To Send the Dead With Reverence Is Also Filial Love

answered by The Analects, Book of Governance (Wei Zheng)

기원전 5세기(공자 언행록)

🎬 TODAY'S FILM — IT ASKS THIS

Departures (2008)

dir. Yojiro Takita · Japan

A man who once scorned the work of washing the bodies of the departed and sending them on their final way finds, in that very act, a reconciliation with death — and, belatedly, with a father he long resented. What does treating death with dignity give back to the living?

THE QUESTION THE FILM ASKS

Do I treat death as a mere procedure to be handled, missing the meaning of sending the departing off with dignity?

THE CLASSIC'S ANSWER · ORIGINAL

死葬之以禮祭之以禮

生事之以禮死葬之以禮祭之以禮

📜 THE CLASSIC'S ANSWER

While they live, serve them with reverence; when they die, bury them with reverence; and honor them in remembrance with reverence.

💡 TL;DR

Confucius saw that filial love does not end while a parent lives.

📝The Classic Answers

Confucius saw that filial love does not end while a parent lives. Serve them with reverence in life, send them with reverence in death, and honor them with reverence thereafter. How we handle death reveals how we regarded the person. I rush to be done with the end, yet the hands that carefully wash and neatly send off a departing body hold comfort for the living too. The rite of death is for the dead and for those who remain. I remember that dignity must be kept to the very last.

— ONGO · Curator

🌱Apply It Today

Recall someone you have sent off, and hold one small rite of your own to honor them today.

📖 Classic Source: The Analects, Book of Governance (Wei Zheng). Ancient text in the public domain; rendered and interpreted independently by ONGO.
The film is honored as an equal questioner; its plot is rendered only as a universal dilemma. The classic source is an ancient text (Public Domain), and the reflection is 100% original ONGO content.