Creating Love: My Account of a Buddhist Funeral in Japan
by AJ Snook
It is a hot early August afternoon. 35 degrees Celsius. Luckily the air is dry enough, and the breeze as swift, to evaporate the perspiration just as it appears in beads along my brow. Walking out of the subway station and up to Gojo Street, I know we are just blocks away. The banquet hall is plain and clean on the outside and in, its doormen in gray suits welcoming us cordially in. I mistake a man standing solemnly in the back corner of the elevator for another building employee. He was in fact a guest, like us. A guest for the funeral.
We are early so I stop for a minute to take in the main room. Ornate wooden candlesticks the color of driftwood sit with earthy mushroom-shaped carvings at their bases. Spreading out above the flames are even more intricately carved butterflies, guardian halos on high. The aforementioned flower bouquets line the perimeter, the names of the heads of households written professionally by hand in black ink (my name included) below each silver vase. Behind the candles lay offerings of oranges, apples, and rice cakes wrapped in expensive white paper, offerings with the intent to alchemize bliss from sacrifice.
Front and center is a large picture of the deceased uncle we are here for, a man I never met yet still love by association. The coffin looks nothing more than another long table save for its intricate cloth covering, full of woven pinks, blues and silvers. About thirty chairs draped in pure white coverings, fifteen on a side, are set out in front. The wife's family sits on one side and the group of siblings and cousins, which we are a part of, sits on the other.
We make our way to back room to wait with the other relatives for the start. "Thank you for coming," say our portly female cousins in unison, their kind words accompanied by deep and reverent bows.
"Is this your first Japanese funeral?" asks a nosy uncle that I'm sure I've met once at another get-together.
Before I can answer a woman in her late 50s, who I can tell was stunning merely fifteen years ago, bombards us with greetings. "Do you remember me?” she asks my wife. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it? What a nice husband you have." No time for an answer for the next question has arrived. We are caught in a vortex of small talk and it's adding weight onto my already overwhelmed brain.
Eventually the headset-clad staff calls us in and we take our seats. Many people are sobbing, and have been since the minute they laid eyes on the broken next of kin. The pain is so clear and fresh on our cousins’ inwardly sinking faces, an effect only a fast spreading cancer can render. All is quiet and the rich smell of incense is in the air as the monk walks in.
He wears a simple dark grey monk’s robe, its cloth draping past his finger tips. Or maybe it’s forest green. My mind’s in a blur. Every now and then he pulls a prayer tool, a paper to read, beads, or a wooden implement of some kind, from inside the billowed robe’s sleeves. “There must be some hidden compartments in there...pockets,” I think. “I wonder if they ever fall down the length of the robe and drop to the floor by his feet, like when I get a hole in the pocket of my jeans.”
Next comes the chanting. It rises up out of the stillness so gradually that I can’t pinpoint the exact moment that his vocal reverberations fill up the silent space inside my ears. It makes me remind myself to seek out and be aware of all of the fine and subtle sounds that are around me. I realize that even among the noiseless air that I wrap myself in as I go to sleep, there must be a circus, a veritable brewhaha of resonance flowing about just outside of my audible spectrum. This thought rushes up on me like a crashing wave, knocking me back, staggering me: my perception of this world is so limited, and like the corpse lying hidden in the box just ten feet away, I am reminded of the fragility that comes with living in this world.
At that the monk hits wooden drum with the mallet and a blast of vibration envelops my meaty shell. The drum itself looks like a hollowed out bowling ball sized acorn adorned with carvings and markings whose shapes I cannot decode. Are they faces? Eyes? It’s too hard to tell, and besides, the melodic low tones of the monks chant puts my eyes out of focus and into a haze. I feel self-conscious and wonder if the guests sitting across the room can notice my uncalibrated stare. Along with my thoughts about the interior design of his robe, it feels disrespectful to be daydreaming and letting my mind wander so idly during such a serious event, so I quickly fine tune my disposition and focus back on the proceedings.
The chanting goes on like this for tens of minutes and soon family members begin to get up two at a time and approach the tables supporting nothing more than two silver bowls, one containing a white-hot coal and the other small flakes of what appears to be incense. We all go up with prayer beads draped from our fingertips, bow to the closest relatives, and place three pinches of the mysterious flakes onto the hot coals, each time pausing a moment to hold the stuff in front of our forehead in the vicinity of the third eye. All the while, through the uncontrollable sobs and whimpers, the monk chants on and bangs on his drum. He provides a melody of grace and a bass line of stability in this room full of sorrow and fear.
Time rolls on and the ceremony swiftly ends. The coffin is opened just above the head and those who wish to look at the deceased man’s face one more time on their way out can. The guests leave the family members on their own to face the rest of the evening together. Though the body isn’t going anywhere, and neither are we, we take a moment to retreat to the private break room in the back for a glass of tea and a change of scenery.
When we return to the main room it is completely transformed. The hall staff has converted the offering tables into dinner tables. Catered sushi, tempura, and bottles of expensive beer await the exhausted family members. The sight alone is refreshing and the first bites and sips are met with moans of adulation. Is it wrong to enjoy life in the time of death? Something pure and honest floating through the air is clearly telling us no.
We spent the next few hours eating, drinking, and talking. Satisfying the most primal human urges of sustenance and warm company is a powerful reminder that joy and love -- not sorrow or despair -- are our primary companions on the journey that starts at birth and ends at a place like this, the aptly named Bright Hall.
An architect cousin from Tokyo warmly invites my wife and I to visit him in the big city. “My neighborhood is like Manhattan,” he says. “I think you’ll like it.” The partially senile brother-in-law of the deceased tries to lighten the mood, but his wit is not what it once had been. His comments are bland and meaningless but we all answer him without cynicism or impatience. “Do you have any Japanese food in America? Do you like baseball?” he asks. A meaningful connection in his life has been severed and he’s making desperate stabs to fill that void.
Most of us are not in the mood for silly jokes or placating each other. Our laughs come out of genuine empathy and care for the person speaking, but not out of duty. The glowing older lady who we talked to before slips my wife more than two-hundred dollars worth of yen wrapped discretely in a napkin. Another crude stab at connection. “Spend it on the baby,” she tells my wife as the woman’s eyes fixate on her stomach that is just starting to show. The kids entertain themselves by sneaking peeks at the corpse's head while nibbling on chocolate covered pretzel sticks. As the beer bottles empty the staff takes note and reminds us to be back in the morning before ten.
With nothing more than sleep and a shower in between, we quickly find ourselves back at Bright Hall the next day. The proceedings are already underway so we take our seats front and center with the rest of the family. Luckily we aren’t the last to arrive, but we don’t feel bound to social rules today. Presence -- including that of the heart -- is all that the closest family members need from us. It’s all I would care about if it had been my father laying there in that box on his sending-off day.
From there the proceedings are simply identical to yesterday’s save for a fancier monk’s costume. Today he is draped in an almost shimmering golden emerald robe. His head is covered by a matching headdress with flaps that hang down and rest on his shoulders. Yesterday I couldn’t stop staring at his glaring bald head and I joked to myself that this monk was doubly bald, his day old male-pattern stubble slightly showing, but a wave of guilt runs through me, bringing me back to the present and out of that scarily capable sea of imagination. Thankfully that shiny, oily distraction is covered up on day two.
After completing the ceremony, the casket is wheeled out front and center. The guests gather round intently while the hall staff scurries near the bouquets and collects small bunches of flowers, miniature bouquets, that they distribute to the family members. We take turns laying the flowers onto the small man’s body. The immediate family all lay sealed handwritten letters on him, as well. The scene before they close the box for the final time was one overflowing with color and beauty. I think that stray stems and petals are going to poke out of the closed casket, but the staff manages to stuff them all in neatly as the casket is shut for the final time.
The men then carry it out to the hearse and we caravan in a minibus flanked by limos to the crematory. A new set of staff, also decked in suits and earpieces, escorts us and the casket into the crematory lobby. There is a large golden plate the size of a breakfast table decorating the wall. I’m sure it has some ancient significance. The casket is placed on a silver conveyor belt, not unlike a contraption you might find in a giant warehouse -- part forklift, part people mover.
The man in charge here -- the man in charge of the ovens -- has a very chilling way about him. There’s a twitch in one eye and a slight hunch in his back. I suppose there aren’t lines of people at the job office applying for this position. I can’t help but wonder if he has dark secrets at home, but at that thought the all-too-familiar wave of guilt finds its way back to me, this time smashing my ego into the surf and I silently curse myself for my inner-inappropriateness.
Next, the casket is wheeled into the adjacent room which looks like an elevator lobby to the afterlife. My inner-inappropriateness calls this place “Hell’s Waiting Room” but I don’t ponder this thought long enough to be hit by more guilt.
Will we feel heat? Will we see fire?
Just like on an elevator, a light on the wall turns on in synch with a dinging sound, and the doors open wide. We are instructed to press our palms together in prayer one last time and we silently give the poor man’s soul our final blessing, the last before his expired life vessel is disposed of for good.
“May the energy that flowed from this man and into the lives of these people, the people I love, flow into the earth around us and continue to affect us in a positive way,” I think solemnly. “May the ashes provide nutrients that the earth can use to make a tree stronger, its fruit sweeter, and the smile of the child who eats it wider and happier.”
I want to think more, to send him more of my thoughts, but the doors are already closing and the family is crying. In fact, I am too. I can tell, if not by the tears, then by the restrained tension on the faces used to hold them back. There are more than forty muscles in the face -- a lot of tools to suppress emotions. “Let them out more,” I think. “Let them out today.”
The beat-up group is ushered out of the crematory and upstairs where we sit in a spacious, air conditioned gray waiting room shared by many other families from around the city. Some kids wear their school uniforms (I guess those are the only nice clothes they have). Some families sit quietly and solemnly while others are loud and boisterous. I wonder if the way they wait is a reflection on the person who died.
Tea is served and we sip slowly to pass the time. I wonder what the burning body looks like and I wonder where my spirit will go when I die. Does a soul stay intact or does all that energy that is bouncing around inside of my skin -- contained -- blast off into the universe and disperse itself evenly into both matter and antimatter?
Soon our party is called back downstairs to the crematory, but I cannot get those existential questions out of my head. Everyone’s silent but I know what to expect: the passing of the bones using ceremonial chopsticks. Thankfully my mother-in-law has already told me that it’s OK for me to take a breather and watch from the sidelines on this one. What if I dropped one? How awful that would be!
And there the charred remains lay on the metal slab in the same arrangement that the corpse lay just an hour ago. “This is the jawbone and this the vertebrae. You over there are looking at his right side and you folks, his left,” explains the strange cremator. He sounds like a lecturer, an academic whose gray utility is out of place in such a colorful time of spiritual transition.
And the passing of the bones has begun. The chopsticks are much larger than I had imagined, looking more like square-cut musical drumsticks than their lighter, more slender culinary cousins. The extended family members are obviously reluctant to participate, though many of them eventually do. “Where is his soul now?” I think while they pass the bones to the crematory man who is holding a small stainless steel tray, a special tray that is most like only purchased by the niche market of crematories, morgues and mortuaries. “Is it here among us?” I wonder as I stand paralyzed. “Has it found another vessel? Is it gone for good?” The thoughts swirl and swirl like a brisk winter wind in a narrow big-city back alley. The crematory attendant, wearing special white gloves, places the burned bones into the urn. He has to forcefully push the larger ones, the femurs I suppose, down until they crack and crunch. His arm shakes behind the pressure for an instant, before to his apparent satisfaction, they transform into ash.
I never was able to make up my mind about what I think happened to the uncle after he died. Not that I realistically expected to discover an answer that so many people before me have also failed to learn, but I was so close to death that I at least owed it the respect to be observant. In the end the warm tones that usually rang through me after family reunions, not funerals, resonated quietly and peacefully inside of me. I feel closer to my wife’s family now, and if I can do anything kind for them or the little ones that follow us to ease the stress of the next long and grueling weekend that is the Japanese Buddhist funeral, I will. Maybe creating love here on earth is infinitely more important than searching for big, dreamy, existential ideas out there. I learned that the funeral is just as much about the living as it is about the dead. Why chase departed souls with cold wispy fingers when we can embrace the souls who are with us everyday with warm entangling hearts? Maybe too much questioning of the otherworldly leaves too little room for wonder and, more importantly, for chances to create loving kindness and compassion here on this one.
End