In his Essays,
Michel de Montaigne discussed the cannibals of Brazil and the ways
that they differed, culturally, from the people he was familiar with
in Europe. A very poignant statement that he made within this portion
of the work was “I am not sorry that we notice the barbarous horror
of [cannibalism], but I am heartily sorry that, judging their faults
rightly, we should be so blind to our own” (1656). The more time a
person spends studying cultures and becoming acquainted with people
from other nationalities, the more they grow to understand what he
means by these words and how true this statement is.
In
America, the bodies of the dead are either buried or they are
cremated. The body is honored and is revered as the vessel of the
person. Because of this, certain steps are taken to ensure that the
body does not look pale and so the decay of the body happens slower
than it would naturally. In other countries, this practice is
considered barbaric because these chemicals are disrupting the
natural order of life and death. In Tibet, the dead are hung on
mountaintops, with specific portions of the body cut to make the body
easier for animals to reach and consume. To them, there is no need to
preserve the body because the spirit has moved on and the body is now
nothing more than an empty vessel. This practice is also common
because the country is mostly very hard ground, eliminating the
possibility of graves, and the fuels used in cremation are very
scarce there. Because of these things, these sky burials became the
common practice and therefore a very important part of their culture.
For Westerners, this practice seems barbaric, as the body only lasts
a short time before it has been consumed by nature. For Tibetans, it
is a natural way to dispose of the body as well as to honor the
spirit that has already moved on.
Works
Cited
De
Montaigne, Michel. "Essays." The
Norton Anthology of World Literature.
Ed. Martin Puchner. Shorter 3rd ed. Vol. 1. New York: Norton, 2013.
1650-65. Print.
No comments:
Post a Comment