O altă formă de antisomatism: Ritualul tibetan al Înmormântării în Cer
Another Antisomatic Ritual: Tibetan Sky-Burial

Summary/Abstract: We consider that the practice of incineration – the topic of the “Incineration: A History–Theology Dialog” Symposium – expresses scorn for the human body, a depreciation and debasement of the value of the body, as an inseparable part of the human hypostasis, jointly with the soul. We are identifying any attitude of body (sōma) denial as antisomatism, a defining invariant of the Gnostic heresies (according to the typology established by Hans Jonas, used by Ugo Bianchi, I.P. Culianu etc.) This paper, based on the authors’s personal experience in Tibet, illustrates another expression of the same antisomatic invariant, in the form of an archaic Bon / Buddhist funerary ritual, still practiced in Tibet today. We believe that both practices are expressing the same rejection of the hypostatic principle (as defined by the Christian Church Fathers), the same denial of the human person, ultimately signifying disbelief and a radical incompatibility with the Christian teaching. Both practices belong to paradigms of Gnostic and nihilistic extraction: in the case of the Tibetan rite – the Buddhist one, in the case of incineration – the postmodern secularised one.

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