Years of 'corpse meditation' now serving monks well

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PHUKET, Thailand -- The grim task of cremating thousands of tsunami victims has fallen to Thailand's saffron-robed monks, whose training requires them to stare at photos of decomposing bodies to better understand the transitory nature of life.

The bloated and decomposed bodies still were being brought to Buddhist temples yesterday, in some cases carried from the jungle on the tusks of elephants that are being used to clear away debris.

Footage on government-run television showed the bodies being wrapped in plastic sheets and tied to the elephants' tusks, with ropes lashed to thick bamboo poles for additional support.

"I was talking to volunteers who were shifting bodies in a very badly hit area, Khao Lak, and into the temple," said Siripanyo Bhikkhu, a Buddhist monk who traveled to Phuket from his monastery in eastern Thailand.

"It's just way too much for people to handle. People are, within one or two days, becoming basically traumatized, operating very much on adrenaline, getting hardly any sleep," said the shaven-headed monk.

Nearly 5,000 corpses, about half of them foreigners, piled up so quickly after the tsunami on Dec. 26 that there was not enough morgue space to store them pending identification.

Thai officials piled many of the bodies outdoors at Buddhist temples and packed dry ice onto the shrouded mounds while medical personnel extracted DNA samples, which could be better preserved.

More than 2,400 Thai corpses were cremated according to traditional Buddhist rites, sometimes without being identified.

Thai officials rushed refrigerated trucks, formaldehyde, plastic body bags and additional personnel to Phuket, Khao Lak and other hard-hit zones, but they have not been able to fully cope with the thousands of dead.

Buddhist monks performing rites, cremations and after-death chants to chase away what they believe to be lingering ghosts also were working hard.