Buddhism, Cremation, and Impermanence

1325 CE depiction of the Buddha's death

This semester I took Religious Studies 200B: Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Chinese Religions (fantastic course by Dr. Martin Adam, by the way - I recommend it). One day we were encouraged to attend a talk by author Tim Ward about his stay at Wat Pah Nanachat, an English speaking Buddhist monastery in Thailand for outsiders wishing to be introduced to monastic practices.

Since I'm mad diligent, I had my death blog on the brain and perked right up and started taking notes when Ward (an excellent public speaker) started talking about a particular experience from Wat Pah Nanachat that stuck with him. (For background knowledge, Buddhists usually prefer cremation because it symbolizes detachment from the self, among other reasons.)

The skeleton on display at Wat Pah Nanachat. Image source

In Ward's story, a female cancer sufferer who lived near Wat Pah Nanachat committed suicide and, as is customary in cases of suicide, was not permitted to be cremated (I promise I'll quit with the suicide posts, and no I am not planning on harming myself). However, since she was a particularly devoted Buddhist it was permitted, as it often is, for her bones to be cleaned and her skeleton to be displayed in the temple as a lesson on impermanence - in this case the impermanence of life.

According to Ward, a German monk at the monastery who had befriended the woman before she died volunteered to be the one to clean the woman's bones as a personal lesson on impermanence. In Ward's account the monk used his dinner knife, which he later cleaned and used in his meal preparation, to prepare the woman's bones to be displayed.

I think that this story was particularly interesting for the fact that the monk was coming from a western society, where the dead may often be treated as scary or dirty, and where many (if not most) people have never seen a dead person. However, he chose to have an experience that many westerners (myself included) would be absolutely traumatized by, one that might even be considered disrespectful. In fact, I'm certain that it would be impossible in our (western) society to find yourself in an instance in which you could legally do what this monk did.

Another thing that this story made me think about was how, to somebody who does not know what they are looking at, the display of the woman's skeleton in a monastery might signify that she was of some special, higher religious status. However, it's sort of the opposite. In actuality her skeleton is there because she did something that meant her body was given the second most preferred treatment. Additionally, an observer could tell that there is something significant about the skeleton, but many of the multi-layers of meaning that it holds for the living (i.e. the monk who cleaned the bones) are lost.