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Where Is My Loved One Who Has Passed Away Now?
On the third day of the Great Ceremony for Offering and Deliverance at Vinh Nghiem Ancestral Temple, the sangha practiced “breathing, smiling, sitting meditation, walking meditation, eating mindfully, and looking at each other with forgiveness and inclusiveness” to pray for and deliver the spirits who lost their lives in the war. At the temple, from the very first day, ceremonies were held to invite the wandering souls, to repent, to recite sutras, to eat vegetarian food, and to release animals; at home, families set up ancestral altars, offered rice porridge and cool water, and generated thoughts of forgiveness, inclusiveness, and loving kindness, sharing the merit for the liberation of the spirits.
The three karmas of body, speech, and mind are “seeds for our continuation,” just like “an orange seed” or “a corn seed” that nourish the tree of the future. When we create wholesome karma through thoughts of forgiveness, gentle speech (right speech/loving speech), and actions that protect and help (right action), we are investing in lasting happiness. According to the Noble Eightfold Path, only these three kinds of karma determine our future, not any divine being.
Family and the relationships between father and child, mother and child, are also seen as “continuation”: not one, not two (neither identical nor different), like the image of the second flame as the continuation of the first. Understanding the impermanence and the unborn, undying nature of ourselves helps us to accept, forgive, and love our parents, spouses, and children. Only then can we build harmony, heal the wounds of the past, and vow never to let “the country be divided” again, resolving disagreements peacefully, in the spirit of brotherhood and the love of compatriots.