Would you bathe in the Ganges?

Ugh, no. I'd rather sit through a marathon of The View.

I can PM some disturbing pictures of the Ganges to anyone who wants em. Any takers?

I think it's sad how a "sacred" river has been turned into a literal cesspool.

[Silver]

Originally Posted by Animus27

Ugh, no. I'd rather sit through a marathon of The View.

I can PM some disturbing pictures of the Ganges to anyone who wants em. Any takers?

I think it's sad how a "sacred" river has been turned into a literal cesspool.

I feel pretty much the same.

If a people LOVE something as much as they claim to love this body of water, why are they not being a loyal steward to it and doing what they can to cleaning it up?! Yikes.

I can imagine, so no, I don't need the pics, ugh~

A few years ago i was in India and visited Varanasi and the Ganges. Didn't bath in it, but there was a man who wanted to bless me. He took me to the river bank and put some Ganges water on my forehead. I must say that for a short while i was pretty anxious about wether i would get sick or that i would get some kind of rash in th face...but not at all lol. But taking a bath in it...no way! I've seen too many and various activities taking place in the river (plus warnings of course) Besides this, when i would be in India again, i'd love to visit Varanasi again...quite an inspiring place to be!!

And talking about visiting holy places:
It was after my visit to India and Nepal that i tried to meditate just a few times, which became the starting point of my spiritual journey...before this visit, when someone would have told me i would start that spiritual journey that year or at some point in life i would have laughed him right in the face, because before that visit i wasn't aware of the existence of the spiritual at all.

its hard to imagine a different culture, you cant tell them to stop burning bodies at the river and dumping them in, this is thousands of years of traditions. and the waist flows to the river. you cant tell someone who makes less than 100 rupees a day to live their life differently, they have no choice. the government does a lot to help like dumping more water in during kumbamela. its not so easy to change the ways it is so over populated, they could send the poor elsewhere and then it may be possible but thats not right. there are so many poor people there, so so many

it is really yucky that westerners watch R rated violence in horror films and have a lot of sex out of wedlock but it wouldn’t be right for an Indian to tell us that we are disgusting because it is our culture. we must understand and respect cultures that are different than ours. living in India taught me so much tolerance, in America we have such little tolerance of others we complain about things like traffic or the dmv but over there sitting in someone’s lap to fit into a rickshaw is barley an inconvenience. India is wonderful, many would not see it this way but i will cherish it forever.

[Chrysaetos]

Originally Posted by mahakali

its hard to imagine a different culture, you cant tell them to stop burning bodies at the river and dumping them in, this is thousands of years of traditions.

A tradition doesn't make it right. If the Aztec culture was alive today, would we allow daily human sacrifices on the basis of tradition? And do we justify commercial whale hunting in the name of ''tradition''? I don't know about the consequences of those dead bodies, but I'm trying to make a point here.

[psychoslice]

Only if I was on fire lol.

Originally Posted by Chrysaetos

A tradition doesn't make it right. If the Aztec culture was alive today, would we allow daily human sacrifices on the basis of tradition? And do we justify commercial whale hunting in the name of ''tradition''? I don't know about the consequences of those dead bodies, but I'm trying to make a point here.

you don’t have to believe in something to respect it, besides you aren’t being forced to jump in there so why be so disgusted? And there are a LOT of places way worse off than India thanks to the river. You wouldn’t tell an Ethiopian that they are disgusting for living in there own filth and feeding there children rotten food because they have no choice. So the real reason for the disgust is the part about the dead bodies, first of all those bodies are burnt to a crisp, charred beyond recognition and it is done wile the body is still fresh so the bacteria does not come from this it comes from the waist. Second these are some of the oldest traditions still being used today in the oldest country where they have the oldest religion with the oldest sacred texts and language still written and spoken. they have with stood the test of time, nothing can compete with that. the Wales were not endangered because of the natives that used them ceremonially they were endangered because of the others that hunted them for selfish gain, if cows were endangered then it would be wrong to eat them too. And the Aztecs and almost all other human sacrificing traditions are long gone for good reasons. Believing that the Ganges delivers your spirit to the desired place is a lot different then sacrificing humans. There are plenty of “reasons” to be biased of another belief race or culture in ones point of view but that is not everyone’s point of view. So the point is that to look with disgust at a religion based on cultural differences is ignorant. Only because you have to live it to truly understand it. Honestly id rather be burned to a crisp and dumped in a river than stuffed in a coffin. Well actually i want to be eaten by wild animals after i die, this seems more natural. My energies will not stay with a corps because there will not be one. You see all those ghosts at the graveyards, its like their prison, no thank you.

I wouldn't mock them for wanting to but I'm not sure I could handle it. I would love to see India some day but I'm so used to living in such a germophobic society such as America, my country, that I just couldn't do it, and other stuff they do in their culture such as using animal dung for various products and rituals. I once read an article in Marie Claire about what various women around the world eat and how many calories they consume, one of the women featured was a woman from India and somehow she consumed 2,100 calories a day but she started her day off with one 12 fl. oz glass of urine. There was no explanation where she got it or why but I was like, ewwww. I don't mean to be disrespectful but germophobia was drilled into my head.

[sound]

If I had to I would ... I would simply harmonize with all the bugs lol

lol dried cow dung makes great kindling and they will collect it and sell it. There’s so much wood laying around in America but you won’t find a stick in India.