It is not easy to be corrupted when gratitude is still there!

In the development of social life, urbanization is an inevitable part, the village road may no longer be slippery in the rainy season, or covered with red soil in the summer sun. But there are values ​​that are the foundation, the unchangeable, it is like a spiritual support for each person to take refuge from the trauma in the journey of growing up, it is a launching pad to develop a rich and beautiful identity for newly merged localities.

Hat Boi in the Ky Yen ceremony at a communal house

In the city, the old seasonal rituals or hometown customs are gradually simplified, giving way to quick, convenient options to keep up with the hustle and bustle out there. But no matter how busy, there is a saying "loyalty to the dead is loyalty to the end", no matter what the circumstances, no matter how different the form, the sacredness of a human journey remains intact. My family lives in the suburbs of Ho Chi Minh City, somewhere there are still fields, gardens of gourds, squash... Every time someone passes away, the trees in the house also hang white mourning scarves. My neighborhood has a shrine to the Lady, the aunts in the neighborhood still call it "the shrine of the Five Elements Lady" (the way to call the shrine in the Southern dialect - PV). When the funeral procession passes by the shrine, the burial team also stops to bow a few times, whether the deceased usually goes to the shrine to worship the Lady or not... That is the custom in the neighborhood, which has not changed since the time of my grandparents and parents until now. Mom often told us that it was the way our grandparents taught their children and grandchildren to bow their heads, to be grateful to their ancestors, and to pay their last respects to the deceased.

Communal houses or shrines are a type of architecture belonging to folk beliefs, which almost every village has. Because this is where the “Thanh Hoang Bon Canh” (also known as Than Hoang Bon Canh) is worshiped, the Lady… who has the merit of founding the village, establishing the hamlet, and protecting the village and hamlet. These folk belief activities are passed down from generation to generation, and a stick of incense with a bow of gratitude has become a good and eternal morality of the nation.

For many years now, with the deep global integration, the influence has been clearly seen, causing many ancient cultures in the world to fade away. People have begun to look for the original values, because every good value is formed and mobilized from the lives of the people to create the identity of a village, contributing to the identity of a nation and people. The children in my neighborhood have grown up to catch up with technology, social networks, foreign languages... and then each of them has drawn for themselves a dream of starting a business, or becoming a global citizen, far different from their half-urbanized, half-rural neighborhood. But whenever they hear the sound of drums at the communal house worshiping ceremony, the playful children put down their phones, run after the adults out of curiosity, and then learn to look at the adults bowing their heads to burn incense and go to the ceremony.

The funeral "bowing" across the shrine, or the drumbeat at the communal house every time Ky Yen, is not only a folk custom, or a story related to beliefs and spirituality, but it is a heritage value belonging to humanity. When we still know how to bow our heads to remember our ancestors, even though life has many ups and downs..., people will not easily be corrupted, when gratitude is still there!

BLUE

Source: https://www.sggp.org.vn/dau-de-ma-hu-khi-long-biet-on-con-do-post803551.html