In Asia, they don't slam the dead with a tomb age

What is 1 November for us from a psychological point of view?

Isn't it the case that for 364 days of the year we push thoughts of death out of our consciousness in order to give them some attention on this one day for mental hygiene?

I don't think that was the original intention of this holiday, although it can indeed be perceived that way. On the 1st of November we honour the dead and, importantly, we do so in the company of the whole of Poland. The cemetery is full of people and candles, and therefore full of life and light. So we feel the social support before encountering the subject of death. It is easier for us. In addition to the temporal aspect, one can also see the spatial aspect of closing the subject of death. It is only present in the dedicated area of the cemetery. To this one can possibly add the church and roadside crosses. There is no place for it in our home.

Opponents of religion as such say that it is our subconscious defence for controlling the fear of death. Freud made similar claims.

There are studies that show that religion, like high self-esteem, is indeed a kind of safety buffer that protects us from the fear of death, which incidentally is one of the basic mechanisms driving human behaviour. Studies show that around 30 per cent of Poles think about death and are consciously afraid of it, and fear decreases with age. If you were to accost the first better person on the street and ask him or her about this topic, he or she would certainly be very surprised and would need a moment to think about it. Once people start to think about death, they start to feel afraid and uncomfortable. There is a broad psychological paradigm exploring the possibility of mastering fear of death. It has been found that the activation of this topic induces anxiety, which in turn increases consumption behaviour, including the desire for luxury goods, increases conservatism and fundamentalist attitudes, in addition to lowering tolerance.

Research by Professor Wiesław Łukaszewski shows that the activation of thoughts about death intensifies the tendency to support views that one accepts, to accept people who have the same views and beliefs, and at the same time inclines to condemn those whose behaviour deviates from our worldview, such as Christian values.

Another thing is that the dominant religion in Poland includes the concept of hell, which makes us fear what awaits us after we have made our lives. On the one hand, we hope for eternal life and God's protection, while on the other we fear the Last Judgement and the cauldron of hot tar in which the devil with a pitchfork cooks sinners.

Leszek Kołakowski pointed out at the beginning of his mini-lecture “On Funerals” that completely different emotions accompany secular and Christian burials.

This is an interesting theme. At religious rites, in the general sadness of those gathered, one can feel the hope of a reunion and a good future for the deceased. At secular funerals, as Kolakowski notes, people don't know much about how to relate to the fact of death. They feel out of place, praising the deceased smacks of a kind of artificiality, everyone just waits until the awkward moment is over. This can easily be applied to the whole of our secularised cultural circle, in which dying is a topic pushed outside of everyday life. It is a taboo that plays itself out in the context of consumption and materialism. The cult of youth, stirred up by the media, dictates to fight against ageing, to take care of one's beauty, to ‘perpetuate oneself’. Meanwhile, death often surprises from behind a hospital screen. This is not the case in other cultures, especially in the Far East. In the Asian philosophies to which I have devoted my research, one prepares oneself all one's life to die well.

Which countries did your research cover?

The main ones were India, Nepal, Tibet and Vietnam. All these countries have a common cultural theme of the cyclical nature of life and death. This has to do with the concept of reincarnation. In our context, this can be interpreted as genetics. After all, there are genes in each of us from our great-grandparents that make us exist and extend in some sense the lives of our ancestors.

Dr. Joanna Różycka-Tran

Professor at the Institute of Psychology, University of Gdańsk, two-time scholarship holder of the Ministry of Education (scholarship at the Vietnam National University in Hanoi). She has travelled extensively in the Himalayan region (India, Nepal, Tibet) and on expeditions, also with students (Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand), where she studied, among others, meditating monks in a Zen monastery or Vietnamese martial arts adepts. She is interested in the psychology of cross-cultural differences and the topic of beliefs and social axioms. She is the author of the monograph 'Social Life as Play. An Intercultural Context'.

How do Asians interact with death on a daily basis?

The example of Vietnamese ancestor worship is interesting. In that culture, the living live together with the dead - they feed them daily and “talk” to them when important decisions need to be made. The deceased member of the family is not slammed with a grave age deep underground, but actively participates in the daily life of the household. He or she has his or her own altar, under which fresh fruit, lanterns and incense are placed daily. In every Vietnamese home, the altar of the ancestors along with their pictures is in the best place. On the first and fifteenth of each month, a larger feast is also held in honour of the person. Anniversaries of death are also celebrated, which are big holidays that strengthen family ties. The Vietnamese believe that deceased people continue to live with them, so when they have worries or problems, they ask them for help. In these parts of the world, psychotherapy as such is not actually used - the prescription for problems is to talk to the spirits of the dead.

In Tibet, on the other hand, death is used for life. In the Himalayan environment, conditions for existence are extremely difficult - there is no way to grow crops, so the staple food is meat, butter and yak milk. As long as man is alive, he has to kill animals to survive. On the other hand, once he has died, he does not exalt himself above nature. The body of the deceased is displayed for the eagles and vultures. Such a “sky-high” burial is also due to geography - in the high mountains, the body cannot be buried in the ground, and there are no trees to make a fire and burn it. The philosophical rationale is that the body of the deceased must serve to further the circle of life - in this case to keep the birds with it. You will be able to read more about this in next week's book entitled. "Psychological Journeys through the Cultures of the World", in which, together with Prof. Divine and Dr. Sorokowski, we describe our adventures from Africa, Asia and South America, in the context of in-depth psychological reflection.

Does this coming to terms with one's own mortality mean that, faced with the impending end of life, Asians do not fall into despair?

During my travels in Asia, the most shocking experience for me, as a white woman from Europe, was what I saw in Varanasi. There I found a hostel on the banks of the sacred river Ganges, which Hindus believe is a tunnel between the world of the living and the world of the dead. Beneath my window, there were pyres burning all day and night, with dead bodies smouldering on them. There were crowds of people around, including children playing. Women were cooking meals, while at the same time sadhus were meditating, monks were performing various rituals. Among these burning dead were also the poorer ones. Their families were so poor that they could not buy enough wood to cremate the body. So the corpses were set on fire and the remains were simply thrown into the river. In the morning, I took a boat and saw human remains floating on the surface of the water. Meanwhile, right next door, people were performing a ritualistic purification, immersing themselves and their clothes in the river and even brushing their teeth. A more eloquent picture of the coexistence of life and death is hard to find. People from our cultural background find this hard to believe.

An interesting fact about the Ganges is that human-positive microorganisms have recently been discovered in the river feeding on the harmful ones. So it can be said that the more impurities in the water, the more purifying it is. The more death, the more life.

I would guess that many tourists from other parts of the world want to check it out.

For a person from Europe, however, contact with the Ganges could cause quite a lot of problems with the digestive tract, although such daredevils do indeed appear. Unfortunately, I was not able to follow up on their subsequent health status.

Are children also initiated into final matters?

Asian children are complicit in all funeral rituals. The subject is by no means hidden from the youngest. In India and Nepal, even young children see the bodies of the dead being burnt. In Vietnam, after the death of a parent at home, one must wait to carry the body away until the children return home and personally say goodbye to the deceased. Then, together with other family members, they take care of his or her altar. There, the children are simply accustomed to the presence of death from a young age.

We often associate Southeast Asia with bustling giant metropolises that mimic the great cities of the West.

These large glass metropolises are almost identical in every region of the world. In them, the ruling religion is consumerism, which is directly linked to the fear of death. As long as I consume, I build my identity and can say that I am somebody. Death takes all this away from me and suddenly I become nobody, I disappear. This is why it is relegated to the confined spaces of hospitals, hospices, cemeteries. On the other hand, it cannot be said that the materialism of the metropolis has displaced traditional Asian cultures. The traditions are too powerful. Even in Saigon's most luxurious shops or hotels, one can find altars in honour of immortal saints. The same is true in India, where we find symbols of deities in exclusive places.

In Poland, Asian philosophies arouse curiosity, but also distrust. The increasingly popular yoga has recently been labelled a manifestation of satanism.

Again, Vietnam comes to mind, whose population, due to the former French presence, is 20 per cent Catholic. What are their churches like? Well, for the most part they are ordinary pagodas, only with a cross on the roof. Openness and the coexistence of different things, even opposing each other, is the order of the day. In Kathmandu, I saw how both Buddhists and Hindus could pray in one pagoda. Half of the altar depicted Buddha and half depicted the goddess Kali. Asians know how to combine opposites, which is linked to their holistic conception of the world. Psychological research has shown that in those regions of the world, people more easily activate two-way thinking, whereas in our culture one thinks in terms of ‘yes or no’, ‘black or white’. This already at the cognitive level closes off the possibility of dialogue.

Find the original article here: https://dziennikbaltycki.pl/w-azji-nie-przytrzaskuja-zmarlego-wiekiem-grobowca-rozmowa/ar/3627870