The drive to Sarnath, from Varanasi, while only a distance of 10 miles, might as well be transcontinental. The calm of the forest of what once was called "the deer park" remains, even as the din of the ghats of Varanasi still echoes in my ears. The walk from the road where Panday leaves me, towards the small temple, is deserted. No one asking for anything! Not only that, but signs discouraging any giving or soliciting line the pathway.
The temple, though small yet ornate in naive way, bears no resemblance whatsoever to the great cathedrals of Christendom.
I am reminded of some of the churches in Italy built by the Franciscans, evoking some of the original simplicity of St Francis, who would have loved the deer park. This place, the site of Gotama Buddaha's first sermon (his Sermon on the Mount) and the birth of the Eight-fold path, the Middle Way, the way, not of self-abnegation, but of self-responsibility, is today honored with a few scruffy workers hacking at the unresponsive earth, attempting to replace a few bricks in front of large, green statues of Buddaha and his five original disciples.
This lack of grandeur seems to go to the heart of Buddaha's teachings. As St. Francis tore away at the rot of medieval Christianity, so Buddha excised from Hinduism, extreme asceticism and human sacrifice, the caste system and elaborate rituals. Though, just as Hinduism still has Varanasi, as lively as ever, so too, does Vatican City still flourish.
Somehow, the ability to balance the spinning plates of religious contradictions may well be one of humankind's more remarkable achievements.