Tibet Sky Burial
Sky burial or ritual dissection was once a common funerary practice in Tibet where a human corpse is cut in specific locations and placed on a mountaintop, exposing it to the elements or the mahabhuta and animals especially to birds of prey. In Tibet the practice is known as jhator (Tibetan: བྱ་གཏོར་), which literally means, “giving alms to the birds.”
For Tibetan Buddhists, sky burial and cremation are templates of instructional teaching on the impermanence of life.As the name implies, jhator is considered an act of generosity: the deceased and his/her surviving relatives are providing food to sustain living beings. Generosity and compassion for all beings are important virtues or paramita in Buddhism.
Buddhism also teaches rebirth. There is no need to preserve the body, as it is now an empty vessel and the soul already departed from the body. Birds may eat it, or nature may let it decompose. So the function of the sky burial is simply the disposal of the remains. A sky burial is often more practical than cremation.
