Republished from the Kumbha Mela Times

Loudspeakers blaring 24 hours a day–chants, announcements, religious instruction in every Indian language, tinny Indian devotional music. Stillness.

Fifty million people together in one dry flood plain, jostling, pushing forward, pushing back, trying to find the way. Stillness.

The sadhus as they walk together toward the mela, single file, never uttering a word. Stillness.

In the sacred grove where Bhole Baba planted the trees that shield us from the brilliance of the noonday Indian sun–a cooling breeze, a pandit chanting Vedic mantras as he tosses his herbal offerings into the sacred fire, and stillness.

In the cacophony of fifty million persons gathered to worship, in the sangam of fifty million souls gathered to pray, undisturbed–horizon to horizon stillness.

What impresses me most about the Maha Kumbha Mela is not the noise but the quiet, the enveloping serenity that calls us into meditation, that pulls us to join the saints gathered here in contemplation of the one source of all things–the inner silence.

The pandit said the name of this area means “the place of emptiness.” It is full of activity but empty of thought. Mind squeezes out of the way and one experiences reality whole, perfect, still.

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