When we arrived, the royal monks were ready and waiting. Here is one of the monks collecting a saffron robe that we had donated. Of course, this is all new to me and although I knew why we were there, I had no idea what would happen or what we were expected to do. I was a little suspicious of the small bump in the cloth laid out on the cremation altar, where we were placing the donated robes.
When the cloth was removed, I was not too surprised to find Nuch's fathers bones lying beneath. That they were laid out in the shape of a body kinda caught me off guard. Apparently, this is the tradition.
While the monks chanted, we were asked to cleanse the bones by pouring scented water and spreading flower petals. Small coins were also mixed in and placed among the bone remnants.
Then, some pieces of bone from each of the body parts were taken and washed in small bowl. They were then placed in a ceramic urn.
The remains that were not put into the small urn were placed into a larger urn and then wrapped in a white cloth. Here's the government officials helping out again.
Once this was done, we walked across to the adjacent sanctuary where the two urns were placed in front of Nuch's father's picture. The large urn will be released into the Chao Phraya river during a ceremony next week. The smaller urn was placed inside a Buddha statue at another temple that is close to Nuch's house. His remains will be kept next to his parents remains - also in the same Buddha statue.
Here is Nuch, her brother, and her mother making Holy Water (not sure how else to describe it) while the monks are chanting.
After that we took the urns home with us, where they were kept in the Buddha image room over night.
No comments:
Post a Comment