Pouring a few spoons of water from the Ganges — a river in India considered to be sacred — into the mouth also brings auspiciousness. After a loved one dies, the goal of the family is to help the departing soul transition to the next life.
Immediately after death, family members wash the body and anoint it with purificatory scents. To keep the limbs in place, the thumbs are tied together, as are the big toes. The body is then dressed in clean clothes and wrapped in a cloth. After, a brief service takes place where the body, with a garland of flowers around its neck, is displayed in a simple casket. During this time, friends and family gather to recite hymns, prayers, and mantras.
Rice balls, known as pinda , are commonly placed near the casket as an offering to help the soul unite with its ancestors. The soul is said to be encased by both a physical and subtle non-physical body. After the physical body dies, the subtle body continues to function, through which the soul moves on to its next destination.
But because so many attachments form throughout life, it can be difficult for a soul to transition, causing it to linger. All beings are eternal and spiritual, whereas the physical body is temporary.
Thus, Hindus cremate the body as a way of freeing the soul from this life so that it can move on to the next. To fully liberate the soul of its mortal attachments, the ashes and remaining bone fragments of the deceased are then dispersed in a river or ocean, usually at a historically holy place, like the banks of the River Ganges. Someone from a different tradition might wonder why a ritual should ask mourners to destroy the body of their loved ones and dispose of their remains when one should be caring for all that remains of the dead?
As shocking as it was, it forced me to understand that the burning corpse is only a body, not my mother, and I have no connection left to the body. My Ph. It made me understand their deeper relevance and question my experiences. Rituals can help us understand concepts that are otherwise elusive to grasp. For example, scholar Nicole Boivin describes the importance of physical doorways in rituals of social transformation, like marriage, in some cultures.
The experience of moving through doorways evokes transition and creates an understanding of change. Through the rituals, ideas that were abstract until then, such as detachment, became accessible to me. The concept of detachment to the physical body is embodied in the Hindu death rituals.
Further, immersing ashes in a river symbolizes the final detachment with the physical body as flowing water takes the remains away from the mortal world. Dealing with the death of a loved one can be incredibly painful, and it also confronts one with the specter of mortality.
The simple answer is, we can either be reborn punar-janma and experience life once again, or be liberated moksha from the cycle of rebirth samsara.
However, the answer is a bit more complex if we see it geographically and historically. Around the world, what happens after death can be divided into two schools. Those who believe you live only once and those who believe you live multiple lives. Those who believe you live only once have broadly three schools — those who believe death is the end, nothing else after that; those who believe after death you go to the land of the dead and stay in this afterlife forever; and those who believe after death you go to either heaven, where you enjoy the rest of eternity, or to hell, where you suffer for all eternity or maybe until you have been adequately punished and are ready to join the rest in heaven.
Those who believe in rebirth believe you keep coming back from the land of the dead pitr-loka to the land of the living bhu-loka until you learn the ultimate lesson after which you no longer feel the need for a body. There are variations on this, where you are punished for various crimes in hell naraka-loka before you are ready to be reborn, or where you enjoy heaven swarga-loka , until it is time for you return to earth once again.
Ancient Egyptians built pyramids because they believed in an eternal afterlife. Ancient Chinese, before Buddhism introduced the idea of rebirth, have always believed in the land of ancestors that one has to go to after death. Even today, there are rituals where you offer paper money to ancestors to spend in the land of the dead, from whence there is no return. While re-birth and re-death punar-mrityu are seen as inevitable, Hindus have also believed in the concept of immortality amrita.
The devas who live in the sky and the asuras who live under the death fight over this nectar, as do birds garuda and snakes naga. We hear that asuras have Sanjivani Vidya, by which they can resurrect the dead. This is used by Jayanta to bring Shukra back to life.
We hear in the Mahabharata, the serpents have naga-mani, or serpent jewel, that can bring back the dead to life; this is used to bring Arjuna back to life after he is shot dead by Babruvahana.
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