Overview

As practiced in Thailand and other south east Asian countries, funeral rites are the most elaborate of all the life-cycle ceremonies and the ones entered into most fully by the monks.

It is a basic teaching of Buddhism that existence is suffering, whether birth, daily living, old age or dying.

This teaching is never in a stronger position than when death enters a home. Indeed Buddhism may have won its way the more easily in Thailand because it had more to say about death and the hereafter than had animism.

Death in buddhism

The idea that death is suffering, relieved only by the knowledge that it is universal, gives an underlying mood of resignation to funerals:

• among a choice few, there is the hope of Nirvana with the extinction of personal striving
• among the vast majority there is the expectation of rebirth either
  • in this world
  • in the heaven of Indra or some other
  • in another plane of existence, possibly as a spirit.

Over the basic mood of gloom there has grown up a feeling that meritorious acts can aid the condition of the departed.

Not all the teaching of Anatta (not self) can quite eradicates anxiety lest the deceased exist as pretas or as beings suffering torment. For this reason relatives do what they can to ameliorate their condition.

Monks role in the ceremony

The people rely upon monks to chant the sutras that will benefit the deceased, and to conduct all funeral rites and memorial services.

Funeral offerings

The food offered in the name of the dead is known as Matakabhatta from mataka ("one who is dead"). The formula of presentation is:

"Reverend Sirs, we humbly beg to present this mataka food and these various gifts to the Sangha. The Sangha receive this food and these gifts of them in order that benefits and happiness may come to the family to the end of time."

Cremation

Cremations are deferred this long to show love and respect for the deceased and to perform religious rites which will benefit the departed.

In such cases a series of memorial services are held

• on the seventh day
• third month, year after death
• and at times on very year on the day of the deceased death

The dead may thus have contact with the holy sutras. When the body is cremated the spirit is more definitely cut off from the world, it is best therefore not to force that spirit to enter the preta world finally and irrevocably until it has had the benefit of a number of religious services designed to improve its status.

At cremations it is quite common for wealthy people to have printed for distribution books and pamphlets setting forth Buddhist teachings in the form of

• essays
• translation of the sutras
• historical sketches
• explanations of ceremonies

Such books, numbering in the thousands, are not only a tribute to the dead and a means of making merit but they have practical value as well.