The ancient fire worshippers of Persia put their death in a circular tower of stone and iron, called the Dakhma or the Tower of Silence. In their diametrically opposed universe of good and evil, man and his environment exist in a constant state of battle against contamination against evil. This struggle is continued in death where proper rituals have to be carried out to ensure the soul's peaceful passage to the next world. Ceremonies carried out around the Tower of Silence are aimed at purifying the dead, obviously then one can conclude that the fire worshippers do not consider death the end of the struggle.
The idea that a soul has to be exorcised of its earthly attachments before it can move on, is not unique to the fire worshippers. Taoist rituals of the dead, the Tibetan Book of the Dead and many others provide for this exercise. Some say that life is a journey, and death is the final journey that we all need to make. Conveniently however we build our lives in this world forgetting the immediacy of death, which may, for all we know, be lurking in the shadows one step behind us. Moment to moment we act as if we are eternal beings, assured of eternal lives, we buy insurance with our acts of religion, our acts of ambition, our acts of love as if they will buy away the terror that lurks around the corner.
Meanwhile, existing in a bundle of automated emotions and desires we veer from place to place, emotion to emotion, conviction to conviction. Inevitably however the bus has to stop and we have to get down, do we find a path? The rites of the dead can teach us much, rather than saying they mark the end of life perhaps we should say that life itself is a preparation for death. The death rites of the fire worshippers suggest this Life is not the point, death is, perhaps we've been missing the point too long. Life is a preparation for death, but not in the pseudo romantic Mishima-tic sense of cutting a cherry blossom off before it begins to wilt, but in the inescapable sense that something is missing from this existence. The Christians call it a cross to bear, the Buddhists call it karma, the Muslims and Sikhs call it kismet. The avoidance of that little voice that nags at you deep inside, makes us automatons, the inability to love, the absence of being loved, intense suffering creating blinding pain, the absence of knowledge, the perpetuation of sin, wilful ignorance distances us from our kismet. The further we drift the more we are unable to recognise it until one day like encountering a stranger on the road, we'll just walk right past her.
We have forgotten that our beacon, death, which shines in the fog, can guide us, because we are afraid. Death is frightening because it onds all equations, all arguments, all words, all pretenses, death is final, we want continuity, The preparation for death needs time, death itself needs time, the dead needs time to die.
I hope we all find our Towers of Silence.
– Wong Kwang Han