The recently released Japanese film "The Mortician", each of which harvested the tears of the audience.
Someone once commented in the song list of NetEase Cloud that when we were young in the past, we always thought that we were afraid of ghosts in the grave, but when it was our relatives who died, we found that what we were afraid of was not ghosts, but that death would take away our loved ones.
The topic of life and death seems to have always been a taboo topic in China, and the mortician is not an industry that everyone has been keen on since childhood, and as this movie has become a hot search, the profession of mortician has once again become a topic.
Today, Zhu Yulu, born in 1997, continues to pay silently in the funeral industry, practicing the mortician's commitment to the deceased and their families, and interpreting the low-key greatness of the industry. "My hands were shaky when I first put on makeup for the deceased, and I have now served more than a thousand deceased people," she said. ”
Chinese pay attention to the aftermath of life, leave with respect, and gracefully arrive at the "other shore" of life, which also represents the "perfection of merit" in their own life. Therefore, Chinese pay special attention to the deceased's posthumous affairs, which is not only the last dignity of life, but also the final account of relatives to the deceased.
The mortician is the one who sends off the deceased on the last journey, and with their help the deceased go to the other shore, the relatives will be comforted.
Perhaps it is the impression that the morticians are locked up every day in a dark, cold room that has not seen the light of day for many years, doing work that feels suffocating and frightening.
However, this is not the case, the service of the mortician does not lack temperature due to the contact with cold corpses, the morticians will treat their work solemnly, seriously, and seriously, they are godly, full of respect for the deceased, full of sympathy for the family, and face every service with empathy. They understand that birth is a baptism, and leaving the world requires a solemn farewell.
Although Zhu Yulu is only 24 years old, she has become a "veteran" in the funeral industry, recalling her first day in the industry, her most impressive impression is her trembling hands.
When putting on makeup for the deceased for the first time, Zhu Yulu's hands as a novice trembled involuntarily, "This is not fear, but too nervous." Zhu Yulu explained in retrospect that this tension was due to the fear that the makeup was not good and that the family of the deceased was not satisfied.
Later, it was not until two or three times of makeup and grooming for the deceased that Zhu Yulu gradually adapted to this profession and freed herself from nervousness.
In fact, Zhu Yulu's nervousness is more due to his devotion to the profession of a mortician, when the warm hands touch the cold body, it is to leave the last beauty of the world to the deceased, so that the deceased can carry the last bit of sunshine to the past. It is not difficult for us to see that the words of the young Zhu Yulu reflect more respect for human nature and reverence for nature.
Death is the end of life, and when people go to this end, it means that they will say goodbye to the world, that they have been liberated from the world, and that they will say goodbye to love and pain. For the relatives of the deceased, the departure of the deceased is more of a reluctance and loss, which means pain and confusion.
In the funeral home, the mortician is actually the link between life and death, standing in the farewell hall, Zhu Yulu, standing in front of him, is full of grief, on the one hand is the relatives who are crying in the world, on the right is the deceased who has sunk away, life and death here is sound on one side, and there is no sound on the other.
Choosing to engage in morticians requires great courage and persistence, especially in China, people engaged in the funeral industry are a minority after all, and morticians are also an unpopular profession.
In the Chinese concept of life and death, death is ultimately a topic of avoidance, and most of them are also prejudiced against the profession of morticians, which stems from the avoidance of the concept of death in Chinese culture, and all words or industries associated with death will cause people's inexplicable fear.
But it is not surprising that people need to deal with the mortician at least once in their lives and see themselves from the side.
Zhu Yulu's parents did not understand their daughter's choice at first, and after she watched a TV show about the mortician, she resolutely chose the industry, and everything for the sake of the deceased also became the motivation for her to persevere.
The greatness of the mortician is that he is not obsessed with prejudice and indifference, but is concerned with respect for death and love for man. In this year's popular web drama "Double Detective", Zhou You, played by Dapeng, has a hand-in-hand makeup ability, and after the makeup of his hand, it can make the family of the deceased feel relieved, and thus gain the respect and gratitude of the family.
"I think the remembrance and respect of the deceased relatives of the living people in the funeral industry is also an emotional sustenance, and this will not change." When Zhu Yulu talked about her sense of identity with her profession, she said the above passage, since she started her career, Zhu Yulu's work is mainly to make up the body, preside over the farewell ceremony, and sacrifice the guests, and she is extremely serious about each work.
What the mortician needs is a love for human nature, a detached sense of life and death, and a contempt for death, so not everyone is suitable for this profession, because the funeral industry needs a higher perspective and pattern of life.
Life is ever-changing, each step has different choices and different endings, but there is only one ending and result that we are destined for from birth, and that is to die. The difference between Eastern and Western cultures is also reflected in the attitude towards death, although people are still sad when they face death, but the different mentalities in the face of death have also created differences between Eastern and Western cultures.
In the West, out of religious belief, it is believed that the deceased will go to heaven to start a new life in paradise, and everything in the world will be erased. But in Eastern cultures, death is linked to obscurity. People think that the place where the deceased stayed before or after leaving will be somewhat obscure.
The obscurity here is not feudal superstition. In Eastern cultures, the concept of "etiquette" is deeply rooted, and death means the end of life. Talking about death in public is considered disrespectful to those around you, after all, death is not a problem that the living want to face.
For example, Chinese will compliment the elderly when wishing them a happy birthday, shou is like Nanshan, longevity is a good blessing, but also a proper number of gifts.
In the Chinese cultural circle, Confucian education has a great influence on Japan, South Korea and Vietnam, which has also led to the surprisingly consistent concept of life and death in the above countries, and the main purpose of Japan in filming "Entering the Mortician" is to eliminate people's prejudice against the Mortician and attach importance to death education.
Returning to the question itself, the concept of life and death is actually a philosophy of life, on the one hand, it is about facing life, and on the other hand, how to face death. For ordinary people, when life exists, what to do is to get more value in life and strive for more success, and when they die, there will be more people remembering and more people remembering.
All in all, fame and fortune come first.
The morticians who are accustomed to seeing life and death have different concepts of life. Death is a passageway, a passage to another world, and when the journey in this world is over, one will go to another world. People's fear of death is more from the fear of the unknown, and when people disappear into the world, no one can understand where they are going.
As for life and death, the morticians believe that feelings are the link between life and death, and as a ferryman of life and death, the morticians pay more attention to the emotions of relatives when facing the end of life. When a loved one dies, how to soothe the grief of the loved one is even more important.
The proposition of death has been raised countless times in the course of human development.
The phenomenon of death in life itself is one of the most incomprehensible and thought-provoking questions, and although people constantly try to deny death and avoid death, people are curious to understand what death really is.
In the face of death, we face not only the end of life, but also the human nature at the time of death and the emotions of relatives after death, in fact, after death, the emotions of the world are the key words of death, the real death of people is not the death of life, but the forgetting from the world, when no one in the world remembers the deceased, it means that the deceased is gone forever.
Morticians are a profession under the sun, and for the sake of the last dignity of the deceased, they do their best to pay their final respects to those who have left.
Young Zhu Yulu has served more than a thousand deceased people, as a ferryman, she has sent thousands of souls to the other side of the Styx, and every turn, you can imagine the gratitude of each deceased to her.
Some scholars once likened death to the door of a house, and whether the deceased went to the exit or the entrance?
There is a dialogue in the movie "The Mortician": "Death is like a passageway, death is not the end." You cross it to the next stop. It is a gate. And I, as the gatekeeper, sent so many people away and said to them: All the way, we will see each other again."
Life and death are a period of reincarnation, for the blessing of death, "all the way to the good, we meet again" is not only the appointment of the next life, but also the appointment after the death, the mortician's understanding and understanding of human death, with a transcendent and open-minded state of mind, which is also the beauty and brilliance of human nature.
Zhu Yulu admitted that she was not afraid of death, whether in school or at work, she had long expected the final outcome, and she could face it calmly.
The eternity of life needs to be guarded, and when we face death, do not forget that there is still a group of people at the end of life, sending the last bit of warmth in the world to the deceased, just like the sun shining on the cold body, lighting the lamp of eternal light on the way to send off.
The journey of life will eventually begin again and again, and the mortician who guards the realm of life and death, on the road of holding a lamp in his hand, is born to the sun, facing this respectable profession, perhaps what we should do is more respect and understanding.
1. Bereavement care for ferrymen of life and death: there is a special profession called "mortician"; qingxi; world expo ;(2021-07-21 journal)
2. "The Mortician": Feeling Death from a Buddhist Perspective; by Yang Di, Film Review, No. 22, 2017
3. The Contemporary Significance of Buddhist Beliefs and Their Concept of Death; Haibo Li; Journal of East China Normal University (Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition) ;(2013-09-15 Journal)