Ching Ming Day which means “clear and bright day” is here again. It is a day to go to our ancestors’ tombs, pull away the wild growing weeds surrounding it, sweep the place clean and then offer foods, drinks and of course some money in the form of hell bank notes. Some even let off a string of fire-crackers or two to attract some good luck.
“Tomb Sweeping Day” as this practice is sometimes known, is not a Buddhist practice but a Taoist one. Of course Lord Buddha encourages us to respect our dead ancestors and hold them in high esteem but it was a Taoist practice to go to the tombs and make offerings each spring.
In the past, it is common to see people burning paper clothes, shoes, houses, cars, home appliances, jewelries and even servants for their departed loved ones hoping to get their blessings in return. But today, this practice is getting more and more commercialized. This morning, I walked past a shop selling such items near my place and saw paper ipads hanging all over the shop. This is getting lunatic. Paper computers or mobile phones are now so passé.
As Buddhist or even Taoists, we are supposed to believe in the concept of rebirth. Our dead ancestors have died for so many years, surely they have been reincarnated, with some even a few rounds. So, if we were to burn these items, who will be there in hell to receive them?
“Hey, I’ve received the gold and silver ingots as well as the clothes you offered the other day and thank you so much!” – anyone heard of this before?
But there is something everybody heard of – those clever entrepreneurs selling these items will be laughing their way to the banks and also, with all the burnings going on for the past month, no wonder the air we breathe in is getting more and more polluted. Some may said, never mind, it’s a yearly affair, not a daily one. And so, this practice perpetuates.
Money is getting harder and harder to come by these days. I think it is a waste to spend several hundreds of dollars burning paper items for a host of dead ancestors and not knowing whether they actually got it or not. It is like burning our money. So what I did from now on is to chant some prayers for them and donate some money to the temple in their names. I chose this way to remember my departed loved ones.
How about you? What do you think of all those burnings?
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188 Hugh Low Street, Ipoh 
“I think it is a waste to spend several hundreds of dollars burning paper items for a host of dead ancestors and not knowing whether they actually got it or not.” This comment is offensive to the staunch believers of Taoism. Just the same as rituals like chanting and donating money to the temples or elsewhere in the names of departed loved one…… Hmmm, did you hear any response from them ?? Let alone not all temples or charitable organizations are managed by committees that are absolutely honest and/or transparent.
The burning of paper offering will hurt our pockets by at least a couple of hundreds but it hurts Mother Earth many, many, many time more. I remember once Dr. Ling Leong Sik tried to change the way we chinese pray by burning less joss sticks and other paper items but by the look of things he failed. I think not knowing whether the dear departeds will receive the item in the after world is not as good a reason to burn less than the fact that Mother Earth cannot take any more to the smog being release by the burning. I hope somebody can take up the matter and change the mine-set of we chinese regarding the burning. To take the matter further I would like to say on the whole we malaysians are polluting Mother Earth in the way we malaysians are throwing rubbish every where we like. I think this should also stop. I hope the government whoever that is voted in during the 13GE should really look into this pollution of Mother Earth.
The Qing Ming (清明) tradition started in the Han Dynasty and became a Qing Ming Festival (清明節) during the Tang Dynasty where family members pay their respects to their ancestors and departed family members by sweeping the tombs and offer traditional sacrifices to the departed. Whilst Buddhism was able to take root in China during the Tang Dynasty, Christianity did not. The former was able to merge with the Taoist tradition of “ancestral reverence” whilst the latter could not. Hence, Christianity was not culturally acceptable to the Chinese then. Here, you note that the author chose the word “reverence” in preference the word “worship”
As a traditional Chinese family, the annual pilgrimage to pay respects to the author’s ancestors and other relatives was compulsory. The wild grass and plants were cleared, the tombs cleaned, the engraved letters in the gravestones were cleaned and repainted with red enamel paint (only last for one year), and traditional sacrifices with candles, joss sticks, paper products (bank notes, gold & silver ingots, etc) and food & wine. According to customs, the sacrificial ceremony was performed hierarchically, starting from the eldest to the junior of the departed. The ceremony is terminated with the pouring of the wine into the earth before going to the next grave. There were other activities at the cemetery which require approval from the Feng Sui Master, such as repairing the grave site or reburial of the bones. In Malaysia, it gets hot by 11am, and most people will call it a day and return home.
Chinese gravestones do contains a lot of information and traditionally, starts with the village in China where the deceased come from, birth & death dates, name of surviving spouse/s, son/s, daughter/s (& their spouses), grand-children and great-grand-children. A married woman would have the family surname followed by her maiden surname. In some gravestones, two colours can be seen, red and gold. The red represent the deceased whilst the gold usually bears the name of the surviving spouse. When the spouse die and is buried together, the gold paint is changed to red paint.
In regard to burning paper sacrifices, it has always been commercialized when the author was a kid. Bank notes can inflate from 100,000 units to 100 million (in a 50 year period). All new mod cons are continuously added into the list for commercial reasons. If we think outside the square, then the burning of paper should be reduced to one piece where the number of gold and silver bars, real estate, cars, aeroplanes, etc (but not human slavery) should be listed on one Big Promissory Note. That should fix your pollution and any inflationary problems, and at the same time, allow people their traditional practice. Those who are good at computer graphics should design put their Big Promissory Note in the market quick! I hope this proposal would be supported by John Tan and 1 Elderly Voter.
Cheng Meng is Hell of A Day in that tropical humidity & heat ,those who do the ancestors’ rites of rememberance are really the living heroes of the Chinese Diaspora in Nanyang ! Overseas Asians tend to. Celebrate the Lives of their Ancestors by Aide Memoirs in charity donations to Community Centers,Hospitals or Schools with their Ancestors’ names etched into the. Buildings, Rooms or named in Honour Rolls ! How else can the living beat the heat,humidity and distant shores far far away ! RIP to one and all !
Gerald Heng- Tuah Sr.
Metrowest Boston,MA.USA.
Being a Buddhist myself, I, too question why people continue to make ancestral offerings. All beings undergo the cycle of rebirth unless they have broken the cycle through proper cultivation.
The Buddha spoke about the merit and virtue of filial piety but you have to conduct the deeds while your parents are alive. When they passed on, they are tied to the next reincarnation based on their accumulated bad and good deeds. Maybe the soul lives in the afterlife realm for a period of time before they are reborn??
How exciting and interesting so what does an Old Buddha mean when he/she says ” in a Nirvana Realm of Supreme Harmony ? ” Is it instant reincarnation and an arrival of an eternal soul ?
Gerald Heng Sr. metrowest Boston,MA. USA.
Some questions: In Korea there is also a tradition of cleaning ancestors graves each year, It is my understanding that for Koreans, this is a Confucian tradition.
1. Is that so?
2. If so, did the Taoist tradition derive from the Confucian or vice-versa?
3. Whichever is so, how did that come to be?
Does Larry D, IpohBornKid or anyone else know?
Mr. Tom Parsons, The Koreans North and South and Vietnam North and South now together do Grave-Site Rememberances like the Chinese from whose Confucius and Daoist ethics they claim also to follow in Ancestor Worship of Family.What is really worrisome is that North Korea now has a Kid Dictator who hero-ancestor worships his Father Kim Jong-Ill and his Grand-Father the original Kim Dictator and Strongman who fought Uncle Sam [USA] to a stalemate !This Cult of Ancestor Worship is blown out of proportions to Cult of Personality Worship that almost amount to Deity Worship like the Japanese in their Samuirai Tradition Worship of their Emperor as the Descendant of the Heavenly Deity of Shinto !With the defeat of Japan in WWII now the Japanese no longer believe that their Kamikaze Suicide Dive Pilots are actually Emperor Worshippers when they yelled on their suicide missions ” Tora Tora Tora ” :”Tenno Haika Banzai !” So commonfolks of goodwill must be very careful about ancestor worship that it doesn’t go beyong redemption into Cult of Personality perpetuation like in North Korea ,What is that silly Kid Kim Jong-Un doing now ?
Gerald Heng Sr.
Metrowest Boston,MA.USA.
I hope the following text may help to answer questions raised by T Parson. Taoism came first in China followed by Confucianism. Both are not religion but a philosophy and they have in common, the concept of filial piety. A good essay can be found on this subject (Filial Piety, Taoism and Confucianism =University of Hawaii_ with the reference url – http://www2.hawaii.edu/~sford/research/taoism/
In my humble opinion, Taoism is more “spiritual” and Confucianism is more “practical”, the latter is more like a social-political philosophy. Although I disagree with Robert Reeve calling Taoism and Confucianism religions, there are some interesting points to learn from his essay “Filial Piety in Chinese Religion (2003), with url reference
http://www.casawomo.com/essays/filial-piety-in-chinese-religion
In my former dissertation on this blog, I made a statement about the acceptance of Buddhism in China as it did not conflict with the culture and Robert Reeve provided an important explanation for its success.
“Filial piety is also mentioned in Buddhist texts. In the Mangalasutta, it is said that the love of the parents “can never be compensated even if one were to carry one’s parents on the shoulder without putting them down for a hundred or a thousand years” (Hallisey 246). Here, it is explained that the reason for filial piety is to show gratitude and attempt to repay one’s parents for the tremendous amount of love and caring that they devoted. The text also mentions more specific examples of how a child can show respect for his or her parents, such as bathing them and providing them with food and drink (245).
Many Asian cultures have adopted the practice of Confucianism and the practice of ancestral reverence is varied but essentially similar. As previously stated, the practice of burning paper for materialistic reasons is highly commercialized and its roots is more likely to come from a “ritualistic” form of Taoism rather than Confucianism.
One blogger did ask the question of whether the “other side” has ever acknowledged the “burning gifts”. A tongue in cheek reply would be this “if it did, you will know it because you would be on the other side”. Sometimes it is not good to tempt fate!
The early Christian missionaries in China failed to win the hearts and mind of the Chinese and yet Buddhism, another foreign religion from India was warmly received during the Tang dynasty. Some Christians now admit that the preaching approach was a little bit bigoted and had they been more culturally sensitive to the Chinese, they would be more successful. Sadly, some people still use the word “ancestral worship” and this statement is still a barrier to convert people to Christ.
The mutual respect and tolerance of religion and religious practice is a pre-requisite for world peace.
Thank you, Ipohbornkid, for this beautiful attempt to distinguish Taoism and Confucianism. However, I would like to point out that the third pillar, Buddhism, is not a religion at all but more a philosophy or rather a way of life. Buddha is a human being, a teacher and a philosopher. He showed mankind the way to cease all sufferings of birth and death through the cultivation of the mind.
The Old Buddha’s Nirvana Realm of Supreme Harmony whatever that means ! Some Hindu Gurus thought of it as the Surpreme Harmony of the Kama Sutra !An unusual earthly achievement with an eternal spiritual awakening !Hola ! Dai Sutra !
Gerald Heng-Tuah Sr.
Metrowest Boston,MA. USA.
IBP
Thanks! Erudite and informative, as usual..
ghengsrs,
Heh, Heh!
Tom, Ipohbornkid, Gerald Heng and all: I apologize for my long absence here – have been sick and STILL not fully recovered from some flu symptoms.
My two cents to the great discussions here:
Daoism is a nature religion – the emphasis is on what’s natural and spontaneous. It can thus be considered as a continuation of the shamanistic tradition that underlined the early beliefs of much of mankind (readers might like to have a look at Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth).
Confucianism, on the other hand, is largely about man and his society. Confucius did recognize man’s similarities with animals, but it is the differences that are important. To be a human, therefore, is a unique privilege.
It also means a lot of rituals that, at least to Confucius, define humanity. Modern people might, reasonably, I think, reject the years of mourning at the gravesite of one’s parents, or the excessive burning of paper gifts as mentioned above. But such love – or show of love – could be considered a way to separate the human from the animal. Filial piety is the foundation through which we regard other people, our society, and the state itself.
Obviously, a worldview that sees, like Protagoras, man as the measure of all things would inevitably involve man-made institutions and laws. This means also a sense of man-imposed orderliness that runs counter to the Daoist penchant for spontaneity. Confucius would say that a good ruler should do this, do that. Lao Tzu would retort that “a good ruler does nothing; yet everything is done.” In his attacks on “big government” Ronald Reagan once quoted Lao Tzu (not verbotim): “Rule a nation like you would fry a fish: disturb the fish too much and the whole fish would crumble into bits and pieces.”
A well-ordered world is often tempting to many of us who’re mad at the chaos we see everyday in our private and public lives. This is the underlying theme of Confucianism – a well-run government and society that is efficient and functions like clockwork. Taken to the extreme, however, we might get the Legalism that inspired the rule of Chin Shi-huang, the First Emperor, when books – considered subversive and thus could be troublesome for the government – were burned. It should not be surprising that the godfather of Legalism was a Confucian, Hsun Tzu, who inspired people like Han Fei-tzu and Li Su, advisors to the Chin government.
Is Daoism, then, preferable? For, in contrast to the many dos and don’ts in public and private life, what Lao Tzu taught was that we should be spontaneous, be natural and let things go their own way. This suspiciously sounds like the Buddhist concept of “letting go.” Perhaps, as Ipohbornkid says, Confucianism is more practical while Daoism is more spiritual.
Yet, Daoism and Confucianism have much in common: they’re worldviews that see peace and a good life as worthwhile goals for mankind. The main difference is their approach to the same goals. Perhaps, like Yin and Yang, Daoism and Confucianism are not really opposites, but two sides of the same coin. Some people might say that the two “isms” are complementary.
Finally, Daoism’s influence in Buddhism was instrumental in getting many Chinese to embrace the foreign “religion.” Chan (Zen) Buddhist Hui Neng’s teachings such as “when hungry, eat; when tired, sleep” are as naturalistic as they come. And as I mentioned in this blog before, the bloody battles of the Han dynasty had prodded the Chinese people towards a worldview that forbade the taking of lives. I’m not too sure, however, that the Buddha had taught about re-incarnation: rebirths or not necessarily reincarnations, though there have been stories about people remembering their previous lives.
I like Bertrand Russell’s recipe for a good government: love and knowledge. Love without knowledge, said Russell, was typified by the medieval priest calling on his flock to gather at the churchyard to pray together for the disappearance of a contagious disease. The result of course is that everyone got the disease. Knowledge without love, continued Russell, was what happened in Nazi Germany.
For the individual, I agree with Russell’s intellectual enemy, Nietzsche: we might have been too enchanted with the cerebral, the abstract philosophies that typified, for instance, the Enlightenment. Nietzsche called this almost Confucianist worship of the intellect as the “Apollonian.” When I visited Singapore some time ago, I felt like walking into … not a city, but a gigantic hospital. Everything was so neat and clinical, and supposedly so efficient. Very Apollonian. I thought it needed Nietzsche’s solution – some passion, some chaos even, or what the German philosopher called “the Dionysian.”
And what the Chinese called “daoism.”
Thanks Larry,
Your comments are always welcome.
Hope you’re feeling better soon!
Thanks, Tom – guess in everyone’s life, there will come a time when illnesses stay longer than necessary.
I posted some of my Daoism and Confucianism remarks among my friends and one of them, a strong backer of Confucianism, asked me to comment on his two articles. Since his articles tend to be bilingual and long, I’ll just post my comments below:
…………………………………………………
Dear …..:
Here are some thoughts on the issues.
About China becoming a Confucian state, you started off with Lincoln’s definition of a democracy, a government (1) of the people, (2) for the people and (3) by the people.
Then you quoted “The Song of Five Children”:
“The people are the foundation of a state which will enjoy peace and harmony when its foundation becomes firm and solid.”
And from that, you stated, came the “Mandate of Heaven” that all Chinese dynasties had adopted since Chin Shi-Huang.
I agree that “Mandate of Heaven” could be translated as the people’s mandate, but it is difficult to proceed from that to the idea that such a government is necessarily of the people and for the people. When we talk about the people, we mean, I hope, the vast majority of the people and not a selected few. Like governments in other parts of the world, a selected few always seem to decide what the masses want – so far as I know there was no such thing as a referendum in any Chinese dynasty. So we can assume that when Chinese emperors claimed they had the Mandate of Heaven, they were doing what many modern governments are saying, that they’d the people’s support in whatever they were doing.
No Chinese dynasty had ever begun by getting itself elected: on the contrary, it has always been through tremendous bloodshed to the extent that everyone from the previous dynasty had to be wiped out (“cutting the grass and wiping out the roots”). The masses were often helpless and of course very afraid and passive – it was perhaps such fear-induced passivity that led each new dynasty to assume that it had the “people’s mandate.”
You also mentioned how Confucius envisioned the Datong Society “which offers just about all the basic human rights described in Articles 25 of the United Nations‘ ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ in order to assure peace and harmony in a state.”
Even if the Datong Society offers such human rights, can that necessarily guarantee the proper implementation that would “assure peace and harmony in a state”?
The “solution”, we might think, partly rests on the people that control the implementation – those with “talent and virtue.” As you said, Plato too had thought along the same lines – a group of virtuous and knowledgeable people to help the philosopher-king.
The problem, of course, is the criteria for choosing such men: for Chinese dynasties, the prerequisites for selection would surely involve: 1) their acceptance of the monarchy system, 2) their total obedience to the monarch, 3) willingness to give up their lives for the monarch and the monarchy. I submit that such requirements would turn off many a talented and virtuous man from serving the government. Indeed, for a very long time, most ordinary Chinese had assumed that all government officials were necessarily corrupted. Once in a while, one might appear to be honest and virtuous, and that person – like Justice Bao – would be immortalized in history.
I agree that when Confucius said that “the world belongs to all under the Great Way” he was being inclusive. The problem is how inclusive. We know that, just as Plato’s democracy involved slavery, Confucius’ Great way was always structured along class lines, with the nobility and Emperor on top of everyone else. Thus, “monarchic democracy” seems like a contradiction in terms (oxymoron).
>With almost no human culture (人文 ) of their own to speak of, all the Roman emperors ruled their subjects and the conquered by force<
The Romans were much influenced by the Greeks – their Gods were largely the same as the Greeks' but under different names. Roman rhetoricians like Cicero are always mentioned along with Plato and other Greek orators in any serious study of rhetoric. Roman culture was so enmeshed with Greek culture and that the word Greco-Roman is everywhere when we talk about ancient Rome. So it was not merely force, but a common language (Latin) and culture that united the vast reaches of the Empire. We've people like Ptolemy from Egypt, Augustine from Syria, and that Russell Crowe character Maximus Decimus Meridius who hailed from Spain. It was through Latin that Christianity spread all over Europe, and works by writers such as Ovid, Lucretius, and even Julius Caesar reveal a great thriving culture. Furthermore, before the birth of the Empire, there was also 500 years of a very civilized Republican Rome.
It is true that unlike China, the breakup of the Roman Empire had left it in smaller, separate states, but Latin continued to be used until the rise of local languages took place around the 14th century. Even today, most European languages contain words and phrases that originated from Latin.
We're proud to be Chinese, but Rome too is in many ways to be admired.
I think the present Chinese regime is popularizing Confucius not because they're converts to Confucianism but because, like many governments in the past, they want an obedient citizenry. Hierarchy is central to much of Confucius' teachings, and it's something the so-called "Communist Party" is eager to preserve.
About Chairman Mao and Mandarin, he did popularize the plain form or putunghua which is now the common language all over the country. Unfortunately, many of the rural primary schools were closed down by Deng Hsiaoping after 1978, an act that deprived hundreds of millions of Chinese schoolchildren their right to a basic education. Mao also got the country to adopt pinyin, which is a great help to many non-Han Chinese citizens (and English-educated Chinese overseas).
Warm regards,
Larry