Grandma the cat was twenty years old when she died on the morning of the winter solstice. We made an altar in the house and placed her body on it surrounded by flowers, candles and incense. Along with the other cats, we spent a day in front of her body, praying and remembering our love for her. On the second day we went outside to look for a suitable place to dig a grave. The ground was cold and frozen and it was hard to make much of a dent with the shovel. David suggested, “Why don’t we make a funeral pyre and cremate her body?” I envisioned myself sitting by that fire seeing her small black and white body burning in the flames—smelling like meat cooking. “No, cremation is out of the question, we have to bury her.”
That incident made me realize something about how different cultures deal with their dead and how that was related to how those cultures viewed and treated animals. Members of the three religions founded by Abraham—Judaism, Christianity and Islam—all adhere to the practice of burying their dead, unlike Hindus who cremate the body shortly after death. Meat eating (the eating of cooked corpses) is as central to Judaism, Christianity and Islam as vegetarianism is to Hinduism—interesting. I was raised as a meat-eating Christian, and the smell of cooking flesh is engrained in my consciousness as the smell of dinner—not as the smell that I associate with the funeral of a friend or family member. The repulsion we feel at the smell of burning human flesh stems from its similarity to the smell of cooked meat, which must be viewed as soulless in order for us to eat it with guiltless justification. We do, in fact, have cremation in the West, but unlike in places like India where cremation is performed outside in public view, in the West the body is taken away and put in a sealed, high temperature oven at 1500 degrees Fahrenheit for about 4 hours. To alleviate any risk of repugnance, the only thing that family and friends see are the clean, odorless ashes that remain.
The story of Abraham is found both in the Bible and the Quran, and it tells of how God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son. But just as he was about to place his son on the fire, an angel appeared to say, “You have proved your faith and your fear of God; for that He is happy with you, so unbind your son and instead, put a lamb on the fire.” Ritualized sacrifice of animals—killing them and burning their bodies and then distributing the meat all in the name of God—formed the foundation of the three major religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It also formed the political core and the establishment of urbanization—a sedentary way of life deeply rooted in a practice of enslaving animals, exploiting animals, buying and selling animals and eating animals, which demanded that animals be viewed as soulless objects whose only purpose was to be used by human beings.
Prior to the great agricultural explosion, which gave birth to capitalism and urbanization and pretty much the world as we know it today, human beings lived wild with other wild animals and the natural wild environment. At that time, human beings felt connected and as kindred spirits with all of nature. But when we started to enslave (domesticate) other animal beings, we had to disconnect from them, as well as deny our connection to the whole of nature. Elaborate rituals were employed to accomplish this division and nullify guilt. Ritualized killing was part of this process. Domesticated animals were brought to a temple to be offered to God, killed by priests while reciting incantations, put on a fire, cooked and then either given back to the person for a fee or the meat was sold and distributed to others. In time as human population increased, so did the herds of domesticated animals, and cities grew larger, as did temples and political power. Religious temples became more and more like commercial slaughterhouses. Two thousand years ago, ancient Jerusalem was known as the “red city,” not because of how the beautiful sunsets colorfully reflected on the walled fortress surrounding the city, but because of the crimson blood that overflowed the gutter troughs running out of the main temple—the by-product of the many animal sacrifices that were going on. All of the three religions of Abraham uphold a speciesist view, which looks upon animals as inferior to humans, so in those religions cremation is not acceptable because burning is for animals, not humans.
Vegetarianism was not always a central feature of Hinduism. The ritualized killing of animals played a big part in early Vedic culture. The Brahmin priests did the job of animal sacrifice, and originally only Brahmins were allowed to eat meat. After the religious reforms brought about by Jainism and Buddhism, Hinduism became primarily a religion that upheld the virtue of ahimsa and along with it, the practice of vegetarianism. In turn, cremation became the popular method used to dispose of human corpses among the vegetarian Hindus, Jains and Buddhists.
When we begin to look deeply into the rituals of our culture, including funeral ceremonies, we may uncover the roots of many violent practices that have been ingrained and unquestioned in our way of life, and we may come to realize that many of these practices have been learned. The good news is that when we recognize the origins of certain behaviors, we realize that they aren’t necessarily natural or hard wired into us, and with that we are reminded that when something is learned it can be unlearned. We can dismantle the old ways of our present animal slave-based culture and create a new way of living. We can rise like the phoenix from the ashes of the sacrificial fire and fly to greater heights than have even yet been imagined.
Teaching Tips
POETIC INSPIRATION:
The insight for the essay came from my experience with the death of Grandma, the cat as I expressed in the first paragraph. When I started writing the essay I kept hearing in my head Bob Dylan’s song Highway 61 as well as a poem I had written several years ago about the ancient Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. So I include those here for you.
Excerpt from Bob Dylan’s song Highway 61:
“…God said to Abraham, “Kill me a son,” Abe says, “Man, you must be puttin’ me on” God say, “No,” Abe say, “What?” God say, “You can do what you want Abe, but the next time you see me comin’ you better run.” Well Abe says, “Where do you want this killin’ done?” God says, “Out on Highway 61” –Bob Dylan
A poem of mine:
What did he do to make them so mad?
What did he do to make them so mad
that they had to nail him to a cross for being so bad!
What was his crime against the state
Which moved them all to such hate?
Have you seen a movie or read a book
That tells you how he went too far—
The Passion, The Last Temptation, The Super Star?
But what was it that he did,
That they would fear their own annihilation
From his tempestuous tantrum tempting temptation?
I have seen it
In this Essene
It is no watered down story of a victim’s distress
Or of a pilgrim’s quest
It is the story of an activist—
I and my father are one
There is no difference between god and the creation
What you do to one you do to the whole
The story’s old been told and told
Jerusalem at the time
Taxes had to be paid
Sacrifices had to be made
Money had to be changed
This Israel, see it if you will
The great Temple on the Hill
Even then the walls did wail
With the lust for money
Tainted with the cries of the kill
Gentle morning doves,
Baby goats, and sheep
No fruits, no flowers accepted here
Only a bloody corpse will do
Life desecrated for a holy price
The law said you had to pay in blood
And buy an animal for the sacrifice
To get the temple priests to kill your feast
You must pay in Holy-City currency
No foreign coins or bills accepted
Money was exchanged, animals
Bought and then brought up the hill
Wailing to the temple door
Inside their throats were cut
Canals flowing with innocent blood
Jerusalem the city of the red flood
Rivers and tributaries, gutters of gore
Flow from the famous Temple of Lore
I have seen it
In this Essene
A vegetarian honoring life
As the way to the Divine
Thou shalt not kill no man no ram
No more killing no need to
The temple is within you
Do not defile it with death
Those who wield the sword
shall perish by the sword
Love thy neighbor as thyself
But even with his words thus spoke
there was much money to be made
From the sale of these gentle folk
The economy of the society has grown
Profited from their exploitation and pain
The Nazarene turned the tables and said enough!
Violence only brings more of the same
You cannot plant an olive seed and
Expect to harvest wheat
To know become like the one you seek
So He upset their plans
Cut the tethering ropes
Opened the cages while
They watched their profits fly
Their anger rose their voices high
“We are the chosen,
Killing is the sanctioned lawful way,&n
Who are you to say?”
So he stood there mute and frozen
And they took him away
And frozen he is to this day
This animal activist
Liberator of the oppressed
But alive is he today inside each one of us who cares
He is the sacred heart of the Passion
And the best passion, as everybody knows,
is com-passion
Everlasting life comes to those who allow it to flow.
—Sharon Gannon