The idea behind a Tibetan sky burial is simple: a recently deceased corpse is laid out on a hillside to be devoured by vultures. After the birds pick apart most of the body, workmen hack the remainder to pieces with axes and knives, so that the birds might more easily finish the task.
It is possible to witness a Tibetan sky burial in Langmusi, on the Tibetan plateau near the border between Sichuan and Gansu provinces. There is no guarantee of seeing a sky burial, but Langmusi is a regional center for the ceremony. Burials occurred on two of the three days I was there.
Most people wonder at the appropriateness of attending such an event. I consulted two guidebooks on the topic. One said that sky burials should be avoided, as the presence of tourists angers the locals. The other said that witnessing a sky burial is a rare privilege, but that tourists should refrain from taking photographs as a matter of respect.
What neither book mentions is that Tibetans now sell tickets to the event. Entry costs $1.25, and the ticket itself is one of the more bizzare pieces of memorabilia I’ve collected. It features a photograph of a flock of vultures devouring a human body. The body isn’t visible in the photograph.
People are generally either horrified or saddened when I tell them it is now possible to buy tickets to a sky burial. The tickets seem to cheapen the ceremony and the culture to which it belongs. I understand these criticisms and to a certain extent share them, but I think the reality is not as bad as the perception. No ticket booth mars the burial site, no parking lot, no cluster of vendors selling concessions. What happens is this: as you hike to the hillside, a monk intercepts you in the open grassland. He collects your money and waves you in the general direction of the ceremony. The transaction has no trace of slickness or commercialism, and the ticket is merely a formalized way for the desperately poor locals to extract a little more money from tourists.
Perhaps more importantly, the tone of the event is such that it is not easily cheapened. The ceremony is not particularly solemn or spiritual. Before the sky burial, a small religious service is held with the family. Then the body is taken away to be disposed of anonymously. In some ways the burial itself is curiously banal, like witnessing the unmourned coffin of a stranger being lowered into the ground. The sight makes you perhaps reflective, but not particularly sad.
And finally, the tourists behave appropriately. Most visitors to Langmusi have no interest in viewing a sky burial, and the town is difficult to reach, so for the time being the event is unlikely to draw unseemly crowds. The tourists who do attend are fairly serious-minded. Their interest doesn’t come across as in any way giddy or prurient.
Is that true? Why does one attend so patently disturbing a spectacle as a sky burial? To test one’s own reaction? To witness the extreme? To confront one’s notions about passage and death? To better understand an alien culture? All of these reasons, and prurience to boot. I do know that the Tibetan sky burial is one of the most incredible things I have ever seen, in every sense of that word.
I did take pictures; many, in fact. I wouldn’t have taken pictures if anyone had objected, but no one did. At one point a worker borrowed my camera and began snapping pictures himself.
I don’t feel it was wrong to take the photographs. On the other hand, I will certainly not make them publicly available. Allowing strangers to view the images without having had to confront the rawness of the original event would too easily lend itself to an unacceptable voyeurism.
I have no desire to view the pictures myself. I’m not entirely sure why I keep them.
If I were to draw a lesson from the sky burial, it would have nothing to do with mortality, or death, or dust returning to dust. My lesson would have something to do with the slippery nature of decontextualized images.
I can’t think of another scene I’ve witnessed that is more horrifying than birds (disgusting birds) picking apart a dismembered corpse. I can’t think of anything that comes even close. But due to the setting — the unhurried efficiency of the workers, the bright sunlight and cloudless sky, the relaxed milling of the monks — the event had an almost casual air.
Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not suggesting that the tradition of sky burial itself is disgusting or horrifying or in any way objectionable. In truth, I think there is something very beautiful and profound about this funeral custom. But on a purely visceral level, it is a difficult thing to watch, just as the medical student’s cadaver is disturbing to someone who has never handled one before.
What if I had been told that the scene I witnessed — men flaying skin off bone with stone-sharpened knives — was the final act in a violent murder? Or what if I knew the scene was a religious ceremony, but also in attendance were the assembled family members, the brothers, sisters, parents, spouses, and children, all beating their breasts and wailing?
I can only guess at how my reaction would have differed under these circumstances. But as it was, I felt only a sort of blank shock, as in the moment after a secret is revealed. The images from the burial didn’t lack for power — I had nightmares for two days following — but after the shock subsided, I found my prior equilibrium was essentially undisturbed.
What follows is a description of the ceremony that I wrote immediately after viewing it. The description is fairly raw, so skip it if you’re not interested in the sights, sounds, and smells of a sky burial.
Also, understand that I’m not an anthropologist, so I can’t speak to the origins or significance of the event. Accounts I’ve heard vary. In one version, the ceremony is a final act of charity, an ultimate gift to the vultures themselves. In another, the ingestion of the corporal body by birds is meant to facilitate (or represent) the soul’s ascension to heaven. In another, the ceremony is simply a dramatic illustration of the Buddhist disregard for the earthly vessel once the spirit has departed. Most accounts seem to agree that, in a land where wood is too scarce for cremation and the ground is often too hard for interment, sky burial is a supremely practical solution to a recurring problem.
I can’t vouch for the validity of any of these accounts, and anyway I don’t care to. My description consists of the unadorned observations of an uninformed outsider, a witness to a scene that in some respects needs no interpretation.
The sunlight at 11,000 feet hits the ground flat and hard, pinning objects to their shadows. The light is bright, almost washed out, and it has a vitreous quality that freezes details: pits in rough-faced rocks, bits of trash wound in dry grass, leafless brush.
This light also strikes the naked corpse that lies on its belly thirty feet from where I now stand, its head turned toward me. The corpse was laid out on the hillside only a few minutes before, and birds are still arriving. The birds sail across the valley from the facing cliffs, kiting along on immense wings. They are vultures, huge, crook-necked, squabbling things. They land on the hillside above and then, wings outspread, take loping steps down to the body.
Although the corpse is mostly intact when I arrive, the sockets are red where the eyes once were. With several birds perched on its back and pecking furiously, the body jumps and kicks against the ground.
The corpse is stick-thin. It appears to be middle-aged and has a shock of black hair. It is mostly obscured by the birds, and I can make out few other details. Another tourist and I will later be unable to agree even on the body’s gender.
I am standing about thirty feet back, watching with rapt attention. Behind the concentration, there is nothing. I do not wonder who this person was when alive. The images are so alien that right now all my concentration is required simply to absorb them.
Birds occasionally fight one another for scraps of tissue. Two of them tug at the ends of a yard-long piece of viscera. The more voracious vultures have heads red with blood. The scene should be disgusting, but isn’t, at least not very. I am only troubled when the birds peck at parts that are identifiably human. Hands, knees and feet are bad. Face is the worst. I have trouble swallowing my own spit.
No family members attend the ceremony. For the first fifteen minutes, monks chant a low hymn, and then stand around chatting. The only other witnesses are the two tourists and a crew of men charged with the task of making sure the body is completely disposed. It is a rough group who look as though they should be doing road work. On other days, they probably are.
When the vultures slow their pace, the men set to work. One of them chases the birds away, and the others take apart the corpse with axes and knives. They toss hunks of flesh to the vultures as though chumming for fish. They betray no hint of seriousness or solemnity, just a workmanlike dedication to their task as they slice away skin, chop off arms at the elbow, and chase back the ravenous animals. They banter, spit, sharpen their blades on rocks. One old man hoists his axe high over his head before bringing it down hard, as though splitting wood.
I have moved in closer while the men work, and now am about fifteen feet away. The smell is unmistakeably that of a butcher shop, of warm meat and fat. When the men retreat, the vultures attack, and over their hissing I can hear the rip of sinew coming off the bone.
Eventually the body is reduced to a red-edged skeleton. Red ribs, a skull’s red grin, a thick red vertebral column. Now the men finish the job. One scalps the body and hacks off the top of the skull with an axe. Then they cover the skeleton with a blanket and pound it into fragments small enough for the vultures to devour.
The top of the skull is the only piece preserved. The men have built a small pyre, and the skull cap goes into the flames. When it has been charred white and porous, one of the workers drags it out of the flames and crouches over it, as though divining the future from its cracks. Then he spits, and the gob of saliva sizzles and evaporates on the bony plate. The men laugh.
The workers wash their hands. One of them spies a scrap of flesh clinging to another’s sleeve and flicks it to the ground.
The birds depart. The workers and monks drive off. I and the other tourist are alone on the hillside. I approach the spot where the corpse lay. It is littered with trash, scraps of cloth, beer bottles, broken hafts of axes, rusted blades. I can’t help stepping on bone from past burials; the ground is covered in fragments and tufts of hair.
It is just past 9:00. The sky burial took a little over an hour. The other tourist and I leave to get breakfast. I am filled with a bright tension. The only thing to do is get on with the day.
