All distinguishable names have been changed for privacy.
It is cold and the sun is beginning to set. I’m in Hongxingzhen on the northeastern edge of the Tibetan plateau in China. It is the evening of December 27, 2015 and I’m about four weeks into my “Silk Road” trip. After traveling overland from Beijing to Kashgar, I’m now slowly making my way down south via a series of small monastery towns scattered throughout the mountains. It’s not tourist season and I’m traveling alone. I decide to stop in Hongxingzhen where I find most restaurants and guesthouses closed for the winter. To my relief, a local man spots me and invites me to stay with his family for a few days. I kindly accept his offer.
The area is beautiful. I take a short hike up into the mountains and look down onto the small village and the Famen monastery nestled in the hills below. After descending, I start to walk down the village’s main street. It feels deserted. The shops are empty and Hongxingzhen is quiet. By chance, I see someone standing on the adjacent sidewalk. I stop and look. It is a young woman and her eyes meet mine. In surprise, we stare at each other for an awkward second before I raise my hand and wave. She does the same. We walk towards each other and meet in the middle of the empty street. Her large, round glasses rest comfortably on her small nose as she greets me with a smile and a delightfully smooth English hello.
“Hi, I’m Pete,” I reply.
Her name is Zhang. She is Chinese and studies Anthropology at a university in London. She is in Hongxingzhen doing field research on traditional Tibetan sky burials.
I’ve heard of sky burials before. In a word, Buddhists don’t believe the human body is of much significance. It serves as a vessel and nothing more. Buddhists believe that our existence is a part of a cycle of physical birth and death. In certain areas, when a Buddhist dies, the other members of the community will transport the corpse to the closest monastery in order to perform the sky burial. This serves as a way to directly recycle the corpse. The ceremony involves initial prayers and chanting at the base of the monastery before the corpse is relocated to a secluded and flat area within the higher hills nearby. Once atop the hill, special plants and incense are burned to attract the attention of vultures residing in the surrounding mountains. At the signal, the massive birds fly over and, after the corpse is cut into manageable pieces, consume it. The bones are mashed into a powder and the clothes and blankets and possessions previously belonging to the deceased are burned. This practice can be found at select monastery towns throughout the Tibetan plateau.
Zhang informs me that the Famen Temple in Hongxingzhen is no ordinary monastery. It is well-known by the local community for its preferred location for the sky burial ceremony. Buddhists pilgrimage for days, if not weeks to reach the Famen temple. The temple itself is modest yet quietly magnificent as it sits surrounded by an extensive array of prayer wheels.
With a bit of apprehension, Zhang tells me that she has been waiting five days for the chance to witness a sky burial and one had just been scheduled for the next morning. She has been in contact with the head monk and gained permission to observe the ceremony. I indicate interest in the topic and she picks up on it. She asks if I want to go with her. Absolutely, I think. Only if the head monk says OK, I tell her. We exchange contact information and she tells me to expect a message that evening. The sun drops behind the western mountains behind us and we go our separate ways.
I reconvene with my new host and eat dinner with his family. It is a spicy hot vegetable soup and they proudly give me a large portion. We pleasantly cap off the night with yak butter-milk tea and I retire to my room. Underneath four large blankets, I play on my phone as I wait to hear from Zhang. 8:30 P.M. and I receive a message: “He says ok. Meet main road like before. 430am.” I can’t believe it.
I’m excited. Nervous. A bit afraid, but not sure what I’m afraid of exactly. The excitement mellows and the gravity of the situation sets in. This is no ordinary practice. It demands reverence and respect. It is immensely uncommon for a foreigner to be able to see this, so my behavior will be scrutinized and amplified. Don’t say a word. Do as I’m told. No phones.
But the phenomenon of what I’m about to see ignites inevitable anticipation. What will I feel? I’ve never seen a dead body before. I have four living grandparents. My uncles, aunts, cousins, parents, and siblings are all still alive. Never been to a wake or seen a dead person in a coffin. I think about this for a moment. What will I feel? What should I feel?
4:20 A.M. and my alarm wakes me up. I layer up and brave the -17°c pre-dawn air. I find Zhang on the street a half kilometer from the monastery, hands in her big pockets and her large glasses filling the band of separation in between her scarf and her beanie.
“How do you feel? Are you nervous?” I ask as the moisture of my breath crystallizes in front of me.
“Yeah, a little bit. You?”
“Yeah, a little bit.”
Not much more to say at this point. The frigid, motionless air seems to have frozen the village in place as we walk to the temple. Within minutes of arriving, three monks wander down from the monastery dorms. Zhang steps up to greet them. I stand back. Zhang exchanges customary pleasantries and I see her motion at me. The monks nod in acknowledgement and I respond with a short but sincere bow. I remain in my place as Zhang returns to me.
“We will begin soon. The monks will pray for the deceased and then the other men will move the body up the hill.”
I nod.
A small van pulls up to the entrance and a body is removed from the back. It is wrapped in what looks like a white tarp. Incense burns and the monks recite prayers as dawn’s first light begins to illuminate our environment. It is still very cold.
They finish their prayers and it is time to move the body. The men drive off with the corpse and Zhang and I follow the path on foot. Soon we see large birds soaring overhead against the backdrop of a cloudless, clear blue morning. I track their point of origin and see that they are flying from the same mountains I scaled the day prior. We press on and my anticipation grows.
We arrive to find a flat area with relatively short hills on the northern and eastern sides creating a bit of a kitty-corner facing the western mountains opposite the valley below. Brightly colored prayer-flags stream down from across the northern hill and converge near a black circular area in the middle, completely void of vegetation. From the road, Zhang and I take a wide-angle route to the eastern hill and nestle in about 50 meters away. The three monks are sitting on a skinny log as they finger their prayer beads and quietly chant about 15 meters from the center. They must be cold. They wear dark red robes wrapped and tied around their bodies by dark yellow sashes. Bald heads, no hats, no gloves. The two other men stand around the wrapped-up corpse which now rests near a stump in the middle. Zhang whispers to me, “The men are villagers, not monks. Monks aren’t allowed to touch the corpse. It is unclean.” She goes on and tells me these men are designated by the community to do this. This is their unpaid but appreciated profession and they do it with a sense of filial piety.
From a distance, we see the men begin to chop the body as the birds wait anxiously, flapping their wings and pecking each other as they huddle low against the northern hill to our right. The birds start to creep closer to the two men and the corpse until they eventually form a horseshoe. The men seem to know they are about to be overtaken by hungry vultures and they chop the corpse with fluid and deliberate motions. Having sixty large birds fighting for the same thing is not ideal. Separate pieces are preferred. Soon hunger overtakes them and the birds begin their frenzy while the corpse falls out of sight. The butchers quickly remove themselves from the chaos and the vultures’ hierarchy is quickly and violently established.
They eat for about 10 minutes. Zhang and I remain motionless and silent in the eastern hill, almost as if we are hiding. Momentarily the monks leave and the birds retreat back to their hill on the north side. We see nothing but a scattering of white and red bone shards where the corpse once was.
After taking it all in, Zhang and I start down the mountain. The sun has climbed higher and we can see smoke begin to agglomerate over the village below. Just as we take our first steps, a small white pickup truck drives up. We stop and observe. Three men get out of the car and greet the two who had just finished. After a brief conversation, the initial two begin to descend down the hill and three newcomers uncover and remove another wrapped-up corpse underneath a blanket in the back. Zhang looks at me in amazement. We talk it over and mutually agree to stay for the second ceremony.
A new set of monks arrive to pray for this second sky burial. They assume their positions on the log and rhythmically rock back and forth as they chant. The three men begin their preparations. One looks over and sees us. He starts to walk towards us and Zhang meets him halfway. They talk and look back at me. I perk up. They talk a bit more and Zhang waves me over. I walk quickly to join the discussion and bow upon meeting. They come from a rather distant village, he says. The woman died a few days ago in a remote farming village in Sichuan province and it has taken a long time to arrive. She was in her mid-50’s and sick when she died.
The conversation doesn’t bother him. The man seems to be in a good mood. His smile is amicable and good-natured. He looks us over and offers a closer look. With nervous and sincere eyes, Zhang turns to me.
“Do you want to go closer?”
In an effort to convey apprehension, I intentionally wait a moment before I reply, “yes, do you?”
“No, I think I want to stay back.”
I understand, I tell her. She gives me her blessing to go alone.
I follow the man and stop where the monks were sitting about 15 meters away. Beaks and feathers stained red, the vultures start to regather for round two. I can see everything clearly now. Clutching a strong, wide butcher knife, one of the men begins to hack the partially unwrapped corpse into pieces while the other two fend off the rapidly approaching vultures. He starts with the limbs and moves towards the torso. Before long, the two men can no longer hold back the hungry vultures and they congregate on the corpse. He manages to take hold of the still-wrapped-up head and top of the torso and retreats as the massive creatures begin to eat. My new friend circles around to greet me. With a smile and a nudge, he invites me in for an even closer look. I walk with him until I’m standing at the edge of the dense circle of birds. Puffs of air hit me as the vultures flap their wings in confrontation with other rivals. He nudges me further, as if to say: “If this is what you want to see, then see it for what it is.”
He’s right. I walk in the middle of the birds. A dismembered right hand, severed about mid-way through the forearm, is being tugged at between two vultures next to me. They both pull and the hand flips around in mid-air before falling to the ground, neither bird getting more than a little bite. I look around and birds are playing tug-of-war with random sections of tendons, muscles and intestines. Bits of red flesh fly through the air as each tug-of-war game is both won and lost. After the bulk of the corpse is consumed, the man moves back in and places the wrapped up skull and exposed upper “torso” onto the wooden stump. With a hammer, he pounds three times on the back-left section of the wrapped-up skull. The third swing breaks through the thick bone. He unties the rope around the neck and removes the white, frozen cloth. The head falls to the ground and lies to rest for a brief moment, eye-lids half open staring my direction. It is three meters away. It is a woman’s old, wrinkly face framed by dark silver and black hair. I see her lips curving around her mouth and her small eyes inset deep within her frail cheekbones. I examine her face and follow it down her pointed chin to her thin neck before the skin and flesh stops and my eyes are led to a white and red spine and ribcage. I’m not sure what I’m looking at. Is it her? Is it her body? As I grapple with this, the vultures immediately begin driving their beaks into the opened hole in her skull and start picking away at the brain. It is quickly enveloped as the other birds take notice and converge on this most nutritious organ. And then it dawns on me. I’m looking at a collection of organic matter. That’s all it is. It is simply organic matter that serves as the “carrier” of whatever it is that we call consciousness. It is nothing more and nothing less. We are surrounded by it and, in every real sense, are it. There is no division.
The corpse is devoured completely. In Mandarin, I thank the men for their invitation and wish them safe travels home. I find Zhang and we walk back down to the village.
What happened on December 27, 2015 made sense to me. That morning, I was nervous; that evening I was not. I held no judgement. I felt strangely at ease. I further considered the sea burial as it holds the same principle. Everything is recycled. Humans are not separate from the environment. Our environment is alive, organic, and responsive. It seeks out balance and inevitably leans toward equilibrium. It seems that small groups of Buddhists in the Tibetan mountains have found their own way to manifest this union. They have developed their own method of maintaining balance and I feel privileged to have been a part of it.
Comments