Last week I visited Pashupatinath Ji. Took few quick photos of holy men at the temple premises. 🙏🏻📿
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Sadhus, the dreadlocked holy men usually seen lurking around Hindu temples, are essentially an Indian phenomenon. However, Nepal is also one of their favourite stomping grounds. Sadhus are especially common at Pashupatinath Ji which is rated as one of the subcontinent’s four most important Shaiva pilgrimage sites. During the festival of ShivaRatri, Pashupatinath hosts a full-scale sadhu convention, with the government laying on free firewood for the festival.
Shaiva sadhus follow Shiva in one of his best-loved and most enigmatic guises: the wild, dishevelled yogi, the master of yoga, who sits motionless atop a Himalayan peak for aeons at a time and whose hair is the source of the mighty Ganga river. Traditionally, sadhus live solitary lives. They bear Shiva’s emblems: the Trishul, damaru, a necklace of furrowed rudraksha seeds, and perhaps a conch shell for blowing haunting calls across the cosmic ocean. Some smear themselves with ashes, symbolizing Shiva’s role as the destroyer, who reduces all things to ash so that creation can begin anew. The trident-shaped tika of Shiva is often painted on their foreheads, although they may employ scores of other tika patterns.
Sadhus have a curious role model in Shiva, who is both a mountaintop ascetic and the omnipotent God. Gorakhnath cult, which has a strong presence at Pashupatinath Ji, follow the tantric “left-hand” path, employing deliberately transgressive practices to free themselves of sensual passions and transcend the illusory physical world. The most notorious of these spiritual exercises is the tying of a heavy stone to their lower part, thus helping to tame the distractions of sexual desire. Aghoris, the most extreme of the left-hand practitioners, are famed for their cult of death, embracing the forbidden in order to destroy it. Cremation grounds along the Bagmati river at Pashupatinath Ji are effectively their temples, and they are even rumoured to ingest human flesh – all in pursuit of the liberation of the soul. Sadhus also make liberal use of intoxicants as a path to spiritual insight, (ganja cannabis which grows wild throughout hill Nepal). Sadhus usually consume the weed in the form of bhang or charas as a chilam. With each toke, the holy man intones “Boom Shankar” ~ “I am Shiva”!!
courtesy of fb shiva tribe
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