Aghori Sadhana (The Cremation Ground)

By Mariam Gergis (Shayṭānata, شيطانة) 

Beside the burning pyres

Where Varanasi’s dead find peace,

The Aghori sits in meditation

On what never finds release.

Ash smeared across dark skin,

A necklace carved from bone,

He contemplates the teaching

That we die as we have grown.

His bowl: a human skull,

His blanket: shroud of the deceased,

Each shocking implement sermon on what’s least

Acceptable to minds that cling

To comfort and to form—

Yet in this grim surrounding

Wisdom weathers every storm.

He eats what others will not touch,

Sleeps where fear would wake,

Not from madness but from seeing

Through illusion’s false display.

The corpse beside him teaches

What the living will not hear:

That beauty, ugliness,

Pure and foul disappear

When consciousness expands beyond

The boundaries of taste—

In the democracy of ashes,

Nothing goes to waste.

The western mind recoils,

Calls this practice dark,

Yet the Aghori smiles

At each judgmental mark.

For he has learned the secret

That makes all pathways one:

What we resist persists

Until resistance is undone.