before it joins the Ganga. The Path then merges and disappears into the lanes and ghats of Varanasi. On the wooden bridge, I feel the merging of the rivers, and know that Ganga, Mother River, will too merge and disappear, after its long journey, into the ocean. Another passage.

  The path itself is but a line on a surface. Yet it is also part of a map of another old human journey: the search for understanding and meaning, the impulse to leap beyond the suffering of ignorance and into the light of wisdom and the unity of love. Walking the path, in the rhythm of breath and feet, there is calm, peace, space, beauty and grace. And so it is, as I paint. Peace in chaos. Order in randomness.

  At dusk, the boatman at Raj Ghat takes me downriver; we are searching for an old clay bank on the far shore. We find It, an embodiment of flow and passage. In the failing light we fill the boat with this damp fragrant earth. The children at the Krishnamurti school and I will make people out of this, and fire it in a pit, with leaves, twigs and gobar (cow dung). Another passage. And all the paintings in the Pilgrims’ Path have this Ganga clay in them.

                                                                                                                                               — Shakti Maira

Some paintings from Pilgrims’ Path are presented here. Click on the images for a larger view.