Mourning Rites
The mourning of a loved one usually involves elaborate practices, and commonly occurs in this sequence: A public notification of grief through wailing, the wearing of white mortuary clothes by the family of the deceased, bathing of the corpse, the transfer of symbolic goods like money and food from the living to the dead, preparation and installation of a spirit tablet, payment of ritual specialists (Taoist priests or Buddhist monks), the playing of music and chanting of scriptures to accompany the corpse and to settle the spirit, the sealing of the corpse in a coffin, the expulsion of the coffin from the community. The intensity of the mourning reflects the kind of relationship one had with the deceased.
Confucianism placed importance on understanding and properly adhering to the five relationships:
- Ruler and subjects
- Father and son
- Husband and wife
- Elder brother and younger brother
- Elder friends and junior friends
From the time of Confucius until the 20th century the death of a parent would commonly mean a three-year mourning period for their child. The three-year length symbolizes the first three years in a child's life when they are being carried and loved unconditionally by their parents. These mourning practices would include wearing sackcloth, leaving hair unkempt, eating a restricted diet of congee two times a day, living in a mourning shack placed beside the house, and moaning in pain at certain intervals of the day. It is said that after the death of Confucius his followers engaged in this three-year mourning period to symbolize their commitment to his teachings.
Read more about this topic: Ancestor Veneration In China, Practices
Famous quotes containing the words mourning and/or rites:
“Melancholy is at the bottom of everything, just as at the end of all rivers is the sea. Can it be otherwise in a world where nothing lasts, where all that we have loved or shall love must die? Is death, then, the secret of life? The gloom of an eternal mourning enwraps, more or less closely, every serious and thoughtful soul, as night enwraps the universe.”
—Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821–1881)
“As if the musicians did not so much play the little phrase as execute the rites required by it to appear, and they proceeded to the necessary incantations to obtain and prolong for a few instants the miracle of its evocation, Swann, who could no more see the phrase than if it belonged to an ultraviolet world ... Swann felt it as a presence, as a protective goddess and a confidante to his love, who to arrive to him ... had clothed the disguise of this sonorous appearance.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)