(via) This short mesmerizer by filmmaker Aeyaz – with compelling voiceover from Alan Watts – looks at the Indian holy city of Varanasi and what comes “beyond life”. From the filmmaker:

Varanasi, The spiritual capital of India – a place where people come from all over the country to breathe their last, and immerse the ashes in the holy Ganges for the beginning of a new life. A visit to Varanasi has always been in my bucket list, and being able to film there was like an icing on the cake. Honestly, words fail to describe what I have seen while on this epic trip with Photowalk Dubai. No wonder Varanasi is called the “City of Life”. Simply love this place. And this is my attempt to give you a sense of what it was like to experience the amazing “Varanasi” and the mysterious vicious cycle of life and death…

The transcript:

There really isn’t anything radically wrong with being sick or with dying. We can’t say that it’s a good thing for everything to go on living. In a very simple demonstration that if we enable everybody to go on living, we overcrowd ourselves. So therefore, one person who dies in a way is honourable because he’s making room for others…It’s a far more amusing arrangement for nature to continue the process of life through different individuals then it is always with the same individual, because as each new individual approaches life is renewed. And one remembers how fascinating the most ordinary everyday things are to a child, because they see them all as marvellous. It is not, therefore, natural for us to wish to prolong life indefinitely. But we live in a culture where it has been rubbed into us in every conceivable way that to die is a terrible thing.