Taiwan funeral decorum and customs originally came from China with its components of Buddhist funeral services combined the Daoism and Confucianism. A Buddhist prime focus is upon the care of the deceased. This entails awakening the decease’s “Chong-Yin-Shen”- that being the period between actually being dead and before ones reincarnation and then to assist the deceased through reincarnation either onto a better next life or being reborn into paradise. Following these Buddhist beliefs and religious underpinnings creating a paradigm of life and death, Taiwan can be seen as having evolved its own localized practices.
This qualitative research applied the procedure of documentary analysis; literature review; field study and recording the process of the funeral services; together with in-depth interviews of a wide spectrum of participants. The core objective of the research was to integrate and compare relevant data and then to make an analysis of it to construct a better grounded conceptualization. As a participant observer the researcher was able to document the Buddhist funeral service process whilst aiming to understand the original underlying meaning of the practices.
In broad detail the purpose of this research was: • To analyze the whole funeral ceremony process as a deeply embedded social phenomenon. • To appreciate differences between Buddhism and other selected forms of religions. • To understand Buddhism from within the context of absorbed Daoism or other folk tradition beliefs.
The research apart from a study of broad sweeping central issues, attempted to appreciate the fine details of the localize and moved towards postulating the future of Taiwan Buddhist funeral services.
Research findings: 1. Taiwan’s Buddhist funeral services continues to emphasis at its core a cultural components derived from Daoism and Confucianism traditions. 2. The main elements of change within contemporary Taiwan Buddhist funeral decorum and customs is derived from Buddhist funeral practices interplay with folk tradition beliefs. 3. The evidence revealed that the Buddhist funeral services in fact closely follow local folk traditions. The main finding is that fundamental Buddhist beliefs as realized through ceremony practices , coalesces with local folk traditional decorum and customs to create a trajectory of change that over time becomes current practice only to be open again to augmentation. 4. Other religious funeral rituals in Taiwan are a flux of Buddhist doctrine and classic metaphors and analogies. Most of the Buddhist based proprietors of funeral service homes seek to perform a funeral process as part of their own “practice in life.” Learning from their own Master they in time augment their ceremony based upon the Buddhism philosophy and their own Master’s teaching methods. Consequently this finding points to the value of further research to undercover if they is any underlying archetypal philosophical or belief based aesthetics.
