sky burial

Putrefaction plateaus in Iran, where the dead were sent for decontamination before going to their final resting place. But then I started to think (and read) about it. One of the main tenets of Buddhism is compassion, which includes kindness toward all animals. So the idea at work here is that, if your body is just a shell for your spirit, which will be reincarnated anyway, and if your spirit has left it and it could nourish another creature, then it should. Bya gtor literally translates to “alms for the birds” in Tibetan. It’s considered important to not waste the opportunity to help another living thing. A daily dose of hidden gems to visit, extraordinary places to eat and wondrous stories from around the world. Once the body is kept in a sitting position for two days and a lama recites the necessary prayers, the corpse’s spine is broken so that it can be folded and carried to the sky burial site, which is usually quite a schlep. Family members may accompany the dead on this journey, beating double-sided drums and chanting. Once arrived at the site, the rogyapa , or body breakers, first burn juniper to attract vultures. The corpse is placed face-down on the stones, its hair removed, and the ropyagas begin to chop up the limbs with axes or sledgehammers, sometimes flaying meat from bones and throwing it to the waiting vultures. When only bones remain, they’re pounded into a pulp, mixed with barley flour, tea, and yak butter, and given to the crows and hawks, after the vultures have had their fill of meat. It’s a bad omen if the vultures won’t eat, which can be a problem if the body has been treated with disinfectant or medicine, as it might be at a hospital. Typically, the yak that is used to transport the body is supposed to be set free after the ritual, which is yet another reason that sky burial can be a costly process. Most of the times that it’s practiced in Tibet, therefore, it’s a commuted version of leaving the corpse on the stones to be ritualized by the birds instead. It was actually only around 40 years ago that a similar death ritual was performed by the Zoroastrians in parts of Iran and India. It differed in that the corpse was not prepared — it was left intact on a short tower with a low parapet around the perimeter (a dakhma, or “tower of silence” ). On the top of the tower were concentric rings: the outer one for the bodies of men, the middle for women, and the innermost for children. When the sun had bleached the bones, which could take up to a year, they were collected and dissolved in lime in an ossuary pit at the center of the tower, then filtered by charcoal and flushed away by rainwater. The Zoroastrians’ reasons for sky burial differed greatly from the Vajrāyana Buddhists. Zoroastrianism considers a dead body as unclean and impure, as well as liable to be rife with demons. To bury a body is to risk defiling the water supply via putrefaction, and cremating one could contaminate the air. The use of dakhmas was outlawed in Iran in the 1970s, as the country’s urban limits spread out and threatened to swallow the rural areas where the towers are built. Many of these towers remain throughout Iran and India, along with the ossuaries where the bones finally rest. Today, in order to keep impurities and demons contained, some Zoroastrians have taken to encasing corpses in cement before they’re buried. In northern Australia, a ritual was practiced mostly in the north by various Aboriginal tribes wherein the bodies of the departed were placed on raised platforms and covered with foliage. After several months, when all of the flesh had been depleted, the bones were retrieved and painted red with ochre. Then they could be carried around by the deceased’s relatives, or placed in a cave until they degraded into dust, or stashed inside a hollow log, or just plain abandoned. For a period of time after the death, speaking the deceased’s name was forbidden, and his or her property would be destroyed. The concept w