Tibet and bones

My recent post about old Tibetan rituals involving skulls, excrement and sex has led to some further self education about odd aspects of Tibetan religious practice.   

But first - let's watch someone who looks like China's very own Henry Ergas explain (by very clearly reading from the script) the importance of Xi Jinping's recent visit to the country.   It's from CGTN, so of course it's 100% unadulterated pro-China propaganda; but I must admit, the country is looking cleaner and more modern than I expected:

 

OK, back to esoteric religious stuff.

I didn't know much about how Tibetan religious practice was so heavily into human skulls and bones.   But look at this image, which comes from what seems to be one guy's pet project - a website with the impressively prosaic name Facts and Details:  

It's captioned "Skull Queen of Heaven", but I don't know where it's originally from.   I suppose I  can do a reverse  image search - well, I just did, and it's still not clear.  It appears on some Himalayan art resources site as if it's in a private collection.  The image has been used by various other people too, presumably without authorisation, so it remains a bit of a mystery.

 

Anyhow,  it's presumably a fancy version of a kapala, which, as Wikipedia explains: 

 A kapala (Sanskrit for "skull") is a skull cup used as a ritual implement (bowl) in both Hindu Tantra and Buddhist Tantra (Vajrayana). Especially in Tibet, they are often carved or elaborately mounted with precious metals and jewels.

 

 

 

 

Googling the topic further, here's an old leaflet from 1923 Use of Human Skulls and Bones in Tibet which goes into plenty of gory detail about the history of this.  Let's see if I can copy some bits:

 

Well, surely the "sky burial" was doubtless real - just the detail of boiling up Dad's head and drinking from it might be the exaggeration?

Anyway, the leaflet actually goes on to record lots of different societies which have used skulls for cups - sometimes from their defeated enemies' heads; sometimes a relative they liked.  Even Australia gets a mention!:

But back to why Tibetan Buddhism does it:

Well, I suppose that is one way of remembering life is temporary and you'd better behave.

The leaflet describes the Tibetan interest in getting just the right type of skull for worship purposes:

 

The leaflet does point out, though, that it is not completely unknown for a Catholic saint's skull to be used for ceremonial drinking on their feast day in Europe, so let's not be too condescending.   

Anyway, to end on a lighter note, I see from Facts and Details that the most common chant used in Tibet is one that is pretty easy to remember, but the English translation seems very long!:

The most common chant is om mani padme hum ("Hail to the Jewel in the Lotus"), which means "I invoke this path to experience the universality, so the jewel-like luminosity of my immortal mind will be unfolded within the depths of the lotus-center of awakened consciousness and I be wafted by ecstacy of breaking through all bonds and horizons."

It is the mantra of Chenresig (Avalokiteshvara), the Bodhisattva of Compassion.

I like the long version.