When the Cremation Ground Becomes a Temple

 

Two fierce forms of the Goddess seated on corpses in the cremation ground, surrounded by skulls, dogs, and fire — a vision of the smashan as the supreme altar.

The Most Forbidden Altar

Midnight.
A full moon hangs heavy over the cremation ground.
The air is thick with the smell of ash and rain-soaked earth.
Somewhere in the darkness, jackals cry.

And there — in the middle of that desolation — sits a solitary sādhaka.
He is not meditating on a soft mat or before a golden murti.
He sits on a corpse.
His body is smeared with ash.
Around him are skulls, broken bones, the remains of yesterday’s funeral pyres.

This is śava-sādhana — the most terrifying of all Tantric rites.
Its very mention makes even pious hearts shudder.
It is everything religion is supposed to keep far away:
death, impurity, blood, the realm of ghosts and ghouls.

And yet here sits the sādhaka — not in defiance of dharma, but in its deepest fulfillment.
He has come to the place society rejects, to the altar no priest will enter.
He has come to stare into the face of the thing we spend our whole lives avoiding — the end of the story, the burning of the body, the silence beyond name.

To the ordinary mind, this is blasphemy.
To Kaula, it is the most sacred temple.
For here, in the smashan, the last mask falls.
What remains is not piety, not prestige, not even hope — only naked presence before the Great Mother who devours all forms.

Holy Scandal: Kaula’s Smashan Revelation

For most of the religious world, holiness means distance from death.
Temples are swept clean, lamps are lit, flowers are fresh.
The dead are kept outside the city gates.
The cremation ground is for untouchables, ghosts, and mourners — not for saints.

Kaula turned this upside down.

For the Kaula, the cremation ground is not a place of pollution but the holiest shrine.
Why?
Because it is here that reality stands unmasked.
Here no one can pretend that life is permanent, that identity is fixed, that virtue will save the body from the fire.

In the smashan, everything collapses:

• Name and form are burned to ash.

• Caste, status, lineage lose meaning.

• Even the distinction between human and animal blurs, as jackals and dogs drag away what was once called “father,” “mother,” “child.”

To sit here, not as mourner but as worshipper, is to bow before the realest truth:
that everything we cling to will one day be devoured.
That even our holiest ideas — purity, piety, moral code — will not escape the pyre.

This is why the practice is called terrifying: not because of ghosts, but because it strips the seeker bare.
The sādhaka who sits on a corpse offers not flowers but fear.
He offers his sanity, his clinging to life, his very “I.”
And when the offering is complete, when even fear has burned away, the smashan becomes radiant — no longer a place of dread, but the very throne of the Goddess.

The Danger of Projection and Mimicry

Stories like these have a way of gripping the imagination.
The mind thrills at the image of the midnight sādhaka, fearless among skulls.
The ego whispers: “I too will go to the smashan. I too will prove my courage.”

But this is where the path becomes dangerous.

For without inner ripeness, the cremation ground does not liberate — it shatters.
What was meant to burn the ego ends up burning the mind.
Instead of awakening, one may return broken, unhinged, lost in darkness.

Kaula masters knew this.
That is why they veiled these rites in secrecy, giving them only to disciples who had passed through years of preparation — who had built the vessel strong enough to hold the fire.
The smashan is not a place for curiosity or performance.
It is a razor’s edge.

What is silence for a liberated one can be repression for another.
What is freedom for a siddha can be recklessness for a beginner.
And what is medicine for a soul on the brink of awakening can be poison for the unready.

The lesson is clear: do not copy the gesture — trace the root.
If the impulse comes from agitation, rebellion, or thrill-seeking, let it pass.
If it comes from stillness — if it rises like a call that will not be silenced — then seek guidance, step carefully, prepare the ground.

The smashan does not forgive mimicry.
It will either rip away what is false — or rip away the one who is not yet ready to be stripped.

Grades of the Soul

Not every seeker belongs in the cremation ground.
And that is not a judgment — it is simply the rhythm of the soul’s journey.

Spiritual life is not a single, straight road but a curriculum with many grades.
Early grades need temples and hymns, the comfort of incense smoke, the security of clear rules.
This is not “lower” — it is necessary.
Without these foundations, the psyche cannot withstand the nakedness of the smashan.

Kaula knew this.
That is why it never tried to reform society or scandalize the devout.
To laugh at the pious is as immature as to fear the cremation ground.
Both belong in the same great school of the soul.

Those who have passed through earlier grades can understand the fears of those who still need them.
But the reverse is not true — one who still needs the temple cannot yet understand why someone would sit on a corpse at midnight.
This is not superiority or inferiority — only a difference in timing.

And this is why it is cruel to tear away another person’s faith too soon.
Dogma that feels like prison to one can be life-support to another.
Break it prematurely, and you do not liberate — you only confuse.

So the Kaula walks carefully.
He does not proselytize.
He does not scandalize.
He lets others stay where they are until their own soul is ready to graduate — just as he too was once guided, step by step, until the cremation ground called his name.

Responsibility of Transmission

This is why Kaula never shouted its secrets from the rooftops.
Its teachers were not recruiters — they were guardians of a fire.

To hand someone a cremation-ground practice before they are ready is not compassion but harm.
It is like giving a child a sword sharper than they can lift.
Instead of cutting ignorance, it cuts the hand that holds it.

So Kaula kept its rites hidden, wrapped in layers of initiation and testing.
Not out of pride or elitism — but because the sādhaka’s mind must be tempered before it can survive the sight of its own death.
Only then can the midnight pyre become a temple and not a madhouse.

And this principle holds beyond Tantra.
Every path, every tradition has its initiatory logic.
Even a simple mantra is best given when the heart is ready to hold it — otherwise it becomes just sound, stripped of power.

This is why the mature sādhaka does not flaunt their freedom.
They may walk among temples with quiet reverence, never mocking the rituals they have outgrown.
They may speak gently to those who still need dogma, for they remember when they too needed it.

Transmission, then, is not about shocking the world — it is about preparing the ground so that when the time comes, the seed can take root without being scorched.

The Inner Smashan

In the end, the cremation ground is not just a place on the map — it is a place within.

One day, whether we sit under the full moon or not, each of us must face our own corpse.
The corpse of pride, the corpse of ambition, the corpse of “I.”
When these are laid on the pyre and burned, the real smashan reveals itself — a vast, still field where nothing remains to be feared.

You do not need skulls or midnight to find this place.
It may open in a hospital room, at the bedside of a dying friend, in the moment of betrayal, or in the silence after prayer.
Wherever the ego shatters and the world grows unbearably raw — there is the Goddess, waiting.

When that moment comes, the question is not whether you know the right ritual.
The question is whether you can stay.
Stay as the flames rise, stay as the illusions burn, stay until even fear has turned to ash.

Then, what seemed like horror becomes radiance.
The cremation ground is no longer a place of terror but a throne of truth.
And the one who sits there is no longer a frightened seeker, but a child of the Mother — bare, luminous, free.