Sky Burial: Tibetan Practice where the Dead are cut into pieces and offered to Vultures
Watch the video with the practice. Unfortunately, these westerners cannot understand the significance of the practice and end up with proclaiming primacy of Jesus and their own beliefs. The problem is that West has not known any other way to live except to eulogize the body and the physical. So, when they come across such ruthlessly practiced form of the understanding that body is a useless vessel once a person is dead…. they somehow can’t come to terms with it.
Btw, this is very similar to the practice of how the Zoroastrians (Parsis) treat their dead. They leave them in the towers or wells for vultures to eat the bodies.
What is Sky Burial
Sky burial, or ritual dissection, is a funerary practice in Tibet, wherein a human corpse is incised in certain locations and placed on a mountaintop, exposing it to the elements (mahabhuta) and animals – especially predatory birds. The locations of preparation and sky burial are understood in the Vajrayana traditions as charnel grounds. In Tibet the practice is known as jhator (Tibetan: བྱ་གཏོར་, Wylie: bya gtor), which means “giving alms to the birds.”[1]
The majority of Tibetans adhere to Buddhism, which teaches rebirth. There is no need to preserve the body, as it is now an empty vessel. Birds may eat it, or nature may cause it to decompose. Thus, the function of the sky burial is simply to dispose of the remains. In much of Tibet, the ground is too hard and rocky to dig a grave, and, due to the scarcity of fuel and timber, sky burials are often more practical than cremation. High lamas and some other dignitaries may receive burials so as to honor them in death, but sky burials were standard practice for commoners.
