I took an early morning boat ride on the Ganges River. Water is life. Hinduism considers this river sacred, the mother of all life. Bathing in it washes away sins. Spreading a person’s cremated remains in it takes you to heaven without having to be reincarnated. It is also a dumping place for all matter of refuse. It is a convergence of many living things; monkeys, cows, dogs, goats, people; all gather at the river’s edge for their individual purpose, 7 chakras multiplied by the 12 signs of the zodiac is 84; the number of steps leading to and from the river’s edge. Symbolic of the 84 million reincarnations a soul must undergo unless their ashes are scattered in the Ganges
At this most sacred place for the Hindu religion, I symbolically put my past into a small floating vessel, lit the oil lamp inside, and offered it to the
mother of all life, the Ganges. It is my process, my journey in letting go.