Nothing Traditional letter and the Simplified letter

korean pronunciation Mu

chinese pronunciation Wu

japanese pronunciation Mu or Nasi

D-letter Wu means nothing or void. This letter show that a pile of logs is being touched by the fire.

Then logs will be disappearing. Only ashes will be left. This letter symbolizes the cremation. The Far eastern Asian funeral was mostly the burial. But Buddhist funeral is the cremation. Buddhism had emerged at India. Indian funeral is mostly the cremation. I guess that the cremation tradition in Buddhism came from India. Nowaday the cremation is the most common funeral because of the lack of the burial land in South Korea. Those trend has nothing with the religion.

The famous monk’s funeral used to be a big nation-wide ceremony. Those cremation procedure are called Dabisik in Korean, and Cha pi in Chinese.

After the burning is complete, people are supposed to search the special remaining pieces. The small jewel like stones can be found, those are called as Sheri(in Chinese) or Sari(in Korean). Sheris are not decayed. It is said that if the monk has the highest virtue, there must be very many Sheris. When Siddhartha(the originator of Buddhism) was cremated, there were thousands of Sheris. His Sheri are called the Genuine(Jinsin) Sheri. The genuine sheris are distributed through all the asian temples. The genuine sheris are carefully reserved under the Buddhist towers.

One of the genuine Sheri tower, Sumano tower located at Jungrim Temple in South Korea.