When a person dies, be it a king or anyone else, his physical body is eventually consumed by animals, chewed up by insects and then disintegrated with time. Finally, it returns to nature and no one can preserve it. Although the kings of ancient Egypt and other countries tried to preserve their corpses, transforming them into mummies with medicines, these mummified bodies are still very different than their bodies were before death. Except for archaeological research, the mummies serve no purpose.

Archaeologists often spend considerable amounts of money, manpower and time just to unearth a dead body from two thousand years ago, and then bring it back and put it on display for entertainment. Sometimes people are really strange; they do many curious things. They’re always talking about famines, saying that this place needs money and that place needs food, yet they ignore the catastrophes happening everywhere, and instead are concerned about dead bodies and prehistoric animals. In digging up dinosaur fossils and the skeletons of dead humans, they spend a lot of money, risk the lives of many people and expose themselves to the heavy risk of bacterial infection.

In excavating these objects, they sometimes also unearth lethal viruses, and it’s impossible to predict such things. When people venture into the primitive jungles for timber, they may also be infected by the germs there. These germs have been concealed in the jungles for millions of years, and have never come into contact with humans and so once humans are infected, there's hardly ever a cure. But people let the germs spread through reckless excavation and tree felling. That’s why we have so many incurable diseases today.

There are such terrible things happening! Germs and poisons were placed in some tombs to prevent thieves from stealing the ornaments or jewelry inside. Of course, the jewelry might still be stolen eventually. Perhaps the germs only affected the first few tomb robbers and spared the last one so he managed to get away with the treasure. Still, a lot of harm has been done to the world in this way.

People on this planet do things topsy-turvy. The most important time of human life is when we’re alive. So, we ought to take good care of our body, keep it healthy and then do things that benefit society and are good for our life so that we can live happily. Also, we should cherish each other while we’re alive instead of making a big fuss when people die, disrupting traffic along an entire street and slaughtering many pigs and cows to entertain guests. This incurs very heavy karma related to killing.

In the Earth Treasure Bodhisattva Sutra it is said: “When people slaughter for a deceased person, the dead one will also have to share the burden of retribution. Or, after a baby is born, if people slaughter animals to make offerings to the deities or ghosts, both the mother and child will be exposed to negative influences.” For example, sometimes they might fall ill for no apparent reason. That’s because the karma of killing has affected the health of the mother and baby. When a family slaughters to make offerings to the deceased, it also undermines the freedom and reduces the blessed reward of the dead. As a result, they cannot be liberated quickly or be reborn in a higher realm. People often do things with good intentions but end up harming others because they haven’t studied the ancient scriptures thoroughly. The ancient sages have imparted much wisdom to us, but we don’t listen. We claim that we’re Buddhists though we don’t understand what the Earth Treasure Bodhisattva Sutra discusses. If we understood it, we wouldn’t even dare to slaughter animals to feed ourselves, not to mention slaughtering them for others.

Also, many people do silly things such as buying a “good” burial plot for their deceased relatives. They’re willing to spend money on anything or to buy any piece of land, and the more expensive the better. Actually they’re trying to make use of the deceased. The parents may be dead, but can still be used to protect the descendants. People buy that piece of expensive land not to let the deceased rest in peace, but to have them bless their descendants; they’re very calculating in spending that money. There are people who have spent several millions or more to buy land for building a grave.

The descendants of some families are not well off, yet they exhaust their entire wealth to buy a burial plot. It’s still not certain whether their descendants will prosper, but meanwhile they’re already starving. Since they spend all their money in this way, of course they can’t run their business any more! If instead they made good use of that money in running their business, their family would prosper immediately, and there would be no need to confine the corpses of their relatives in such graves! They’re dead already, yet they still need to take care of the later generations of their family! It’s regarded as “filial piety” if you do this. Otherwise, people will blame you for not being good sons and daughters. Isn’t this world strange?

First Find Your Way Home While Living

When we’re alive, if we fail to find the way Home and don’t know where our true Home is, no one will take care of us after we die. Suppose a person is walking on the road day and night, but doesn’t know where his home is and doesn’t know where he should return later; is he not being a bit insane? Most people are doing precisely that, walking incessantly on the road of life, but having no idea where their “home” is. When they die, they say they “go home” but to which home? If they have no idea when they’re alive, how will they know when they’re dead? Failing to address this issue when alive, after death they can only cling to their graves, but that’s not their real home! Anyway, graves aren’t permanent either. When a war or earthquake comes along, the graves will vanish. Where will your “home” be then?