stairway to heaven

My grandmother used to go to a Buddhist temple by her house and we thought she would want some Buddhist rites performed at her services. So the day she died, we went to the temple and got two monks to come out to perform some sort of rites at her wake and cremation. It was very interesting. The monks chanted at her wake while we stood around the coffin. The chanting went on for so long that I almost fainted. Afterward, the person closest to her poured water out of a teapot into a cup placed in a bowl next to the coffin. So my uncle poured the water into the cup until it overflowed into the bowl. While this was happening, we formed a human chain by each placing a hand on the shoulder of the person in front of us, so it was like a symbolic transfer of energy. I would have liked to shoot photos of the ceremony...but I was in it.



I shot this photo at the crematorium. These are the two monks that led the chanting on Saturday. One is from Ceylon and the other is from Burma.