Disir
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- Sep 30, 2011
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This is actually part one of two articles. The interesting thing in part one is the division in the approach between who takes the bones to the pagoda. It's an interesting article.
According to Lisa Arensen, an academic who conducted ethnographic research in Reaksmei Songha, the villagers’ treatment of the bones illustrates what local Buddhists believe is needed for a spirit to move peacefully into the afterlife.
“In Khmer Buddhist cosmology, the fate of the spirit of the deceased is perceived as bound up in multiple and often overlapping factors, including the manner of death, the cumulative karmic merit or demerit of the deceased, and the physical treatment of the corpse,” Arensen notes.
The way the physical body is treated after death plays an important role in the “metaphysical freeing” of the spirit, contributing to whether it goes to heaven, hell or is reborn, she argues in her paper The Dead in the Land, which was published in the Journal of Asian Studies this year.
Before a soul can reincarnate, the body must be transported to the pagoda for cremation. Generally, a family member accompanies the body, and the deceased transforms into a venerated ancestor.
But during the rule of the Khmer Rouge, when traditional Buddhist ceremonies were prohibited, the dead were denied these rituals. For many Cambodians, the improper treatment of the corpses left the spirits of the deceased in limbo, doomed to walk the world as ghosts until someone frees them.
The remote village finding ways to live alongside war’s human remains
and here is part 2:
The nun in purple defying norms
According to Lisa Arensen, an academic who conducted ethnographic research in Reaksmei Songha, the villagers’ treatment of the bones illustrates what local Buddhists believe is needed for a spirit to move peacefully into the afterlife.
“In Khmer Buddhist cosmology, the fate of the spirit of the deceased is perceived as bound up in multiple and often overlapping factors, including the manner of death, the cumulative karmic merit or demerit of the deceased, and the physical treatment of the corpse,” Arensen notes.
The way the physical body is treated after death plays an important role in the “metaphysical freeing” of the spirit, contributing to whether it goes to heaven, hell or is reborn, she argues in her paper The Dead in the Land, which was published in the Journal of Asian Studies this year.
Before a soul can reincarnate, the body must be transported to the pagoda for cremation. Generally, a family member accompanies the body, and the deceased transforms into a venerated ancestor.
But during the rule of the Khmer Rouge, when traditional Buddhist ceremonies were prohibited, the dead were denied these rituals. For many Cambodians, the improper treatment of the corpses left the spirits of the deceased in limbo, doomed to walk the world as ghosts until someone frees them.
The remote village finding ways to live alongside war’s human remains
and here is part 2:
The nun in purple defying norms
