Remembrance Rites Continue the Love Toward the Departed

answered by The Book of Rites, "Ji Yi" (The Meaning of Sacrifices)

기원전 편찬(유가 예법 모음)

🎬 TODAY'S FILM — IT ASKS THIS

Festival (1996)

dir. Im Kwon-taek · South Korea

A scattered family gathers to hold their old mother's funeral. Along with grief, long-buried conflict and regret spill out, tangled together in the house of mourning. Over the few days of passing through death together, the family rediscovers one another. How does a place of loss become a place of reconciliation?

THE QUESTION THE FILM ASKS

Do I see a family funeral and its rites as mere tiresome procedure, forgetting it is a place that binds the living back together?

THE CLASSIC'S ANSWER · ORIGINAL

祭者所以追養繼孝也

📜 THE CLASSIC'S ANSWER

A remembrance rite is a way of caring, belatedly, for the departed, and of continuing the filial love left undone.

💡 TL;DR

The Book of Rites called a remembrance rite the continuing of filial love left undone.

📝The Classic Answers

The Book of Rites called a remembrance rite the continuing of filial love left undone. The departed do not return, yet the living gather in the place that honors them. Scattered siblings sit together again before one person's death, and old sediment and regret spill out together. A house of mourning is a place of grief and, paradoxically, a place where a family rediscovers one another. I am ashamed to have seen funerals and rites only as things to be gotten through. In passing through death together, we recover the bonds we had forgotten. The rite that honors the departed, in the end, binds those who remain.

— ONGO · Curator

🌱Apply It Today

At a gathering that honors departed family, rather than rushing the forms, give time to sharing hearts with the living beside you.

📖 Classic Source: The Book of Rites, "Ji Yi" (The Meaning of Sacrifices). 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.