A photo of a temple in the holy city of Kashi, also known as Varanasi. Kashi is one of the seven holy cities of Hinduism, which includes Mathura, Dwaraka, Ayodhya, Rameshwaram, Puri and Ujjain. Kashi is a city well known for its temples, especially the Kashi Vishwanath Temple, which is the center of the whole town.

 

The city is also equally well known for its yogi and ascetics, who practice yoga and tantra, the esoteric practices that raise the kundalini force or psychic energy along the spine, allowing one to attain to Nirvana or liberation.

Too often people embark on one or another Hindu practice - a course in Yoga, a meditation class - without any clear idea of its real objective. But meditation and Yoga are most effective when one is clear about what one is trying to do. While they may have incidental advantages to offer, their ultimate purpose is one only: it is moksha, release from the individual condition and the wheel of rebirth which goes with it.

 

Wisdom, it has been said by a modern Hindu saint, consists in discovering the real purpose of life and the means to achieve it. The purpose of life, in the view of most Hindu practices, will by now be clear: it is to put an end to our habitual identification with the jiva, the transient individual self, and to identify instead with the unchanging consciousness which stands behind it and which alone is Reality. The four major traditions of Hinduism are different ways to this objective. Although we have treated them separately, they mix and influence one another, and their interplay gives to Hinduism its immense variety and its many subtle nuances.