August

The Buddhists had a very different view of death from most Western religions and philosophies. Death was almost never the end, just a brief respite until another life, which wasn’t really something to look forward to either. Eternal life punctuated by rebirths was often a punishment rather than a reward, meanwhile true death, the extinguishing of the self, Nirvana, was a hard won prize.

Prior to renouncing his life as a prince, the sheltered Gautama Buddha had to first encounter old age, sickness, and death. Therefore, the contemplation of death, especially, had long been a central element of Buddhist training. Funeral services had long been the domain of the monks, so much so that even when in modern times Japan had all but abandoned Buddhism, they continued to employ monks for funerals, even in otherwise secular households. In Thailand, it was not uncommon to see monks in the observation decks in hospitals during autopsies, as it was widely known and accepted that this formed an important element of their religious education.

It was clear now that the main reason things had gone so terribly wrong was because in the West, people weren’t used to looking death in the face. Only a few kinds of professionals there ever encountered a mangled or rotted corpse. If a dead body looked too much like a dead body, it meant a closed casket funeral. Those who chose to work as coroners or undertakers, are seen as a little touched in the head, as if no healthy person would willingly undertake such a polluted job.

In India, by contrast, there is hardly room for funerary professionals. The cremation usually happens a day or two after death, so there is no need for make up or embalmers. The family takes care of everything. The smell of decay is covered over by marigold flowers, friends and family say their goodbyes, and the body is burned in a charnel ground, the ashes are scattered in a holy river. Since many charnel grounds are next to major temples in crowded areas, most people are familiar with the smell of burnt human flesh. On the more extreme end, there is a long tradition of tantric practitioners who go so far as to live in cremation grounds, converse with corpses, and do all their begging and eating with a bowl made out of a human skull.

The tantric Buddhists of Tibet, Nepal, and Bhutan, also have a long-standing, unique relationship with death. Instead of cremation, they practice burial by air, which is among the most macabre of funerary rites. The corpse is carried up to a mountaintop, where the skin is flayed, and the flesh is cut up into small pieces, to be devoured by vultures. When prepared properly, all the meat is consumed by the birds in a matter of minutes, leaving only the skeleton. Some of the bones, in turn, may be turned into ritual and musical instruments, like kapala bowls or damaru drums made from the top of the skull, or kangling thigh-bone trumpets, which allow the deceased to aid in the spiritual practice of others even after their death.

But even though Buddhists were far better equipped to deal with the returner phenomenon psychologically, it did present them with philosophical problems. For, strictly speaking, resurrection in Buddhism was impossible. Once the consciousness was reborn, following the 49 days of the in-between Bardo state, it couldn’t return to the same body. There were reported cases of short-term resurrections within the seven-week grace period, but anything longer was believed to be impossible. This was not to say that Buddhists didn’t believe in zombies and the undead. In fact, they had an even older and richer tradition of it than many Western religions. Advanced yogic masters were said to have the power to transfer their own consciousness into that of a corpse, and move it around at will, before transferring it out and returning to their original body. But, most of the time, the undead were said to be possessed by foreign, wrathful spirits.

Therefore, despite the growing, accumulated evidence that the returners possessed all their old memories and desires, most Buddhists refused to recognize them as anything close to the same people. This didn’t mean that they treated them harshly. All life is sacred, all suffering should be avoided, and even the undead deserve compassion. So, there was more than a little irony in how initially in the West, people believed in resurrection yet hated the returners, while in Asia they did not believe in it yet still showed them compassion.

As the world continued to struggle through its nuclear summer, it was the Asian countries that were able to provide the most humanitarian relief. China, with its efficient centralized government, was able to mobilize the quickest, and built thousands of shelters, hospitals, and farms in the most heavily affected areas. India was instrumental in restoring technological infrastructure damaged by the conflicts. Meanwhile Japan, which after Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Fukushima, had more negative experience with radiation than any other nation, became the world leader in fallout management and cleanup.

This time saw a dramatic increase in the veneration of the Buddhist bodhisattva Kṣitigarbha. Though always a major figure in the Buddhist pantheon, he had been overshadowed historically by figures like Majushri and Avalokitshvara, the bodhisattvas of wisdom and compassion. But it was always Kṣitigarbha, whose name means “Earth treasury,” that was most closely associated with the underworld, and was known for his vow to liberate all the hell-beings prior to achieving Nirvana himself. He had long been venerated in Japan under the name Jizō, and was often depicted as a protector of the spirits of dead children. There was a legend that some dead kids are sent to “Children’s River Bed Hell,” where they have to pile rocks on top of each other, only to have demons come and knock over the towers and torment them. Kṣitigarbha was the only bodhisattva who cared enough to travel to hell to hide the children from the demons and comfort them. So, it was fitting that he now became a symbol of the reconstruction, after so much of the world had their towers toppled through the panic caused by their own demons.