The Children at Sarnath

Five minutes outside of Varanasi is Sarnath.

Where Varanasi is sacred to Hindus, Sarnath is sacred to Buddhists. It is said that Sarnath is where the Buddha first preached his four noble truths and delivered his first sermon.

With the morning’s bitter boat ride fresh in my mind, I was dropped off by the local Diamond Tours representative and given three hours to check out the site before being picked up and returned to my hotel.

After checking out the small museum located to the south, I wandered around the ancient ruins of a Buddhist temple, searching for answers to questions not quite fully formed in my mind. The ruins were flat, silent and empty, with nothing but echoes to answer my thoughts. With dark thoughts wandering through my head, I left the destroyed temple and moved on to the modern one a hundred yards down the road in a deer park.

A local legend surrounds the deer park. It is said that it was once the hunting ground of a local king. While out hunting the king set his sights on a doe. He draws his bow, but a hart blocks his sights. The king stares into the hart’s eyes and realizes that it is an incarnation of the Bodhisattva, warning him. After that, the king set his hunting grounds aside as a deer park, and holds all animals there as sacred.

The legend may or may not be true, the but the deer park is real enough. It’s located right behind an active Buddhist temple, where Buddha’s first sermon as well as his four noble truths are enshrined in stone.

A massive school group of perhaps a hundred and fifty children and their handlers arrived around the same time as me, and I found myself surrounded in a sea of children. They all lined up to enter the deer park, a solid 50 meters of children on either side of the narrow walkway. I walked casually in between them to the ticket booth, trying to ascertain prices and decide if it was worth it to go into the park. Once at the ticket booth, I realize that I do not have time anyway, and immediately turn around.

To find myself facing a gauntlet of Indian children, all staring with fascination and curiosity at the giant white Gora with the ZZ Top beard. Looking back, I must have struck a startling figure, Six foot two with sunglasses, beard and an unsmiling face.

Bracing myself, I started down the gauntlet and found myself face to face with a smiling Indian child. His arm was outstretched in a gesture unmistakable in any country. “Hello!” he shouted.

I couldn’t help myself. I smiled and took his hand. “Hello.” He giggled and drew back to his friends. Still smiling, I continued down the gauntlet. Seconds later another one popped out of the crowd. “Hello!”

“Hello.” More and more of the tiny brown faces were smiling at me. I couldn’t help but smile back, grin growing wider and wider as nearly all of them waved and offered hands to me, shouting the only English word they knew.

Grinning like an idiot and feeling like a celebrity, I made my way down the gauntlet of Indian children. Without knowing, or doing anything but smiling and saying hello, they’d managed to turn my day around.

-Doug