the funeral world and afterlife in the mentality of the Vietnamese
20/10/2016 | 10:51
"To be born, grow old, get sick and die," the inevitable rule of life: people for centuries lost so much time to understand and conceive of this rule, the rule of life and especially death.
the funeral world and afterlife in the mentality of the Vietnamese
Thursday, October 20, 2016
10:50 AM
"To be born, grow old, get sick and die," the inevitable rule of life: people for centuries lost so much time to understand and conceive of this rule, the rule of life and especially death.
Since ancient time to the Bronze Age, ie about 2500 years ago, the ceremony of a particularly complicated eras funeral.
Probably, people believed in the existence of a world after death.
In many ancient tombs they found many artefacts buried with the deceased: the tomb shaped like a boat, a coffin that is having the shape of a boat, contained all an interesting and fascinating world of buried things, all objects that represented the tools of society era.
In the Red River area, the Chinese invaded Vietnam in 221 BC: But only towards the end of the year 43, that is, after the repression of the Chinese General Ma Yuan to the revolt of the two sisters, the Chinese culture began to take root : in the big cities of the red river delta Chinese graves found contain tools differing from those contained in the Vietnamese graves.
The Chinese influence became stronger through education and dissemination of Chinese philosophies such as Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism.
The rituals of these philosophies and Chinese religions were slowly accepted by the Vietnamese community in time because of the laws of both the occupants of the bourgeois class Vietnamese Chinese wire.
The rites became over time more and more colorful and attractive.
The influence of Buddhism from India and interesting regions in the south of Vietnam Tran was very strong during the period from 1225 until 1400: the cremation became an important part of the funeral ceremony for the company.
But, during the 20 years of Chinese occupation and the subsequent Le dynasty, burial and exhumation became especially widespread.
The tombs found in this period have revealed the presence of embalmed mummies to a very interesting methods: the bodies of the deceased were found wrapped in precious cloth type silk and scented ointment.
The custom for poor families could not follow this style too expensive and should therefore be applied to a more complicated process changing the dress for the dead, "Cai Tang, Sang áo".
The funeral is already a long process linked to so many popular beliefs, how to invoke the spirit, choose the time to put the dead man in the coffin to carry it out of the house to the place of burial.
But Cai táng is a more mysterious ceremony: people believe that there is a world after death.
After death the body decomposes but is the spirit that follows a road to go in the afterlife world.
The Vietnamese believe in inferred, a hell-like world, but then the deceased is reincarnated in another life.
It is believed there are ten stories of the world of the dead: in relation to the sins made during his earthly life, the spirit of the dead person is assigned to a specific plan to atone for the punishment.
After completing the time allotted for punishment, the spirit is reincarnated in another life.
But this belief on the world of the dead is a bit 'vague and for many people the spirit world is much closer and the spirits have a close relationship with our earthly world: you have to respect the customs and traditions during his earthly life, otherwise it brings bad luck to yourself !.
In northern Vietnam the dead is buried in a wooden coffin and after a period of 3 or 5 years will reopen the grave to put the bones in an urn.
The time to begin the ceremony begins very early in the morning when there is still sunlight: using the oil lamp to see better. With rice wine mixed with the scent of cinnamon can be cleaned bones are placed in the urn of baked earth.
This urn is buried in the ground again in a place that a soothsayer considers sacred and lucky!
Since that time the spirit of the dead man has an eternal home to live!
The farmers feel that their ancestors still exist and live near the cemetery of the village!
And from this belief that arise many customs relating to that world: people try to communicate with the dead to understand that world, and in the end only a few people manage to do it.
The activities of the mediums (a type of exorcism) is widespread from us: people search for ways to satisfy all the ancestors in the afterlife world with the hope of receiving paranormal aid.
a lot of money being spent to build the most beautiful tomb and burned many votive offerings for the spirits making lots of offers.
Religions such as Taoism and Buddhism have an important role in the funeral ceremony.
The Buddhist monaco pray to purify and show the right way for the spirit in the afterlife world is believed that there is an entity that helps the spirits stained by the sins to come out of dell'inferi punishment.
A lower state of nirvana is called Boddisatwa, in Vietnamese Bồ Tat Tang and Äịa Bồ TAT ie Boddisatwa which helps the spirits of the underworld.
The Taoist monaco instead can create spells to ward off evil demons and also use the geomancy, fascinating technique since it allows to draw responses through the observation of the landscape, the rocks and earth.
In Vietnam it is said: "wealth creates the ritual" Phu Quy sinh Lễ Nghĩa!
But perhaps it should say "the wealth and ignorance creates the ritual"!
When the afterlife world is yet to be discovered and our world has yet to understand the ritual comes to explain the mysteries and then Buddha says: "one of the sorrows of human life is ignorance"!
I think the world of 'afterlife, for any country, depends on human imagination of every people that the beliefs handed down from generations to generations as the Tibetans leave the corpse to the vultures, the Indians cremate the bodies and leave them at the Ganges river .
Today the afterlife world for mulsumani suicide bomber blow himself up along with the enemy, but once the Viet Cong were killing for freedom, for liberation and in the name of communist ideology.
Yesterday I went for a Zay village of Ta Van looking for a wood house, a pond in front of the house full of fish, a green garden of plants and vegetables and rearing animals: in the distance, on the hillside, you They lay the old and the new graves as they were a pile of earth.
From that place the spirits of ethnicities sleep with heads facing the valley filled with rice terraces: you sleep for thousands of autumns in the middle of the green.
In the Hmong house there is the altar of the ancestors, but only a small corner with three cups, a little rice, some piece of red paper hanging on the wall in the kitchen while resting three men sat on their low couches with a bottle of liquor strong!
Another carousel of life or another karma?
