During the trip to the Sichuan mountains we had visited many areas with largely-tibetian population and has some chances to acquaint ourselves with small bits of the Tibetean culture. One interesting Tibetean custom is called “Sky Burial” (天葬), and we happened to pass by a temple in which this ceremony takes place.

Sky Burial is basically a burial ceremony in which the dead person, instead of being given to the earth (i.e. buried in it), is given to the sky. (Un)fortunately, on the day we had passed through the temple nobody had died, so we had to content ourselves with seeing the altar and hearing a verbal description of the process. On the plus side the monk had consented, after some persuasion, to let us take a a picture of the altar (normally they don’t let people photo the altar, especially while the ceremony takes place) so I can show you what it looks like:

the altar on which the sky burial takes place

The dead person is placed upon this altar and a knife is used to cut open his body. At this point eagles, the greatest benefitors from this ceremony, arrive from miles around and start feasting on the body. After the body is picked clean by the eagles, and just the skeleton is left, a hammer is used to smash the bones (you can see the hammer clearly if you click to enlarge the picture) so that the eagles have easy access to the bone marrow. Finally, nothing remains but a small pile of clean, broken bones, and the ceremony reaches its conclusion.

The place itself is very pastoral and a bit at odds with the “mood” that some of us might associate with burial ceremonies, in particular ones involving the corpse being torn to bits by wild animals. This picture was taken standing right next to the altar:

view from the sky burial altar