Ascetics

Man is the sacrifice, say the holy texts. In sacrifice, the priest identifies with what is offered into the flames. If it is ghee, the priest becomes the dripping ghee. If it is a cake of vegetables, then the priest is each of the vegetables. The priest re-enacts the death of Prajapati, the Lord of the gods and the first sacrificer, whose dismemberment was also the birth of the world. Then the priest dies to let the fire be reborn. He dies as offering; he offers by proxy his lower life, the dross of his body, to the sacrificial flame.

The ascetic likewise is a kind of living fire, I tell W. Upon ordination, he lies on an unlit funeral bier. His marriage is dissolved, his possessions redistributed, and he is released from his duties to his ancestors. He is a dead man – but he's also become deathless, for another part of him has transcended his earthly body. He's sacrificed himself; he's a living sacrifice, a living torch, even as he wanders alone, greeting no one, asking for no alms, and showing indifference in his dealings with all things.

Rubbing himself with ashes, sitting in a thorn bush or on a bed of nails, the ascetic aims only at self-liberation, at escaping rebirth. As he starves, his soul, atman, glows brighter in his eyes. As he thirsts, his inner fire licks up to God. As his limbs atrophy, he is God alive on earth; his soul, atman, is at one with Brahman. That's why it is an honour for the householder to receive the ascetic as a guest. It is why feeding the ascetic is the greatest of boons.

Is that why he feeds me?, W. wonders. Is that why he took me in? I've destroyed everything. I've left it all behind. And am I not compelling him, too, to leave his life behind - his career, his intellectual reputation? We're wandering as ascetics, naked but for loincloths, our ricebowls our only possession. We're wandering in living sacrifice, ascetic-idiots, humiliating ourselves in service to God: that's how I see it, isn't it?