Young Buddha Got It Bad Cuz I'm Brown

Right about now Indianz With Attitude court is in full effect.

Maharaja Dre presiding in the case of IWA versus the police department.

Prosecuting attourneys are MC Curry, Ice Lassi and Masala muthafuckin Chai.

Order order order. Ice Lassi take the muthafuckin' stand.

Do you swear to tell the truth the whole truth

and nothin but the truth so help your pajama-wearin' ass?

Why don't you tell everybody what the fuck you gotta say?

FUCK THA POLICE

On my way back to Varanasi from a place called Sarnath, my rickshaw got stuck in a mix of vehicle and pedestrian traffic that had all the makings of a riot. Dozens of assault-rifle wielding police officers were escorting a backhoe which I first thought was just being a pain in the ass and blocking traffic. Soon I realized it was methodically assaulting shops and tearing down parts of the storefronts as shopkeepers and cutomers fumed within. Crawling down a kilometer long stretch of road we saw the evidence of a day spent unannouncedly destroying parts of people's livelihoods, bricks and iron laying in twisted piles in front of hundreds of shops, and people's eyes fixed in rage upon the invading machine. I'm sure somebody knows why this is happening, but I'm just gonna go ahead with what is usually the proper response and say Fuck Tha Police.

It's been a busy day, between hanging out with my surprisingly philosophical gaggle of little children, visiting monumnents out of town, and having lengthy discussions with priests and gurus of three different religions, I absorbed a fair amount of knowledge, leaving just enough time to slice my way through an angry mob.

First things first. One of my little child friends informs me that last night's episode with the handgun was nothing to be concerned by. To paraphrase my little buddy "If he own a hotel in this hood, fo sho he packin' heat." It's becoming increasingly obvious that I'm living the hood life. Last night in addition to the customary dogfight, I also got to hear an argument over the price of opium. The lodge shuts itself closed with steel doors at 10 and the owner takes a gun when he goes out at night. This is why I'm always shutterred up in this bitch blogpostin'. At least until I get my nine.

Today I decided to get out there a little and I took a day trip out to Sarnath, a peaceful little town with an assortment of ruins marking the spot where Buddha gave his first sermon and thus started the cycle of the wheel of law. It is the birthplace of Buddhism. One day they're gonna build a stupa to Ghostface Buddha at a netcafe in the Pahar Ganj of Delhi marking the spot where I first made a cow shit joke online.

Sarnath is a lovely little place. There are a plethora of quiet Buddhist temples and monks from the various Buddhist countries wander around and mingle with the foreign tourists and Indian picnicking couples. I'd have to say the Sri Lankan temple was my favorite, as it was quite nicely built, had a tranquil garden of palms and a sacred bodhi tree, a golden Buddha statue quite like the logo of this fine website, and also had a deer park. I spent a great deal of time walking about reading pearls of Buddhist wisdom carved everywhere in about 15 languages. I also talked to a Buddhist monk but he had to scurry off and assist a pack of Japanese Buddhists, who even in their grey robes and orange sashes still carry a bevy of GPS-enabled, mp3-playing, remote-control-helicoptering cameras and needed someone to take the group photos.

You take your shoes off to visit temples, but I decided to just wander around the whole town barefoot. The very idea that it was possible to do this without having to constantly dodge paan spit, broken masonry, and animal manure was an irresistible novelty. People looked at me funny. Them bitches got a smile and a toe-wiggling they will never forget.

I eventually stumbled into a Jain temple, where I talked to a disciple for about an hour. Jainism, I have concluded, is essentially Buddhism on acid. He opened our discussion by distinguishing between the two branches of Jainism and proudly announced that he was of the minority Sky-Clad variety, meaning that when he becomes a guru in his own right he will go around completely naked. To illustrate this point he presented a massive folder of photographs of himself with the various naked gurus he studied under, naked-ass gurus blessing government ministers, and a picture of the Dalai Lama seemingly bowing before a Jain guru's member. Sarnath is holy to Jains because one (three? I forget how many) of the Jain tirthankas (sort of like prophets) were born here....hundreds of millions of years ago. They were also several stories tall and lived for various periods of a thousand to 8 million years. Mahavira, the last tirthanka and a historical figure quite similar to Buddha makes the most sense, while the others sound like characters from the underwater sequence in the film Yellow Submarine. Because of their diminishing size, the fact that Mahavira was a reasonable human height leads Jains to conclude that the next one who will show up in about 100 million years will be approximately a foot tall. The disciple confessed that he had great difficulty understanding these matters, as they were incredibly bizarre in comparison with the actual philosophical tenets of his faith...which is saying something.

One thing I have to say about the Jains is that they're consistent. Though they've been around 2500 years, they are willing to accept the implications of modern knowledge on their faith. For instance, now the naked gurus aren't even allowed to wash themselves, because this would kill bacteria and they are sworn to harm no living thing. I quickly concluded that I don't want to be a Jain, because I roll over in my sleep, potentially killing insects, and I also am not attracted to the idea of pulling out all the hairs on my body one by one with my bare hands. I am a hairy man. Plucking my thighs alone would give me arthritis; going any higher would leave my hands reduced to a cyborg appendage on a stump, leaving me looking like a naked, bald Luke Skywalker.

Finally I entered the archaeological site where the ruins of some of the world's oldest Buddhist structures are lying around. Among these is an enormous round brick tower marking the precise spot where the Buddha first expounded the core of Buddhism to an audience of 5 erstwhile ascetic friends. The Buddhist monks I talked to spoke with deep reverence for the place. It's not every day when you can see the place where your deepest beliefs originated. I'm no Buddhist (or a Jain, no matter how cool they are) but all told Sarnath was a pretty cool historical experience.

Back in Varanasi I instantly ran into my kid buddies again. This time they directed me to a riverside Diwali ceremony where fire-dancers and yogis performed on mattresses at the ghats while hundreds of ecstatic saddhus singed and clapped along to the music, pausing only to smear red paint on my face and toss candles into the river. One of my urchin chums bought me dinner and me and the cook talked about the meaning of life.

India rules.