Last Rites

Question 1)  What's the greatest certainty of life.

Question 2) What's the most taboo subject in Western society?

Doesn't that seem strange?

How many people have even seen a dead body?  The answer is very few, unless you happen to be an undertaker or a doctor.  Do you think about death?  Of course you don't.  Death won't happen to you, it happens to them.  We do, as a society, have a remarkable aversion towards any consideration of the one thing we all know is certain for us, despite the fact we prepare endlessly for many eventualities which are very unlikely to occur.  There are still many people in this country with garages full of canned food to tide them over in the event of nuclear apocalypse, and yet when it comes to big D, it's three monkey syndrome; hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. 

 A brief look at Western funeral rites confirms this condition.  When somebody dies, the coroner sees the body, a close family member may go and see the body, but there is almost certainly no lying in state.  The body goes into an ornate box carried in the back of a morose black car.  At the crematorium, the ornate box sits on a little conveyor belt, and moves behind a curtain, where somehow it magically disappears.  Even our vernacular regarding death dodges the reality.  People don't die, they 'pass,' 'go to a better place' or we 'lose' them.  Some people would regard this entire process as respectful, but in reality I suspect that it is symptomatic of deeply unhealthy attitudes regarding death.

In Eastern cultures we find a very different story when it comes to last rites.  In the Hindu tradition, the dead body is placed on the floor of a room in the house, having been washed and dressed.  The body is carried on an open stretcher to a cremation site, preferably by a river, where it is lain on top of a pyre and cremated in full view of the associated mourners.  Following this the ashes are swept into the river.  They even cremate tigers for goodness sake.

In Tibetan Buddhism, where wood for pyres is scarce, the practice of sky burial is more common than cremation, whereby the dead body is dismembered and laid out on a hilltop for vultures to eat.  Far from being something out of a B-line slasher film, this is viewed as a last act of generosity to the natural world by the deceased.

So why the differences?

In Eastern cultures, far more so than in the West, death is viewed as a certainty.  Buddhist funeral traditions focus on, and act as a focus for meditation upon, the impermanence of life.  Life is something to be celebrated, and yet its impermanence is something to be grasped and realised.  In Britain, and most of the West, funerals are more likely an unfortunate blip on our consciously or unconsciously held beliefs that we and those we love will last forever.  Western funeral traditions seek to sanitise death, keep realities behind mortuary doors, under coffin lids, six feet beneath the earth.

Why the problem?

Refusing to confront the natural realities of death most likely leads to one of two conclusions.  Either you successfully ignore the fact that it is inevitable, in which case you or those around you will suddenly face death, and be entirely unprepared for it.  Alternatively you will be so worried about the abstract concept that you might die that you will never risk anything.  On this subject Tony Campolo aptly wrote that 'the majority of us tiptoe through life so as to arrive safely at death.'  Both these scenarios result from a refusal to thoroughly consider what death means, and more importantly its complete certainty.  Our funeral traditions help maintain this taboo regarding the only great certainty, and ensure that most of us cause ourselves far more pain and regret than if we had grown up with mature and realistic understanding of life and death. 

Steve Jobs, better known for founding Apple Computer had the following to say after forced confrontation of his own mortality through cancer.

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.  Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.  Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking that you have something to lose.  You are already naked, there is no reason not to follow your heart."

We could all be a lot happier, ironically, if we accepted the inevitable, and lived in the light of a certainty, rather than pretending that death is in some way a terrible, macabre event which happens to an unlucky few.  

They may not have the Ipods, the Primarks, the comfortable detatched houses, but in this way, the East has a lot to teach us.