What really matters

by Perla Semaan

One of the most spiritual habits in Bali, is burning the body of the dead. Nothing new comes to the mind since burning the dead is practiced a long time ago and in several cultures. But what you didn’t know is why they do it. In Bali, when a person is dead, they build him a carriage to hold their corpse. The bigger his status was in life, the bigger the carriage. You may ask why? Now that he is dead, what difference does the size of the carriage make? After putting his dead body on the artistic carriage, they would carry it while celebrating his death. They believe that death is the soul breaking free from all that is material. They burn the body along with the carriage they worked hard on building, just to admit that when a person is dead, nothing material goes with him. The fancy carriage that represents what they had on earth burns into ashes to prove that it all doesn’t matter. They celebrate death because it’s not a tragedy; it’s the soul breaking free.

Life is just another experience of the soul, just like death. And being truly alive means living by soul, not by body nor by mind. So if it’s the way you are living, than death and life barely differ. Because it’s the soul that’s alive anyway.