Sky Burial?

"When I'm dead, just throw me in the trash." - Danny Devito as Frank Reynolds in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

Devito may not have put it so elegantly, but his sentiment about avoiding the financial and bureaucratic hardship that can accompany end of life issues is one we can all understand. There is a tradition referred to as the 'sky burial' which allows for the reintegration of a person's physical form back into the ecosystem and provides a closure that a pseudo-permanent burial site can never offer.

Sky Burial is most popular in places such as Tibet, Mongolia, Bhutan, and Nepal that is characterized by moving the body to a high elevation area such as a mountaintop to be left there to decompose or be eaten by vultures and other birds. This purpose of the sky burial is simply to dispose of the body in the most generous or nature-conscious way. Regions and peoples which practice this most often practice sects of Buddhism which emphasize the bodies lack of importance after death, and believe that the spirit returns to the earth at this time, and such believe it is best for the body to do the same.

Often the body is prepared by monks who either transport the body whole, where it is picked apart mostly by vultures, and then when the last bone fragments are left, the fragments are broken apart and the resulting mash fed to birds that scavenge after the vultures have departed. Another process is for the monks to break down the body into a mash, which is put out for the vultures and other birds alike. It may seem, to the western mind, that this process is almost lacking in care and respect as the traditions of western cultures seem to emphasize in death, with an almost sacred care given to the treatment of bodies after passing; it is important to realize that in taking this method of treatment for human remains we are, in a sense, adopting a different paradigm for how we as living human beings relate to our dead, but that this in no way is imparting disrespect or a lack of dignity to the meaning of the lives of those who have passed.

The sky burial is rarely used by those outside of these cultures but maybe others could learn from these peoples' openness to discarding the remnants of what was once a person. Instead of fetishizing death as a means to immortalize our lifeless bodies in concrete prisons, we may find a more balanced approach in this ecologically friendly solution.