Śmaśāna Bhāva: The Cremation-Ground Meditation

Śmaśāna Bhāva is the culminating practice of this phase — the meditation that the Aghori performs while sitting among the ashes of the dead. It is called "The Great Reversal" because it reverses the fundamental direction of human attention.

Ordinary attention moves outward: from the self to the world, from the center to the periphery, from awareness to its objects. Śmaśāna Bhāva reverses this: attention moves inward, from the periphery to the center, from the objects of awareness to awareness itself. The cremation ground is the perfect environment for this reversal because it presents the mind with its ultimate object — death — and then removes every possible distraction.

The practice: sit in the śmaśāna at night. Apply bhasma (ash) to your body — forehead, arms, chest. Light a small dhūni or ghee lamp. Begin japa of the Bhairava mantra. After 108 repetitions, stop. Sit in silence. Observe the environment — the ash, the dark, the silence, the occasional sound of an animal or distant vehicle. Now observe your reactions to the environment — the fear, the fascination, the boredom, the eerie calm. Now observe the one who is observing. Who is this? What is this awareness that watches fear arise and pass, that watches the mind construct stories about what might be in the darkness?

The tradition says: when the observer and the observed merge, when the one who is afraid and the fear itself become indistinguishable, the śmaśāna reveals its secret. The secret is not supernatural. The secret is that the awareness you are right now is identical to the awareness that was present in every person whose body burned on this ground. That awareness did not die. It cannot die. It is what you are.

This is the Aghori's great reversal: the place of death becomes the place of liberation. The object of greatest fear becomes the gateway to greatest freedom. [ORAL + FIELD]