Thai Coffin Ritual

I found this on the net I thought it was rather bizarre and fascinating at the same time. The Buddhist temple Wat Proman in Thailand offers a rather bizarre ritual to bless devotees in order to ease their problems. All they have to do is lie in a coffin, “die” and be reborn again anew and this whole process is believed to purify bad karma and bad luck.

This seemingly morbid ritual has its roots in traditional Buddhist contemplation of death and impermanence. The Buddha himself advocated meditating upon bones and corpses to remind ourselves of our mortality so that we realized the preciousness of our human life. This is to chance our view of life and is not meant for us morbid or suicidal in any way. As for the ritual, devotees lie in coffins while Buddhist monks chant a few verses and they can be reborn again. Some people claim that the ritual fools negative spirits that the devotee had died and so they stop bothering the devotee.

Some have reported seeing the spirits of dead loved ones while lying in the coffins, which is considered a bad omen to some. This ritual is not short of its detractors who had branded this as an occult practice while some say that it is inappropriate and inauspicious for a living person to lie in a coffin. Some detractors went as far to call this whole practice commercial, which is a degeneration of Buddhism.

No matter how this practice is judged, it does nothing to stave off the popularity of this ritual amongst the ordinary Thai folks.  This ritual is performed in many monasteries and usually no fee is charged for the ritual but devotees often leave a donation.

(Taken from http://funstuffcafe.com/the-thai-coffin-ritual-for-the-living )

The devotee lie is a coffin with a simple flower offering for the ritual.

This Coffin Ritual is extremely popular with the general Thai population.

Devotees are ‘reborn’ again after they emerge from the coffins.

The monk cover part of the coffin with a swath of cloth and start to recite sacred verses.