Death and Identity in Ladakh and Rondônia

Type :

Presentation

Pages :

3 pages

Format :

.doc

Published date :

06/19/2008

Category :

Philosophy & literature

Sub category :

Humanities/philosophy

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Summary :

Pre-contact Wari' culture's physical interaction with the body of the deceased.
Tibetan mortuary practices reveal that familiar and community interactions play a similar role as the Wari' family does.
To find where the body plays a more central role, examine the individual identity.
The broadest level of identity in Tibetan culture is the absolute or ideal identity.

Abstract

Every culture defines different entities and ideas in relation to which the individual can experience his or her identity and physical or mental substances on which one's identities are located. Mortuary rites described in Hiroaki Mori and Yukari Hayashi's film The Tibetan Book of the Dead: A Way of Life and Beth A. Conklin's essay "'Thus Are Our Bodies, Thus Is Our Custom': Mortuary Cannibalism in an Amazonian Society," reveal how the Tibetan Indians of ladakh and the Wari' of rondônia define their identities. The Wari' experience identity in relation to their familiar, tribal, and ecological circumstances, and these identities are corporeal - they are located in the body. Tibetans, on the other hand, express identity at individual, community, universal, and absolute levels; individual identity is located equally in body and mind, while community and universal identities are progressively more mental as the scope of identification increases. The absolute identity, which is of the broadest scope, is purely mental. This analysis is borne out by an examination of how Wari' and Tibetan communities interact physically with the corpse and reincarnation mythology in both cultures.Pre-contact Wari' culture's physical interaction with the body of the deceased illustrates the nature of familiar identity in that society