Waning Moon Conrad

Addressing your actual question

- maybe -

there are practices in Buddhism that are traditionally performed in charnel grounds, cremation grounds or graveyards. If the practitioner has fear, that can intensify the experience of practice and the fear can (theoretically) be transformed into something more beneficial. It is said that there are poisons such as anger, envy, pride etc that can be transformed into their corresponding wisdoms which have poetic names such as "mirror-like wisdom", "action-accomplishing wisdom" by ritualistic processes or by simply gazing into them and stepping into them without grasping at self. My (extremely limited) understanding is that it is the grasping at self that maintains their poisonous nature.

Some of these rituals involve the visualization of the dismemberment of the physical body and the feeding of it to demons, hungry ghosts etc or the transmutation of it into nectar and the feeding of it in a skullcup to various buddhas, boddhisattvas, deities etc.

These practices are typically derived from the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras which teach sunyata or "emptiness of self" (which should not be interpreted as saying that there is no self but that self is a process rather than a thing, a becoming rather than a static, unchanging being.

It should not take a gigantic leap to see that for some people, a practice such as this, understood in this way and practiced enthusiastically and energized by faith and perhaps even a little fear might actually be effective in enabling a practitioner to, by using their body which they identify with self, as an offering, to transcend the sort of grasping at ego that seems to characterise so many of us (myself included) and also seems to create, generate and sustain much of the misery that so many of us feel so often to varying degrees.

The living are more dangerous than the dead.

The dead may possibly be living - elsewhere - but their bodies at least are nice and quiet and not given to riotous behaviour or to accosting people with a view to wreaking mischief.

Corpses rot, they do not commit vivaphilia.

Graveyards can be peaceful and pleasant. If or when you feel strong enough, try a ritual in the graveyard. It you leave feeling more miserable than you did then don't repeat the exercise.

Just don't be noisy about it. Police officers may be angels when you need them but they're bloody demonic when they interrupt your sacred occasion with such esoteric tidings as, allo allo allo what's all this then? or righto mate you're nicked!

Mantras, words of power or barbarous names of evocation, uttered (or muttered) quietly but with intent can induce feelings just as powerful as when they're bellowed.

I hope this is useful to you in some way.

[ October 29, 2002: Message edited by: Waning Moon Conrad ]</p>