The Levity Of Death.
Trigger warning: this story discusses death in details some might find disturbing.
Exactly 20 years ago I hitch hiked across the frozen tundra of Tibet. It was so cold that there were times I thought I might be found, a hundred years from then, frozen in place, staring up at the Himalayas with an awed grin on my face.
.Strange as it sounds, that image elicited in me some much-needed levity. It was an arduous trek: there wasn’t much to eat, and my only belt had run out of holes. So that my pants would stay up, I started adding new holes in my belt with the yak herder’s knife that I traded for my only thermos. Needless to say, I was at my edge physically, and, often, mentally.
.In the vein of miracles that happen when you’re traveling and need one most, one morning a Toyota Land Cruiser passed by on the road I was walking. It pulled over. The driver was a Sherpa, the passenger a British stock photographer. I gratefully accepted the ride and didn’t even didn’t care where they were heading. I just needed to get out of the cold.
.We drove together for a day when we came upon a trail of local Tibetans walking up a mountain, carrying bags of raw onion and apples that the Sherpa driver told us were likely imported from eastern China. Every fourth person was carrying a dead body, wrapped in stained cloth, on their backs. My first thought was that these people were innately prepared to trek in conditions where I, clearly, was not.
.My 22 year-old-self was at the beginning of a deep, new realization: the human mind is totally subjective. Our capacity to have vastly different experiences within the same environment is endless.
.We drove past the travelers, up the mountain to a monastery where the photographer had arranged a visit. We were quickly greeted by the resident monks, who put us in a room heated only by a tiny stove burning dry yak dung. It was getting dark, just beginning to snow, and as we settled in, we saw that one by one, the travelers we passed on the road were arriving in the courtyard. They placed the bodies and food offerings in a circle, and the monks went to work, reciting text from the Tibetan Book of the Dead so that the souls could be released from their earthly vessels and ready themselves for a favorable rebirth.
.That night, in the monastery clinging to the side of a blustery, snowy mountain, I hardly slept. The wind howled through the cracks between the roof and the walls, and something was stirring in me. Later I would recognize it as the feeling that comes just before every concept I have taken for granted as The Truth gets totally disrupted.
.The monks roused us just before dawn. We carried lanterns up to the top of the mountain to help guide the monks and people carrying the bodies of their family members. We eventually arrived at a wide-open space, and the monks quickly built a fire out of juniper branches as the sun began to rise.
.Vultures gathered. At first there were only a few dozen, and very soon there were hundreds. The monks put on robes caked in many years worth of of dried blood. They each had a hook and a large, sharp blade. I was handed a long chain to swing above my head to keep the hungry vultures at bay. One by one, the monks cut open the shrouds to reveal the naked, dead bodies that lie on the frozen ground.
.I watched, thunderstruck, as they began a process of cutting the bodies up. It was both methodical and sacred. As they did, the vultures became more and more restless. I felt them trying to eat away at my bravery in an attempt to get past me, to the bodies. Witnessing my state, one of the family members came over to relieve me of my duty and signaled for me to assist the monks instead. Another realization: his view of death and mine were completely, absolutely different. What registered in me as almost unfathomably morbid was, to him, a hallowed rite of passage, an essential part of being born human.
.Then came another mind blowing thought: this was probably not an isolated incident, or the singular result of cultural difference. It is likely that each person on the planet holds views on the entirety of existence — including birth and everything that leads up to its very end — that are completely unique. Not one of us is experiencing life the same way anyone else is, even if we are standing on the same ground, witnessing the same thing. In a flash, I saw that my core beliefs are what determine how I live each moment, how I love, and communicate with others. My beliefs determine how much life I assign to each breath. And those same beliefs can change in an instant, depending on my experience. This meant that I could change anything about my experience of life, depending on what I choose to believe.
.Trembling with molten vitality (the first real heat I’d felt in these frozen environs for days), I walked slowly over to the monks. One of them handed me a hook and a saber. I took a breath, summoning courage in a way I’d never needed to before, and I began to help them cut the bodies up. We did this work together for another half hour, and when it was finished, the monks and I walked away. They explained to me that within less than a quarter of an hour the vultures would complete their work in this ritual by either consuming or carrying off every last piece of the disassembled bodies.
This, I learned, is called a Tibetan Sky Burial. From our Western lens, it might seem unfathomable to interface with death at such an intense level. For the Tibetans, it is an intrinsic part of being born into a body. It is both a birth rite and a privilege.
.Decades later, I can still access the deep gratitude I feel for the families I had only just met, who welcomed me into some of the most intimate moments of their lives. To them I say: you forever changed my worldview, and every relationship I’ve had since being there with you. Thank you for shaping the way I have lived my life ever since.
.ང་རང་ལ་བརྩེ་བ་ཡོད། nga rang la zeywa yue
