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Essay on Mortuary practices in Buddhism and Christianity
There are various similarities and differences in mortuary practices among the religions of Christianity and Buddhism. Even within these two religions there are various sects that have differences in performing mortuary services. The scope of this report would not include the difference or similarities of these religious factions, but in fact would deal with the common knowledge available regarding mortuary practices within the two religions, Christianity and Buddhism. This report discusses firstly the beliefs of Buddhism regarding the mortuary practices and then would compare and contrast these believes and practices with Christianity.
Mortuary practices and believes in Buddhism
Buddhists believes that man is a mortal soul and that death is the fact for every living organism. Nevertheless, despite this truth, the death of an individual is a sad event. Hence, the services of the funeral that takes place after death needs to have a sad and solemn atmosphere and all the activities must commensurate with the somber event. There is a popular belief that in Buddhist religion the funeral services that takes place are accompanied by noisy processions and singing, like in china and India, however, this belief is incorrect. In fact many have asserted that these does not come under the domain of Buddhist practices.
Many also, however, make belief that these noisy processions and singing are in fact related to joyous occasions and in Buddhism when a person dies it is celebrated. This is not true. These singing and processions are a part of the ancient Buddhist culture and are passed down from one generation to the next and depict very much the somber mood every person related to the deceased.
These Buddhist practices after the death continue for many days, in some cases for more than a month. In some Buddhist sect, accompanying with this practice is the practice of burning down paper houses that represents the attribute of a death person and is done so as to benefit the person who has died......
