The Ceremony of Moving the Casket

Simon Child

Dharma Drum Taiwan was offering a video stream so that fortunate ones could see the ceremonies in the Grand Buddha Hall during this period. Not many of us could receive this but Simon stayed up till 3am watching the ceremony of moving the casket from the Buddha Hall to the Crematorium. He wrote this to me afterwards. JHC

Monastics gradually lined up in perfect lines, and stood very still and silent. Technicians fussed around the altar area getting microphones in perfect placings. Lay persons were seated at the back of the hall, including Zarko and Carmen. The seniors filed in, in a very slow procession, to a background of Amitabha chanting. Abbot President Guo-dong Fashi was near the front of the proceedings but he wasn't the actual celebrant, I didn't recognise the person doing that. In fact I didn't recognise many people that I might have expected to be there, such as Guo-yuan Fashi, Chi-chern Fashi, Guo-gu, Chang-wen Fashi, etc, but the place was very full and they were no doubt lost in the crowd. I think I spotted Guo-xing Fashi briefly.

There were several short announcements in which I heard Shifu's name, each followed by a minute or two of standing silence. Then some chanting, the Heart Sutra I think since it endedwith the Moho chant. Then a very slow procession (to Amitabha chanting) bringing in a large cloth carried at shoulder height by six monks. It probably took them 10-15 minutes to reach the coffin (one step to each Amitabha recitation) and they draped the coffin. Then they turned around and started moving the coffin equally slowly out of the hall.

Monastics all kneeled waiting for the coffin to reach them then they prostrated and later stood to file out behind the coffin, one monk leading the way carrying a photo of Shifu, and Guodong Fashi carrying what looked to be the memorial tablet.

As they reached the back of the hall the lay people in the hall likewise kneeled and prostrated. There was a big awning outside the Grand Buddha Hall to keep off the pouring rain, but beyond that all down the road nearly to the exit of the complex were thousands of lay people lining the road in rows perhaps two-deep and more at places, all wearing plastic macs, who prostrated as the hearse passed and then joined the tail of the monastics and lay people following the coffin. The procession went slowly through the DDM complex perhaps for half an hour with Amitabha chanting being broadcast throughout and heavy rain continuing. Many people weeping of course, perhaps the heavy rain was because Guanyin was also weeping.

The crowds thinned out near the exit of the complex, after the formal gate, and then the cars speeded up to go to the crematorium and the broadcast returned to static views of the Buddha Hall, now with hardly any people anywhere to be seen.

It was a grand and powerful ceremony. Most of the video up till now has simply been a view of the Buddha Hall with a background of Amitabha chanting and occasional switches to recordings of Shifu's talks. But this was a full TV documentary-style broadcast, with views from many angles, lots of close-ups of faces of the monastics and audience (including a fullface view of Zarko Andricevic chanting Amitabha), lots of broad sweeping views of the DDM complex, etc.