Ethical Research On Funeral Customs In Rural Areas

Rural funeral customs,as the life ceremony of people’s "death",are mainly composed of three parts: funeral ceremony,funeral ceremony and sacrifice ceremony.The ritual procedures are complex and varied,and taboos are fussy and strict.There are dozens of links from the beginning and end,small funeral,mourning,condolence to funeral and sacrifice after burial,and each link has its own different regulations,bearing very important ethical functions.Based on the funeral rites and customs of Z village in Lanzhou suburb,this paper takes the specific rural funeral rites as the breakthrough point,and tries to deeply understand the ethical functions carried by rural funeral rites and customs,explore the life wisdom and moral emotion behind rural funeral rites and customs,and explore the realistic situation and development trend of funeral under the background of the new era.First of all,rural funeral rituals are the coping wisdom formed by people in the process of facing death.This wisdom mainly comes from religious beliefs and moral ethics.Religious belief satisfies people’s transcendental needs to settle life with the concept of the soul and the construction of the afterlife world;moral ethics is based on the actual human relations and daily use,attaches importance to the continuation of blood life and daily moral life practice,and is based on family blood.Continuation and the spread of individual spiritual wisdom endow individual life with ultimate value.Secondly,the rural funeral rituals are the etiquette norms to maintain the family filial ethics,which contains the filial ethical spirit of the living to the dead.Funeral is not only a process for people to express their grief and show filial piety,but also an important way for rural society to teach filial piety.The complicated funeral rituals extend the children’s filial piety to their parents into moral behaviors such as “death is like life”,“death to grief”,“following filial piety” and other moral behaviors.Thirdly,funeral customs in rural areas are also an important way for people to unite blood and family ties,promote family members to live in harmony and realize the harmonious relationship between man and nature.The complicated funeral ceremony not only maintains the intimate relationship between family members and consolidates the harmonious interpersonal relationship between neighbors,but also strengthens the moral and emotional connection between the living and the dead,and promotes the harmonious relationship between man and nature.Finally,the reality of rural funeral customs is complicated.With the changes of local society,the development of funeral customs in rural areas is gradually characterized by simplification and formalization,and the ethical spirit of etiquette itself is gradually showing a trend of weakening,and the humanistic value of funeral is weakened.It is imperative to renew and develop the funeral customs in rural areas,repair and awaken the sense of ceremony in rural funeral,revive the spirit of ceremony and justice in funeral,and present the respect for life and expression of emotion in funeral in a ritualized way that is more in line with modern life.