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A "natural burial" reflects the desire for something simpler, something less 'wasteful' of time, money and natural resources, and at its core, it cries out for the body's physical return to the earth, without barriers or inhibitions, chiefly in the form of vaults or metal and plastic coffins, that prevent its transformation back into the elements it was made of.
But the least talked about, and perhaps most compelling argument against cremation (or disappearance at all, for that matter) even if the energy use was negligible and harmful emissions nonexistent—may be that, in disappearing, we actually lose our chance to continue to participate in planetary life in a personally meaningful way.
planted in a forest or a sustainably managed city cemetery and becoming food for the regenerative Earth system, we can still do one last thing with our bodies that may be much more significant than a disappearing act: We can remain fully present, albeit transformed, nourish the soil, and rekindle life as a forest or a tree.
On the continuum of processes, a natural burial that makes one's body available as a full-spectrum nutrient source for the soil web does more for the planet's biological system than cremation. According to Dorian Sagan, author of Into the Cool and student/teacher of the thermodynamics of living systems, the longer that our biological web can keep life forms "in play," transferring energy from one creature to another in the great chain of being, the more resilient our planetary system can remain.
The complex and self-organizing, self-regulating biological and geophysical systems that help to balance temperature, moisture, and atmospheric gases and support life as we know it on Earth are created and maintained by the continuous recycling of the organic and inorganic matter that are the elemental building blocks of all animate beings. Sterilization (from the formaldehyde) and the combustion of cremation destroys the integrity of fundamental molecules, enzymes, and microbes present in your body and the soil it's buried in. In contrast to the chemical-intensive practice of preservation or the energy-intensive process of combustion, returning to the earth's natural system arguably makes the best use of our parts—us—for the greatest number of beings, over the longest period of time.
Becoming a tree, if for no other reason than to offset our own personal C02 emissions during our lifetime, might be just the ticket we need.
I want to be cremated because I don't want to take up space and I don't like the idea of rotting in the ground. Nothing unnatural about ashes, fire is natural and many things have burned without man's help, we just call it cremation and charge a price for it but it's still natural.
I want to be cremated because I don't want to take up space and I don't like the idea of rotting in the ground. Nothing unnatural about ashes, fire is natural and many things have burned without man's help, we just call it cremation and charge a price for it but it's still natural.
[LEFT]the combustion of cremation destroys the integrity of fundamental molecules, enzymes, and microbes present in your body and the soil it's buried in. In contrast to the chemical-intensive practice of preservation or the energy-intensive process of combustion, returning to the earth's natural system arguably makes the best use of our parts—us—for the greatest number of beings, over the longest period of time.
The origin of life and humans is unknown.That is to say that humans do not know how they came into being and why humans come to this world.
We only know that life and humanity is the product of natural process.Humans should therefore be in a humble attitude towards nature and the product of natural process: the human body.
Death and giving birth both are parts of natural process.Death is human body lose its functions and stops working.In nature,animals after death are decomposed by microbes and become the nutrients of microbes and plants,thus participate in the circulation of the organic matter in biosphere. This course has already lasted hundreds of millions of years since life appeared on earth,and our bodies are the products of this circulation.
After death,as long as not to burn the body as garbage by cremation,the body would still be in the original natural process.The remains would be eaten by microbes and plants,thus turned into other life forms and still in the biosystem and participate in the eternal circulation and evolvement of life in nature.
Nature never produces garbage.Its every process is reasonable,otherwise it is unlikely to create life and humans.
Death is a normal natural process,but cremation is the artificial destruction of the human body.and is the artificial destruction of things and processes that we don't really know.
Burial is to return the human body to nature.let it be handled by nature,even coffins are redundant.The dead thus blend naturally and be in one with nature and live forever with nature.By that we pay reverence to nature and things that we don't really know and also the greatest respect for the dead.
So why cremation?
Why spend thousands of dollars on a Cadillac, ahem, casket, all shiny, and in such nice colors, wall to wall, fabrics, etc. I mean, to be lowered into the ground? I've heard of "green" caskets or that type of material, you can wrap a body in, that's good for the earth, now, that's a thought, versus, cremation.
I never found Cremation to be environmentally ethical, all the smoke released into the air ,while dead corpse in soil will prove to be beneficial to the plants and trees. We can " ritualize " death without breaking the cycle of natural decomposition.
But how does the body decompose back to the soil, if it's inside a Cadillac, ahem, casket?
If my corpse could be left in an open field for vultures to feast on that would be fine by me. The funeral business is such a waste; caskets. concrete liners in the ground; such a waste of space. Cremation is easy and cheap.
I don't know if it's legal anywhere in the United States, but you could investigate Tibetan sky burial.
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