The sky burial is a traditional ritual among the Tibetans with a strong religious significance, in which the deceased’s body is dismantled by a rogyapa (breaker of bodies) as a form of jhator (giving of alms to birds). “Sky Burial” is also the title of a book by Xinran Xue, a Chinese author and radio presenter, in which she gives insights on the Tibetan sky burial ritual. This essay argues that while the sky burial is considered by other religions as horrid, it is justified, since religions is in itself a complex subject matter that different people in different parts of the world interpret differently.
In the sky burial ritual that outsiders would consider morbid but is the best fate for the dead in Tibetan culture, the fragmented body parts are the fed to the vultures. The significance of this ritual is the fact that vultures are regarded as holy birds, and feeding corpses to the birds is understood by the Tibetan Buddhists as implying that the body of the departed is of no value, since the soul, which is most important, is no longer resident there (Lamb 2013).
Many cultures such as the contemporary Christianity and Islam have argued that the Tibetan Buddhist culture is extreme and possibly improper. However, it is worth noting that in the spirit of the freedom of worship and belief, what a certain culture does with their departed should not raise serious concerns, as long as it does not harm the living in any way. To this end and as Xinran Xue notes in her book, it may be argued that the sky burial, morbid as it may be to outsiders, is in line with the Chinese Tibetan religion and, as it is, should not be a subject of condemnation.
Works Cited
Lamb, Robert. How Sky Burial Works. HowStuffWorks, 2013. Web. 30 Nov. 2013.
