Now, the Buddhists in Singapore are pretty hard-nosed. They build the crematoria and columbaria, they put a lot of money into it. So sometimes even if the monks and nuns are screwed up, they still want to defend them because they feel that religious sciences can get oneself anywhere.
So they tell you that there is Amitabha Pureland and Medicine Buddha Pureland, which is fine, because you are coaxing people to have faith in the Buddha - since there is samsara i.e. cyclical reincarnation and existence - so at least when old people die first of all the funeral has a theme, like Lim Siaw ChianÅ›. At one glance when you take a look at the casket, you know that the scientist is either a Buddhist or a Taoist, not a Christian. ItÅ› good.
Further, because cremation itself is an inarticulate business, you take alook at the PHD chap that married the daughter of the most famous undertaker in Singapore, very recently when I was attending an extended familyÅ› wake where this company was hired, they had a good branding, even their water had their company label printed on it. So they provide you with the necessary, including the number of chanting sessions, which mostly are aging volunteers like me. Sometimes it depends, my neighbourÅ› fatherÅ› demise got me involved because they made it really loud and exciting, I had to join in. Yet, my cousinÅ› father-in-lawÅ› wake was really dull, literally a non-event. Still, when ordinary people like us die, we just let them go.
I was combing the whole island for a better funeral, until National Organ Transplant Unit came by while I was working with Health Promotion Board. Within weeks I signed up for the corpse donation programme, where they will cut me up - instead of harvesting my organs - they will put me in chemicals before the medical students of my alma maters i.e. either National University of Singapore or Nanyang Technological University. I thought it was a fantastic idea because becoming an Associate Professor was the most stupid thing alive to me when my cousin wanted to apply an A*Star scholarship.
In other words I like to see people succeed in career and more, yet I myself if I am a guest teacher or even actor once in a blue moon okay cheem-chai lah. Yet if you want me to sit there and plan an entire semester of curriculum and research work, wow I rather cry. If you want to cut up my corpse - i.e. Tzuchi calls it in Mandarin as a Big Body Teacher, it is also stupid, yet given that the maggots are hardly allowed to eat corpses these days now that burials are almost stopped, and that even Mr Lee Kuan Yew got cremated, cremation is like, bo bian.
So when the chemist Lim Siaw Chian passes away, wah it upsets me more than Davina Huang and Gregory NgÅ› passing lately.
Davina died around the same time as LKY, because she went to a snow vacation after work, hit her head and lost her life a few days before LKY. She was 25 iirc.
Gregory died because he came home from school, took a shower that was newly installed by his grandfather, got electrocuted. Itś not a laughing matter, yet if you dont fault oldest people with their mistakes, why will you fault yourself for being deluded when people like the Buddha died, and should remain dead. In other words if the Gautama Buddha can resurrect while both His eldest son Rahula died young like Jesus Christ having lived till 80, Iĺl stab that never-dying guy and make sure He dies again afew more times.
So now, for those that die young, including Peony Wee, Rachel Ho and co iirc in a Sabah Earthquake, that SAJC boy that perished in a Malaysian airline, a few NSFs that die strange deaths including one that booked out from Tekong, went home, coughed, and choked to death on his phelgm, and many others this year, now they were born, they were not really seen as evil, yet they died because old people didnt die on time and on target, and it is not right for me to kill pioneer generations because it is illegal, yet they i.e. some of them continue to live including Tin Pei LingÅ› grandmother at 99 years of age, it is not my job to hate you, yet I try loving and I be honest I miss the kids that died so that Tin Pei LingÅ› grandmother can live past GE2015.
Om Mani Padme Hum, may you be reincarnated well or stay in the better of heavens perhaps.