In India I had the powerful experience of watching a cremation on the Ganges River, at the burning ghats at Varanassi. The wealthy people pay someone to take the body there and to do the work of the cremation, but the poor people do it themselves. This is quite a job. As I stood and watched for a couple of hours from a bridge, I felt that I saw the purpose of that work and how the poor people get the most benefit. 
    The body is put on a pile of burning logs, and has to be kept there until it completely burns. When it starts to fall apart, the parts have to be put back on the fire. The person in charge has to stay until there is nothing left but ashes. They have to leave it clean for the next person. This entire process takes about four hours. 
     Watching this was such a beautiful experience for me. It took just long enough that I got through my thinking and came into a stillness. For a certain amount of time the body was enshrouded recognizably, and in one piece. You could still think of it as that person, but as you watched and grieved and remembered, the form would become less and less like a body. Parts would come off and disappear into ashes. By the end, the concept of the person that has been locked into your mind is also gone. When you watch someone turn to ashes, your mind cannot hold on to them. 
     I think it is important for us, and even for children, to see what happens to the body after death. In this way, we won’t have false ideas that the person might come back or that they are asleep. For me, watching the burning was a spiritual experience. The person turns into something ethereal, and smoke is the closest representation of that transformation on the physical level. The soul is released, free to go to the plane of immortality. The body, as the sacred vehicle, has finished its journey and is ready for reconfiguration into something else.