Traditions

Dad spoke.

But I was not the one he spoke to. Not even when I have been sleeping next to my dad's shrine ever since he passed away. Not even when my hand was the last to touch dad as he was placed into the freezer.

Instead, dad spoke to this Daoist master. A master who has the ability to communicate with spirits and the dead. And he also does fortune-telling too.

Taiwan is a place rich with traditions. This island has throughout its history absorbed peoples and cultures from East and West, and assimilated religions and beliefs from near and far. People have their roots in Confucianism, which makes them learned in idea(l)s such as filial piety and respect for law and order. At the same time, they have a strong influence from the Japanese past and upbringing, and are under the constant bombardment of Western fashion and culture. The result is an unique hybrid of faiths and traditions.

This means, often you have statues of a (Mahayana) Buddha placed next to the Chinese Guanyin (Godess of Mercy), while merely a few feet away sit the local deities for the wind, the earth, fire and water . All this often together under one roof. Buddhist monks mingle with Daoist priests. Local customs of burning paper money mix with chantings of Sutras from ancient India. No combination of rituals and rites seem too surprising, and many submit themselves to these rites and rituals often without knowing exactly why or how. Sometimes it amounts to pure superstitition, at others times pure mysticism and cult-like worship. It is both a fascinating socio-historical insight into life on this island, but at times, also daunting to understand, let alone practice perfectly.

For the past few weeks, I am just beginning to learn the intricacies of all these rituals and traditions, and to be honest, some are simply outright outrageous and nonsensical.
When it comes to the dead, the rites are especially long-winded and complicated, which is part of the reason my dad can still not be cremated, even though it has already been almost a month since he passed away. It is not just a matter of cremating him and placing the ashes in an urn. We have had to find a suitable location to place his urn, which all depends on his birth and death time and date, and in addition we must find a suitable time to do this.

According to the tradition, each person has three spirits, one of which remains in the body of the dead, and the other two fly away and wander the world after dying. These three spirits must be gathered together by an elaborate ceremony of chanting and sorcery, gongs and bells, for them to return home. And the reason why many people have an ancestral plaque bearing the name of the deceased inside their homes is because it is widely believed that the dead, though invisible to normal people, usually will return and continue to live in that plaque. It is this plaque, often wooden, that is worshiped and referred, and before which fresh food and fruits, incense sticks and paper money, together with the favourite things of the deceased, are offered regularly. This is just a thin icing on the rituals that need to be performed.



To make sure the spirit comes home takes time, and a lot of effort. And for the many, many days since dad's death, we have been busy with this. My mum knows of this grand master who apparently has great abilities, and he has been involved in many of the planning and ceremonies. The day before yesterday, he suddenly called and told my mum that my dad spoke to him, and the grand master said that dad is sad that none of us have visited him at the mortuary, where dad's body is lying in a freezer. It is of the utmost importance that we go see dad, the master said.

I did not know whether to laugh or cry. Why did my own dad not communicate with me, but communicated with a master of ceremony and voodoo-- the very kind of people dad detested to the bone while he was still alive? Most ridiculous of all, we were told that we should open the freezer and let dad 'see' us. I was outraged.

It is correct that I have not paid respects to my dad at the mortuary since his death. But apparently waking up every single morning to cook dad breakfast and offer him cigarettes is not quite enough. I must open the freezer and let he see me. Why? Why?

I began to sob at the thought. It baffles me, as it has baffled me several times in the past few weeks, why people are so concerned with the dead when they are dead, but not when they are alive? What use is it to give the dead a proper burial according to all the rites and rituals from generations and generations ago, when you do not show any compassion or love toward the dead when they are still living? How can any amount of chanting or voodoo help the dead toward a peaceful existence in the hereafter, when while alive you let the person down and give him regrets and disappointments? It is to me beyond sense how people can can blindly obey rituals and rites, but never stop to ask themselves whether their intentions and their hearts are pure and clear. A thought stuck to mind from this, and other turbulent encounters with unheard of myths and rituals... when dad passed away, I felt little sadness and shed little tears... why most the living make me so sad and make me shed so many tears?

I bluntly told my mum and brother that I refuse to open that freezer, and that they cannot force me. I want to treasure my own memories of dad, to treasure that peaceful posture at the moment of passing, and I absolutely do not want to have it ruined with view of the stiff and darkened flesh on my dad's cold corpse. Why must I go let a dead corpse see me? Is it not enough that I hold my memories of my very own dad in my heart and mind? Is it not enough that I send metta (loving-kindness) and wellwishes to my very own dad in silence? Can I not mourn dad's loss in my own quiet and calm way? Traditions dictates that I cannot... or at least better not, unless I want to suffer from bad luck and risk experiencing disasters rain upon me.

If so be my life and fate, so be it.

When I got to the mortuary, I went in first. Along a wall of freezers, I found dad's. Number 440. I knelt down before it, and put my hands together. Silently I whispered to dad, firstly apologising for not visiting after he passed away, but I told him, and I think he already knows, he is in my heart. With eyes closed, I knelt there, sent him prayers of good wishes and my hopes of his happiness and newly found freedom. Perhaps he also received the little words and wishes I sent up in the sky lantern the day before. Nothing more do I ask for on my birthday.

My brother softly walked to stand beside me, and I started to turn and walk away, thinking perhaps he had gotten the guard to come open the freezer. But my brother called me, and asked me to come back. He too realised that it is not necessary, and will only accentuate the pain of loss over nothing. We went to the mortuary, as told, and we saw dad. Perhaps not in so many words, but we saw him in our hearts, and felt him through our palms and fingers as we placed them on the door of the freezer. And I think we can come to peace with that. And as can our dad.

This is just a simple example of the kind of superstition that makes my life sour and complicated, and sadly even more so in this difficult time when I have to deal with dad's passing away and be strong physically and emotionally to comfort my family.

And there may be more to come.