To fly when you die
I was surprised to hear that sky burials are still - erm - alive and kicking in Tibetan China, after their ban in the 1970s. And I was surprised again to find that in the thin air of tiny little Litang there lived one of the few rogyapas ("body-breakers") in the region, which meant that sky funerals took place every Monday, Wednesday and Thursday at the top of a nearby mountain. So here was my big chance to witness a rare tradition but after much hemming and hawing (hard to do when the air is so thin you can barely bloody breathe) I jammed out.
Unlike Chris, I had no problem with watching a body get dismembered and fed to vultures: I just couldn't lose my Judeo-Christian uptightness about the whole funeral thing. Partly it was the horror of having to trek to the top of the mountain by dawn (later I found out there were paved roads right to the site, as the bodies are delivered by ambulance from the morgue) but mostly it was my mom having died last year.I know that the Buddhists see the body as just so much garbage - which, let's face it, it is - but I couldn't get past how I would have felt if some tourist showed up to gawk at her funeral.
My new friend Miguel made the other choice and came back clearly moved. He described the process as being the most 'real' and honest way to deal with death that he could ever imagine. I had always like the idea of the sky burials - in a mountainous area with little or no arable land, it is such an eminently elegant solution to the disposal of bodies. And the Buddhist tradition, the body is being used after death to provide sustenance to other living creatures.
The body-breaker is a rare creature nowadays. The role is traditionally passed down within a family (to nieces and nephews) as they are prohibited from having children (but not, as far as I can research, from having sex). They and dead bodies are the only wearers of all-white in Tibetan Buddhism (why brides over here rarely come down the aisle in a Western style meringue wedding dress!!) and they are expected to be fastidiously clean and clean-living.
Miguel described in great gory detail how the body-breaker hacks off the limbs of the body first and toss these to the patiently waiting vultures. While the birds tuck in, he then spreads the torso and heads with tsampa (tibetan oat flour) and pounds it all into a paste with a sledgehammer. The birds then finish that off, everyone waits to see how they fly away (some people see the energetic flight of the vultures as a good 'sending off'), and then all the people attending walk the kora for the soul.
Grief, crying and wailing is not a good thing at a sky burial, as it is seen as the living person's way of chaining the dead person's soul to the present, as opposed to wishing them off well to the next carnation. And having foreigners hang around is very okay with the families, apparently, as they welcome more people to pray and walk the kora for their loved ones. So maybe next time...
PS In case you are wondering why the funerals only take place three days a week, it's considered a very bad omen if the vultures don't eat all of the body, or even worse, won't eat at all. The spacing of the days is to give them a chance to work up an appetite, with the bigger bodies done on the first day of the week.
