#charnel grounds

[charnel-grounds]

Sally Mann, “Body Farm” c. 2000

University of Tennessee’s anthropological facility at Knoxville, a.k.a. the “body farm”, where donated cadavers are left to decompose in an outdoor setting for scientific study.

[mind--funeral]

[aurademortt]

[opiraticentranced]

The charnel ground is not merely the hermitage; it can also be discovered or revealed in completely terrifying mundane environments where practitioners find themselves desperate and depressed, where conventional worldly aspirations have become devastated by grim reality. This is demonstrated in the sacred biographies of the great siddhas of the Vajrayāna tradition. Tilopa attained realization as a grinder of sesame seeds and a procurer for a prominent prostitute. Sarvabhakṣa was an extremely obese glutton, Gorakṣa was a cowherd in remote climes, Taṅtepa was addicted to gambling, and Kumbharipa was a destitute potter. These circumstances were charnel grounds because they were despised in Indian society and the siddhas were viewed as failures, marginal and defiled.

Judith Simmer-Brown writing about the Mahasiddhas, completely realized tantric masters of the Nath, Mahamudra, and Dzogchen traditions.

[blackpremiers]

[bizarrobrain]

"On a Cross of Ether" by Charnel Grounds - From "Molecular Entropy Examined in the Bowels of a Great One" (2021)