SKY BURIALS

I am only posting a photo of the vultures that feast at these burials. The video is linked below for those who wish to watch.  Viewer Discretion is advised.

Burying our dead is very popular in Christian and Muslim religious faiths. For centuries burying has been the oldest and most effective way to honor the dead. These days cremation is becoming a more and more choice among many and is more affordable than the classic funeral. The cost of a funeral can average anywhere from $5k to 10k and higher.

Many people choose to bury their loved ones so they will have a place to go and visit them and keep the grave clean of weeds and trash.

In other religions, they prefer to burn the dead body. It is largely believed that the human body is composed of five elements that are the sky, water, earth, air and fire.

In the Hindu religion the human body is burnt. It is believed that when the body dies, the soul moves out and goes to heaven or hell according to the deeds one committed through  their life on earth.

There are places in this world where the culture believes in what is known as “Sky Burials.”  The Chinese Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) occupies roughly 471,700 square miles (1.2 million square kilometers) of Central Asia to the northeast of India. Encompassing some of the highest peaks of the Himalayan Mountains and the least explored regions on the planet, the average altitude for a Tibetan settlement is roughly 16,500 feet (5,000 meters) above sea level.

These burials are practiced in the Chinese provinces and autonomous regions of Tibet, Qinghai, Sichuan and Inner Mongolia, as well as Mongolia Bhutan, parts of Sikkim and Zanskar which are parts of India.

Although these burials may be considered taboo to those who are accustomed to attending funerals and seeing their loved ones lowered into the ground, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. It is not taboo to those who live in regions in the world where the ground may be too frozen and hard to bury their dead, they don’t have access to formaldehyde to sanitize the body of the deceased or the means to embalm their dead.

The locations of preparation and sky burials are very much understood in the Vajrayana Buddhist traditions as charnel grounds. Excerpt taken from Wikipedia. 

This ritual fits with Tibetan Buddhism’s religion, tradition and beliefs that human beings have an interconnectedness to the environment.

Below you will find a video of a sky burial. Viewer Discretion is advised.