Burials in the sky are funeral rituals that are practiced in certain areas of Asia, especially in Tibet and Mongolia, in which the corpses of the deceased are exposed in the wild for scavengers, especially vultures, to devour them . The idea is that the body returns to nature and turns death into an act of generosity towards other living beings , which in Buddhism is considered an important virtue.
To do this, the deceased are previously stripped, dismembered and sliced by expert men , who cut strips of meat with their knives to attract the birds. After they account for most of the deceased, the bones are crushed, dusted with barley flour, and offered again to the raptors.
Tibetans, who know this ceremony as jhator, believe that the disappearance of the corpse by this means is a sign that the person was good in life.
The rite is usually celebrated in the mountains near the monasteries and, many times, the relatives cannot be present, so that the soul of the deceased breaks the ties that bind him to his relatives.
