Question:

Can you advise me please; what is a Buddhist’s preference when he/she passes: burial or cremation? Is it an individual choice or more like the Catholics who lean toward burial. I’d appreciate your comments on my question.

Answer:

Generally speaking, it doesn’t matter. Historically, cremation is usually the procedure, but that’s just the tradition in the East. In India, along the Ganges river, it is tradition to cremate the body and throw the ashes in the river. Holy men would be “buried at sea” in the river itself. Over thousands of years, this has built up to the point where the Ganges is one of the most heavily polluted rivers in the world.

A Buddhist spends his or her life trying to escape the confines and the limitations and suffering of the human body. When they finally leave the body, what is left is like the prison after the prisoner has finally escaped.

A dead body is just a shell, dispose of it however you want.