inspiration for cemetery contemplations

[Aemilius]

In this video you'll see dead corpses floating on River Ganges, crows having a snack thereof, etc.. This is helpful for your meditation on impermanence of life. Scenes mentioned in the Satipatthana sutta section of Nine Cemetery Contemplations are difficult to come by these days, here you see several of them:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xxz7LwEreaE&feature=related

[plwk]

When I was at the Ganges River in Varanasi back in 2010 at around 5.30am on a boat cruise, I wasn't so lucky enough to encounter a floating corpse as I have always heard travellers tell but did watch 3 live riverside cremations in progress...alongside activities of bathing, morning rituals, linen washing and tourist cruises...

This is another resource apt for cemetary reflections but as always proceed with caution...

[Tarpa]

Just watch faces of death videos, etc. if you're looking for a visceral jolt of mortality. Good occasion to recall the 4 turnings of the mind towards dharma. I see corpses and violent tragedy fairly often as a truck driver, the roads are graveyards.
In any case all the worlds a charnel ground, no need to go around looking for corpses, you inhabit one.

[Indrajala]

Just watch faces of death videos, etc. if you're looking for a visceral jolt of mortality. Good occasion to recall the 4 turnings of the mind towards dharma. I see corpses and violent tragedy fairly often as a truck driver, the roads are graveyards.
In any case all the worlds a charnel ground, no need to go around looking for corpses, you inhabit one.

Every time you drive you could end up like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... n5zHxvKZF0

[Tarpa]

Probably at least a double fatality, at least the drivers of both vehicles. Only takes a second. I don't look anymore, I feel like I'm invading their privacy in a very personal moment for them, dying out there in the middle of nowhere in the night or whatever, in shock, hundreds of strangers gawking at you. I usually say some mani's every time I pass a highway cross or places where I know people have died or passing wrecks, and when passing where animals have been killed, lots and lots of animals. I always wonder what the last thing they were looking at was, could be a beautiful day and one minute they were just driving along looking at the view or the road and having a nice day and the next they were gone, just like that, all up and down the roads, millions of people drive by and never know what happened there. Makes you think, not really morbidness but a definite visceral weirdness, we're out of touch with death like with nature.

Sorry about going off topic, thanks for the cool video link Aemelius, cool slideshow, it would be a trip to visit varanasi.

[Indrajala]

Here's something to see. Don't click the link if you think you can't handle it.

Tourist Finds Dog Eating The Headless Corpse Of A Child Next To The Ganges River (India) **GRAPHIC**

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=342_1329917450

[Aemilius]

The parsis, that is zoroastrians, have also practiced skyburial, that is feeding the corpses to the vultures. These places are called Towers of Silence in the zoroastrian faith. In Mumbai India there is a parsi Tower of Silence which in recent years has suffered from the lack of vultures. Many of the dead parsis had been only partly devoured, and the half eaten rotting corpses were lying in heaps in the parsi cemetery of Mumbai. This scandal was in the news briefly in the year 2006. There are some videos in Youtube about a parsi Tower of Silence in Iran, but that has been closed for the deceased by the government and is not functioning anymore, it still retains something of a tangible atmosphere of silence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakhma

[Aemilius]

Alex Berzin has written in his article about Buddhism in Afghanistan that tibetans traveled through Afghanistan on their way to visiting Persia/Iran. This happened hundreds of years ago, Berzin thinks that the ones who went there were probably Drikung Kagyu. It could very well be that tibetans got the idea and tradition of skyburials from the parsi religion in Iran, which they saw on their visits to Iran/Persia.
The claim that they never went to foreign countries is simply untrue.


A Google images search on "Towers of Silence" brings up a lot pictures on the topic (of parsi skyburials).

[5heaps]

even while surrounded by so much death you will still look upon impermanence with a layer of permanence.
much better to study study study and just quickly realize subtle impermanence....then you can hang around death in order to stabilize your no longer looking upon impermanence with permanence

[Jnana]

In this video you'll see dead corpses floating on River Ganges, crows having a snack thereof, etc.. This is helpful for your meditation on impermanence of life. Scenes mentioned in the Satipatthana sutta section of Nine Cemetery Contemplations are difficult to come by these days, here you see several of them:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xxz7LwEreaE&feature=related

Indeed. And FWIW, the cemetery contemplations are also taught in the Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra:

Furthermore, Subhūti, when the bodhisattva, mahāsattva, who is engaged in the practice of perfection of wisdom, has gone to a charnel ground and sees many different kinds of corpses that have been discarded in that charnel ground, abandoned in that place for dead bodies, which have been dead for one, two, three, four, or five days, which are swollen, dark blue, putrid, worm-infested, partially eaten, or dismembered, he should compare his own body with them in the following way: “This body also has the same quality. It is of the same nature, and it has not gone beyond that condition.” O Subhūti, this is how the bodhisattva, mahāsattva, who is engaged in the practice of perfection of wisdom, dwells watching the body in relation to an outer body.