Funeral of a monk
The funeral service of the head of the Taego Order, Ven. Jiheo, was held on Oct. 8, 2023, in Seonam temple, Suncheon City, South Jeolla province.
Hundreds of believers and citizens, including government representatives, participated in the funeral ceremony of the grand master and teacher of the Taego Order, Korea's second-largest Buddhist order. Hundreds of temple decorations announced his farewell to this world.
After the service, a large portrait of the monk, his coffin and funeral flags were borne along by the monks of the order and reverential citizens to the square for the cremation rites outside the temple. When it reached the square, the coffin with the body was placed on a pyre of wood and cremated. Devotees with funeral flags circled the pyre and the monks and several people in attendance prayed continually around it until the coffin was completely burnt to ashes.
Their prayers demonstrated that the deceased’s life as a monk had influenced their lives significantly. The scene reminded this writer of a funeral ceremony in the countryside of my hometown when I was very young.
I didn’t leave my hometown till I graduated from high school in 1978. As a result, I knew the nature and characteristics of every event such as a birth, marriage or death that took place in my village made up of over 100 households. When an old man or woman died, a white Korean traditional jacket was placed on the roof. It symbolized that a death had taken place. Every day, adults would visit the house of those mourning and offer their condolences.
Three days after the death, the funeral ceremony of the deceased would be held in the square in front of my village. The villagers would stop doing their jobs and mourn the deceased. The villagers would be the bier carriers and make the tomb for the deceased.
With the rise of an aging society and a rapid decrease in the population of rural areas due to the policies of neo-liberalism implemented after the 1980s in Korea, social perceptions changed and raised the preference for cremation because the culture encouraged funerals to be simplified and made practical. Moreover, the government also supported the system and practice of cremation.
Worse still, city life instigated citizens to neglect the lives of neighbors. If someone died, only close relatives or acquaintances would know about it. Mutual aid companies began controlling funeral services. After the body was cremated, the remains were put in a columbarium or the earth in a tiny tomb. In an era when traditional values have collapsed and the AI age prevails, funeral services for cremation make a person’s farewell wretched. Funeral services made up 93 percent of the final rites of the dead in South Korea in 2023. The time for memorializing the dead has become shorter or is neglected than in the times of burial culture.
An African proverb says that as long as the dead remain in someone's memory, the person is "alive." In traditional Korean society, when a person dies, every villager shares in the sorrow associated with the demise. Everybody knows the place of the person’s tomb. When monks die, people participate in the funeral service with all their hearts. Stupas are erected to commemorate them. Their lives are remembered forever.
A person’s life is like a moving library. Every person’s life is full of a variety of experiences and life stories. When a person dies, a culture is lost. Traditional and Buddhist funerals help us realize and value the dignity of humans and human culture.
He is a retired English teacher who published a book titled, "Flower Is Flower."