Sarira
Encyclopedia
Pearl
A pearl is a hard object produced within the soft tissue of a living shelled mollusk. Just like the shell of a mollusk, a pearl is made up of calcium carbonate in minute crystalline form, which has been deposited in concentric layers. The ideal pearl is perfectly round and smooth, but many other...
or crystal
Crystal
A crystal or crystalline solid is a solid material whose constituent atoms, molecules, or ions are arranged in an orderly repeating pattern extending in all three spatial dimensions. The scientific study of crystals and crystal formation is known as crystallography...
-like bead
Bead
A bead is a small, decorative object that is usually pierced for threading or stringing. Beads range in size from under to over in diameter. A pair of beads made from Nassarius sea snail shells, approximately 100,000 years old, are thought to be the earliest known examples of jewellery. Beadwork...
-shaped objects that are purportedly found among the cremated
Cremation
Cremation is the process of reducing bodies to basic chemical compounds such as gasses and bone fragments. This is accomplished through high-temperature burning, vaporization and oxidation....
ashes of Buddhist spiritual masters. Sarira are held to emanate or incite 'blessings' and 'grace' (Sanskrit: adhishthana) within the mindstream
Mindstream
Mindstream in Buddhist philosophy is the moment-to-moment "continuum" of awareness. There are a number of terms in the Buddhist literature that may well be rendered "mindstream"...
and experience of those connected to them. Sarira are also believed to ward off evil in the Himalayan tradition.
Terminology
The term sarira or "sharira" (शरीर) is a loanwordLoanword
A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
from Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
. The term "Sarira" originally means "body" in Sankrit, but when used in Buddhist Sanskrit texts to mean "relics", it is always used in the plural: śarīrāḥ. The term ringsel is a loanword
Loanword
A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
from the Tibetan language
Tibetan language
The Tibetan languages are a cluster of mutually-unintelligible Tibeto-Burman languages spoken primarily by Tibetan peoples who live across a wide area of eastern Central Asia bordering the Indian subcontinent, including the Tibetan Plateau and the northern Indian subcontinent in Baltistan, Ladakh,...
. Both of these terms are somewhat ambiguous in English, they are generally used as synonyms, although according to some interpretations, ringsels are a subset of sariras.
Sarira (舍利) can refer to:
- Dharma body sariras, or sutras as told by the Buddha, according to Din Fu BaoDin Fu BaoDin Fu Bao, a noted Chinese Buddhist Scholar, mainly known for his authoritative work, A Dictionary of Buddhist Terms, which took 8 years to write and contained more than 30,000 entries.-External links:*...
's Dictionary of Buddhist Terms, a Dharma body sasira is "the Sutra as told by the Buddha: That which is unchanging in what is told by the Buddha, is of the same property as the essence of the Buddha himself, hence it is called the 'dharma body sarira'". - Corporal and full body sarirasBuddhist mummiesBuddhist mummies, also called flesh body bodhisattvas, full body sariras, or living buddhas refer to the bodies of Buddhist monks and nuns that remain incorrupt, without any traces of deliberate mummification. These are venerated by some Buddhists who believe they successfully were able to...
, the cremated remains of the Buddha (or any other spiritual master), but can also be used to refer other remains (for instance, a finger), or a preserved body, similar to the Roman Catholic incorruptibles. Full body sariras refers to the mummified remains of spiritual masters. - Broken body sariras refers specifically to cremated remains.
- Sariras or Ringsels, when used without qualification, the term sarira generally refers to the pearl-like remnant of a master after cremation.
The word "shrine" is sometimes used as a translation for ringsels (e.g. heart shrine relic refers to ringsels that supposedly formed from someone's heart.) This rather peculiar use of the term "shrine" reflects the Buddhist concept of shrine. For Buddhists, a shrine is anything that is deliberately constructed to remind one of something that is essentially intangible. Ringsels, whose primary function is to act as a memento, serves the same purpose as shrines, hence it is referred to as such.
Pearl-like Sariras
Although the term sarira can be used to refer to a wide variety of Buddhist relics, as listed above, it is generally used to refer to the pearlPearl
A pearl is a hard object produced within the soft tissue of a living shelled mollusk. Just like the shell of a mollusk, a pearl is made up of calcium carbonate in minute crystalline form, which has been deposited in concentric layers. The ideal pearl is perfectly round and smooth, but many other...
or crystal
Crystal
A crystal or crystalline solid is a solid material whose constituent atoms, molecules, or ions are arranged in an orderly repeating pattern extending in all three spatial dimensions. The scientific study of crystals and crystal formation is known as crystallography...
-like bead
Bead
A bead is a small, decorative object that is usually pierced for threading or stringing. Beads range in size from under to over in diameter. A pair of beads made from Nassarius sea snail shells, approximately 100,000 years old, are thought to be the earliest known examples of jewellery. Beadwork...
-shaped objects that are purportedly found among the cremated
Cremation
Cremation is the process of reducing bodies to basic chemical compounds such as gasses and bone fragments. This is accomplished through high-temperature burning, vaporization and oxidation....
ashes of Buddhist spiritual masters.
These objects are considered relics of significant importance in many sects of Buddhism
Buddhism
Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...
since they are believed to embody the spiritual knowledge, teachings, realizations or living essence of the spiritual masters. They are taken as evidence of the masters' enlightenment
Bodhi
Bodhi is both a Pāli and Sanskrit word traditionally translated into English with the word "enlightenment", but which means awakened. In Buddhism it is the knowledge possessed by a Buddha into the nature of things...
and spiritual purity. Some believe that the sariras are deliberately left by the consciousness of a master for veneration, and that the beauty of the sariras depends on how well the masters had cultivated their mind and souls. Sariras come in a variety of colors, and some are even translucent.
Sariras are typically displayed in a glass bowl inside small gold urns or stupa
Stupa
A stupa is a mound-like structure containing Buddhist relics, typically the remains of Buddha, used by Buddhists as a place of worship....
s as well as enshrined inside the masters statue. The pieces of sarira are also believed to mysteriously multiply in number while inside their containers if they have been stored under favorable conditions. Saffron
Saffron
Saffron is a spice derived from the flower of Crocus sativus, commonly known as the saffron crocus. Crocus is a genus in the family Iridaceae. Each saffron crocus grows to and bears up to four flowers, each with three vivid crimson stigmas, which are each the distal end of a carpel...
threads are sometimes placed within or around the bowl containing the individual pieces of sarira as an offering.
It is believed that individuals, regardless of their faith, will be overcome with emotions of joy, love, peace, inspiration, or even spiritual transformation when in the presence of the ringsel. There have been testimonies of healings and visions attributed to seeing these relics.
In Samguk Yusa
Samguk Yusa
Samguk Yusa, or Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms, is a collection of legends, folktales, and historical accounts relating to the Three Kingdoms of Korea , as well as to other periods and states before, during, and after the Three Kingdoms period.The text was written in Classical Chinese, which was...
it is told that the monk Myojong gets a sarira from a turtle which causes others to treat the monk better.
The occurrence of sarira is not restricted to ancient times, as well, many Buddhists have shown that sarira does not limit to humans or masters. The cremation of Tong Xian (通显法师) in March 1991 reported 11000 sariras. Many Pure Land Buddhism
Pure Land Buddhism
Pure Land Buddhism , also referred to as Amidism in English, is a broad branch of Mahāyāna Buddhism and currently one of the most popular traditions of Buddhism in East Asia. Pure Land is a branch of Buddhism focused on Amitābha Buddha...
texts have also shown sariras of many adherents, some occurring recently. Parrots and a dog have been reported to leave sariras after cremation.
Some Buddhists associate a student's spiritual life with the amount and condition of the sarira they leave after cremation. Many Pure Land Buddhists believe Amitabha
Amitabha
Amitābha is a celestial buddha described in the scriptures of the Mahāyāna school of Buddhism...
's power manifests cremated remains into sarira. Many claim that pearls of sarira rain at the funerals of eminent monks. There are reports sarira may appear, multiply or disappear, depend on a keeper's thought. One's vow may also be important. A legend holds that the translator Kumārajīva
Kumarajiva
Kumārajīva; was a Kuchean Buddhist monk, scholar, and translator. He first studied teachings of the Sarvastivada schools, later studied under Buddhasvāmin, and finally became a Mahāyāna adherent, studying the Madhyamaka doctrine of Nagarjuna. Kumārajīva settled in Chang'an, which was the imperial...
wanted to show his translations were not false; as a result his tongue remained intact.
Explanations
One possible scientific explanation for the phenomenon is that they are bladder or kidney stones which survive the cremation. Also, there is evidence that under certain conditions of heating, human bones can form crystalline structures. Sarira are purported to appear after a cremation, and so this could be the mechanism by which they are made. In one chemical analysis, sariras were found to be composed of matter from bones and stones. But there are also hair, flesh and blood sariras. It is probable that after a cremation, sarira would be present in any human remains, as there is doubtful any physiological differences between the structure of the bodies of a highly advanced Buddhist master compared to that of a layman, although Buddhist and Taoist disciplines do exist which are designed to alter the function and composition of the body of the practitioner (See Taoist Yoga). These practices center heavily on attaining the levels of awareness of enlightened masters, such as those purported to leave such relics. Although the common conception is that the majority of bones in the human body are of a size ranging from that of the femora to the phalanges of the fingers, it is rather the case that many of the bones in an average human skeleton are smaller than the more rare, larger bones, and range from the microscopic (as in the ossicles of the inner ear) to the size of a pea, small nut, or pearl. It is possible that some sarira may be these smaller bones, which survived the crematory process relatively intact. As well, a certain confirmation bias may be at hand when considering the phenomenon. In Buddhist culture, since the processes which go into the manufacturing of sarira are highly ritualized and well-known, the appearance of these artifacts will have a tendency to be noticed by those who are looking for them, as opposed to the situation in non-buddhist cultures, where cremation often serves a more utilitarian purpose, and tellingly, dramatically fewer instances of the sarira phenomenon are reported. In Buddhist cultures, sariras are generally not reported on non Buddhists after their cremation. These explanations have not explained why sarira are only reported in buddhists where cremation is a main way to reduce dead bodies for the people, and some companies make business on turning ashes to diamond or beads with complicated process.Documentary films
Pearl relics are documented in the 2008 film, Unmistaken ChildUnmistaken Child
Unmistaken Child is a 2008 independent documentary film, which follows a Tibetan Buddhist monk's search for the reincarnation of his beloved teacher, the world-renowned lama Geshe Lama Konchog . The filming, which began in October 2001, spans a time frame of five and a half years...
, in the cremation ashes of Geshe Lama Konchog
Geshe Lama Konchog
Geshe Lama Konchog, born Lobsang Puntsog , was a renowned Tibetan Buddhist gelugpa lama, who had thousands of followers around the world. Konchog was recognized by the Dalai Lama to be a Great Mahasiddha, or realized guru....
.