On the steps of Drigung monastery, singing a dozen monks. Before she is on the floor of the court, a body in white linen, which had rolled onto a stretcher, carried out at the time. The monks pray for a spirit that was present, when here, but now emancipated from his former home. It is the visitor as a third day, after a specialty Gonpa Drigung profitable, but awful: the elimination of the dead.
My team and I came here last night after a long day trip from Lhasa to Meldor Gungkar County in central Tibet. Drigung monastery is located on a steep hill overlooking our camp. Above the temple complex is a site of “sky burial”, a term that is the removal of the body by being eaten by birds. The birds, which are summoned by incense and revered by Tibetans, issue their droppings on the tops. Sky burial is practiced in the tray, but Drigung is one of the three most famous sights and best prices.
After the song is over, take a furrow of a high ridge, keeping a respectful distance behind the funeral procession that went all the way from Lhasa, this obligation to his deceased friend to fulfill. The ossuary, or Durtro, is a large fenced meadow with a few temples and a stone circle of large stones at one end, where the ceremony takes place. Prayer flags hanging Chorten are numerous, and the smell of burning juniper purifies the air. General Vultures circle, and many others are clustered in the grass a few feet from the coffin.
Tibetans practice several methods of disposing of the dead, but the sky burial is the most common and a very good practice in a country where the fuel is often scarce and land too hard to dig. For me it is a great opportunity for the day, not a visitor to five hundred, had the privilege of the ceremony, which I see, will participate. But I’m afraid I also wonder how the stomach, the spectacle of death.
To pack men in long white skirts OUT the body, which is naked, stiff and swollen. The men have large leaves, which are only a few lines spurred keen on the rocks nearby. The bright sun and clear blue skies but my vague feeling of ill omen. Forensic doctors themselves are not heavy or ceremonial, but quite seriously, as they chat with each other and begin preparation.
Tibetans believe that more important than the body, the spirit of the deceased. After the death of the body three days should not be touched, except perhaps in the crown of the head, through which the outputs of awareness or namshe. Lamas guiding spirit of a series of prayers that the intermediate past seven weeks, as the person who is on his way through the Bard – before the Renaissance.
How to make the first cut, more people are vultures, but from long-wavelength, three men with sticks. Within minutes, the bodies are removed and scheduled for a later, separate disposal. The vultures, which prohibited the entry and waving sticks and shouts. Then the knife a signal and the people all at the same time be reduced. The herd was made that the entire body, including as head bent down, to snatch away the cuts. They are huge birds with wings that more than 2 meters above the dirty white feathers and cover large gray-brown back. Their heads are virtually featherless, not hinder, the bird came to feed in a body.
Thirteen minutes the vultures on a feeding frenzy. The only sound tearing flesh and screams competition for the best pieces. The birds are fed and take the other into the air, their huge wings sounds like steam locomotives in the overhead door. Now get men, what is left of the corpse – only a skeleton of blood – and drive the other birds. They bridge the huge, and started hitting the bone. The men talk while they work, sometimes even laugh, because according to Tibetan belief the mortal remains are merely an empty shell. The spirit of the deceased is gone, his fate will be decided by karma accumulated through all past lives.
The bones are soon reduced to rubble and ashes mixed with barley and then triggered crows and hawks who have been waiting in turn. Vultures remnants of cartilage softens catch and eat greedily. Half an hour later, the body has disappeared. The men also leave your workday ended. Suddenly it is the mountain restore calm. I think the people whose flesh upward leaps over the mountains, and decided that if I had to die in the Highlands, nor anything about it.
Note: At the request of the funeral attendees were no photos taken
