Watching a body burn on an open pyre
Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2014 6:56 am
Recently in Thailand I was lucky enough to see a body being burned on an open cremation pyre. It is the first time I have seen such a thing. I have been to many funerals and seen lots of peaceful dead good-looking bodies, but never like this. In western countries we are so insulated from death, and dead things. People from countries like Thailand and India, which do open cremations, are fortunate in this respect, much closer to the reality of the thing.
So, on to the cremation:
The body of the 95-year-old man was displayed in the sala for four days in a fancy decorated refrigerated coffin. The monks chanted every night for the four days, and on the fifth a pyre was built.
The coffin was carried out and placed on the pyre, which was about 1.5m tall and made of densely stacked wood soaked in some oil.
There were ceremonies and much chanting, then the pyre was lit.
The coffin burned quickly, being made of thin wood and plastic.
The head of the man was revealed after perhaps 10 minutes, and the skin of the scalp blackened and crisped.
That was all we could see for about an hour, just the top of the scalp, as the rest of the body was covered with flower offerings and stuff the family had thrown on top. Apparently in India you can see a lot more, as the body is often uncovered on top of the pyre.
People crowed around to have a look, family, friends, and monks, all quite interested, and nobody considered it inappropriate to be openly curious and as close as possible to the fire and body, without getting burned oneself!
After a while most people left, leaving only about 5 of the original 100+ people.
Then, as the sun set and the night and darkness drew in, it started to get interesting.
The head started turning to to face us, as the neck muscles or tendons cooked and contracted. The head rotated until it was looking right at us. After the first hour, all the skin had burned off the head, so the head turning revealed a grinning skull, white in the heat. There were no teeth, as the man had used dentures for decades.
The eye sockets steamed and smoked, I guess as the brain boiled and escaped through the optic nerve channels.
The vertebrae of the neck became exposed, as crusty black meat slowly burned off, or fell off, leaving oozing patches of red raw flesh and bone underneath.
Now the legs, previously buried under embers, began to rise out of the fire into the air, maybe because the tendons and muscles were contracting again as they burned?
The ends of the limbs - the feet and shins - had burned off completely, meaning the legs stopped at the knee stumps. Over time the flesh seemed to contract away from the stumps, leaving more bone exposed, until there was about 30cm of femur with the joint on the end sticking into the air.
The collarbones poked out, as did the ribs, and the jaw began to crack and open wider and wider.
After maybe 2 1/2 hours, the skull fell off the neck, leaving the headless torso dripping from the throat.
Liquids streamed steadily out of the neck and chest, between the ribs. Most of the liquid was red and gooey, and it coagulated as it poured out, then burned with a sooty flame. Fats or somethings? There was a steady bubbling, frying noise, and it was one of the yuckiest parts for me, that noise. This was the noise of a person, being burned like a forgotten roast.
The skull, now lying directly on the embers, stopped steaming from the eyesockets, and we could see smoke and flame coming from where the spinal cord had gone in. Suddenly the eye sockets burst into flame, and the whole thing was wreathed in flame, just like in some classic horror movie.
After a time the surface flame stopped and we could see though cracks in the back of the eyesockets that there were now flames inside the cranium itself. The brain had finished boiling off the water, and was now burning inside the skull.
Those billions of precious neurons, protected for a lifetime, now just smoke and burning protein.
Over the next few hours into the night, the body became smaller and smaller, being burned away bit by bit, and it contracted and shrank a lot.
Monks came by and uncovered the body more, brought it to the surface of the fire with long sticks, so it could burn better or something.
The muscles of the spine contracted, meaning the spine flexed backward, leaving the torso, the headless, limbless torso, contorted, bent backwards more than would be possible while alive.
I imagined and visualised the body to be my mother and father, dead and burning there. That was sad.
I imagined it to be my body, which was weird but didn't disturb me as much as my parents. My own personal death has not worried me for a long time.
I finally imagined it to be the body of a woman I lust after, her beautiful, flexbile, smooth body all turned to burned meat, exposed bone, and corruption. That was effective! I juxtaposed images and sensations in my imagination of her lovely passionate alive body now, and the charred cooked thing I saw in front of me. An excellent asubha meditation! Repeatedly switching between the two. This specific meditation had been recommended to me by several monks, as a way of reducing sexual desire while celibate at the monastery, but I'd never had the opportunity to really work on that meditation so vividly. That memory will be useful in the future I think
By this time it was getting late, about four hours after the fire was lit, and I was getting tired. The remaining few of us, just two laymen and one laywoman - all westerners - had been sitting beside the pyre all this time, brushing off the ants and mosquitoes and talking of dhamma and death. It had been an interesting evening.
But before I left, I went to the edge of the pyre and had a good sniff of the smoke.
It smelled like barbecue, forgotten steak left on the barbecue for far too long, burning fat and charcoal. Exactly the smell of a normal BBQ.
Even though I knew it was the smell of a burning human filling my nostrils and lungs, I wasn't repulsed by it. Well, er, not too much at least.
I realised "This thing is now edible, and would probably taste pretty okay."
In a warzone, or house-fire, or outside a Nazi concentration camp, that smell of burned human flesh would probably be sickening and terrible, but since it was the body of a 95-year-old who had died naturally, it was a fine smell, not offensive at all.
When I left the pyre, the body was a lump of blackened meat weighing about 15 kilos. The fire was burning much more slowly and the rest of the body would probably take all night to burn away.
So that's how it was. I hope I didn't gross anyone out too much. I definitely recommend taking the time to see such a cremation, if you ever have the chance.
Very interesting insight into the body, my own body, other people's bodies, sickness, death, inevitability, etc, especially if you meditate upon those themes as you are watching.
So, on to the cremation:
The body of the 95-year-old man was displayed in the sala for four days in a fancy decorated refrigerated coffin. The monks chanted every night for the four days, and on the fifth a pyre was built.
The coffin was carried out and placed on the pyre, which was about 1.5m tall and made of densely stacked wood soaked in some oil.
There were ceremonies and much chanting, then the pyre was lit.
The coffin burned quickly, being made of thin wood and plastic.
The head of the man was revealed after perhaps 10 minutes, and the skin of the scalp blackened and crisped.
That was all we could see for about an hour, just the top of the scalp, as the rest of the body was covered with flower offerings and stuff the family had thrown on top. Apparently in India you can see a lot more, as the body is often uncovered on top of the pyre.
People crowed around to have a look, family, friends, and monks, all quite interested, and nobody considered it inappropriate to be openly curious and as close as possible to the fire and body, without getting burned oneself!
After a while most people left, leaving only about 5 of the original 100+ people.
Then, as the sun set and the night and darkness drew in, it started to get interesting.
The head started turning to to face us, as the neck muscles or tendons cooked and contracted. The head rotated until it was looking right at us. After the first hour, all the skin had burned off the head, so the head turning revealed a grinning skull, white in the heat. There were no teeth, as the man had used dentures for decades.
The eye sockets steamed and smoked, I guess as the brain boiled and escaped through the optic nerve channels.
The vertebrae of the neck became exposed, as crusty black meat slowly burned off, or fell off, leaving oozing patches of red raw flesh and bone underneath.
Now the legs, previously buried under embers, began to rise out of the fire into the air, maybe because the tendons and muscles were contracting again as they burned?
The ends of the limbs - the feet and shins - had burned off completely, meaning the legs stopped at the knee stumps. Over time the flesh seemed to contract away from the stumps, leaving more bone exposed, until there was about 30cm of femur with the joint on the end sticking into the air.
The collarbones poked out, as did the ribs, and the jaw began to crack and open wider and wider.
After maybe 2 1/2 hours, the skull fell off the neck, leaving the headless torso dripping from the throat.
Liquids streamed steadily out of the neck and chest, between the ribs. Most of the liquid was red and gooey, and it coagulated as it poured out, then burned with a sooty flame. Fats or somethings? There was a steady bubbling, frying noise, and it was one of the yuckiest parts for me, that noise. This was the noise of a person, being burned like a forgotten roast.
The skull, now lying directly on the embers, stopped steaming from the eyesockets, and we could see smoke and flame coming from where the spinal cord had gone in. Suddenly the eye sockets burst into flame, and the whole thing was wreathed in flame, just like in some classic horror movie.
After a time the surface flame stopped and we could see though cracks in the back of the eyesockets that there were now flames inside the cranium itself. The brain had finished boiling off the water, and was now burning inside the skull.
Those billions of precious neurons, protected for a lifetime, now just smoke and burning protein.
Over the next few hours into the night, the body became smaller and smaller, being burned away bit by bit, and it contracted and shrank a lot.
Monks came by and uncovered the body more, brought it to the surface of the fire with long sticks, so it could burn better or something.
The muscles of the spine contracted, meaning the spine flexed backward, leaving the torso, the headless, limbless torso, contorted, bent backwards more than would be possible while alive.
I imagined and visualised the body to be my mother and father, dead and burning there. That was sad.
I imagined it to be my body, which was weird but didn't disturb me as much as my parents. My own personal death has not worried me for a long time.
I finally imagined it to be the body of a woman I lust after, her beautiful, flexbile, smooth body all turned to burned meat, exposed bone, and corruption. That was effective! I juxtaposed images and sensations in my imagination of her lovely passionate alive body now, and the charred cooked thing I saw in front of me. An excellent asubha meditation! Repeatedly switching between the two. This specific meditation had been recommended to me by several monks, as a way of reducing sexual desire while celibate at the monastery, but I'd never had the opportunity to really work on that meditation so vividly. That memory will be useful in the future I think
By this time it was getting late, about four hours after the fire was lit, and I was getting tired. The remaining few of us, just two laymen and one laywoman - all westerners - had been sitting beside the pyre all this time, brushing off the ants and mosquitoes and talking of dhamma and death. It had been an interesting evening.
But before I left, I went to the edge of the pyre and had a good sniff of the smoke.
It smelled like barbecue, forgotten steak left on the barbecue for far too long, burning fat and charcoal. Exactly the smell of a normal BBQ.
Even though I knew it was the smell of a burning human filling my nostrils and lungs, I wasn't repulsed by it. Well, er, not too much at least.
I realised "This thing is now edible, and would probably taste pretty okay."
In a warzone, or house-fire, or outside a Nazi concentration camp, that smell of burned human flesh would probably be sickening and terrible, but since it was the body of a 95-year-old who had died naturally, it was a fine smell, not offensive at all.
When I left the pyre, the body was a lump of blackened meat weighing about 15 kilos. The fire was burning much more slowly and the rest of the body would probably take all night to burn away.
So that's how it was. I hope I didn't gross anyone out too much. I definitely recommend taking the time to see such a cremation, if you ever have the chance.
Very interesting insight into the body, my own body, other people's bodies, sickness, death, inevitability, etc, especially if you meditate upon those themes as you are watching.