This seems to miss the point regarding Buddhism. They must be copying the Catholics for the biggest, best and most expensive decorations to cover the Catholic Religion, a hollow shallow religion where big business meet religion.
When you look into the dead eyes of someone you knew well then it is instantly apparent that the person you knew has gone/left from the body. In a way like a Snake shedding it's skin and leaving it behind and moving on. Grieving and remembering the departed is left to the living. The dead don't and can't care. I wonder if those who believe in Re-incarnation have a contingency plan for if and when Mankind gets around to killing every Living thing on our Planet as then there would be nothing left alive to re-incarnate into. Perhaps the hope of an afterlife is just Mankind's ongoing egotistical refusal to accept that there just might not be an afterlife.
If this is how people of a religious faith want to spend their time and money I'm all for it. That means they aren't out there killing innocent people under the guise of their religion. So yeah. It's all good. Right?
what... I do not understand why people do things like this. Its good that you want to honor a person memory. YOU DO THAT by picking up where they left off. To go further than that you honor their achievement to be seen in writing and speaking about them. This man has passed this existence and they still want him to work. Use that gold to further his man belief: to feed one more person, to change on more life, to enrich one more soul.
Let it go, schmee. Pronouncements about what is or isn't right by anyone with the word "fashion" in their username aren't really worth taking all that seriously.
The Buddha's teaching would never support this idolatry. But Buddhism has evolved over the centuries to include many local non-Buddhist customs (just like Christians have Christmas trees). Personally I don't see any value in this golden mummy but at least they are not doing any harm (except to logic & their pocketbooks).
