How can remembrance and deliverance be cared for together after a loved one's death?

After a death, rites care for those remaining as well as the deceased. In our faith, soul retrieval, seventh-day observances, and deliverance help the deceased understand their condition, recover scattered energy, release concerns, and know that deities and Buddhas can accompany them. Filling dates and finishing recitations do not remove the need to care about people's hearts.

I understand longing. My loving grandmother died when I was in my second year of junior high. When my parents scolded me as a child, she protected me, and I had hoped to care for her as an adult. Later, after founding Sheng Zhen Men and helping people, I regretted that she had not seen it. Through practice I seriously explored her situation and understood through faith that she was learning in another world. My grandmother and YOYO's mother are two different relatives whose circumstances must remain distinct.

When YOYO asked me about her deceased mother, I told her religiously that her mother was learning beside the Bodhisattva. These experiences can comfort, but one story cannot establish every deceased person's destination. Find a place to express longing and gratitude. Farewell need not wait until sadness is entirely gone, and wanting to let go does not mean you cannot cry or remember.

We discussed Japan's wind phone, which offers a private space for unsaid thanks, regret, and apologies, entrusting longing to the wind. I compared such tangible expression with faith connections through incense and divination blocks. I was not claiming that the phone call literally reached another world.

YOYO often visited northeastern Japan for work. She described disaster memorials, tsunami-height markers, hotel footage of before and after the disaster and reconstruction, and local accounts of losing loved ones. Standing on that land deepened empathy. She felt surroundings and tangible rites could help people speak and release a little at a time. That was her understanding, not a claim that unspoken grief inevitably causes illness or that one rite cures everyone.

Families differ in religion, burial method, and arrangements. Respect the deceased and relatives' circumstances first. Accidental deaths sometimes require more careful understanding, rather than one fixed procedure. Families can use familiar scriptures or Buddha names to dedicate blessings toward a suitable destination, while properly caring for remains and receiving companionship themselves. Distinguishing remembrance from continually holding the deceased back takes time. Religion should offer settling and hope, not make families afraid that one wrong step will harm a loved one.

In discussing recitation and dedication, I also value relying on a familiar spiritual home. Deities and Buddhas regularly worshiped and learned from are more familiar. We request Sheng Zhen Men's Guanyin or Amitābha, making prayers specific. This is our practice experience, not a requirement that adding a place name is what permits blessing. Without a connection established during life, family can still gradually understand and help arrange matters.

From my understanding of separation between living and deceased, even well-intentioned relatives are not suited to continually attaching to the living. Their energies differ and may affect those alive. Let them go to a suitable place while love and blessings remain. This is my religious understanding, intended to settle both sides and let survivors continue living well.

I recall a client whose mother had died about twelve years earlier. Meals still included her bowl and chopsticks, and bathing and bedtime included speech as if she were present. Through divination and faith we explored this attachment and encouraged gradual release so she could go where she belonged. This concerned that particular state. Remembrance or worship alone cannot justify the same conclusion for every family.

It truly is hard to let go when family, including pets treated as family, leave. I understand. Encouraging release hopes to give those remaining and those departed a direction forward. It does not mean saying one sentence and requiring the person to stop grieving immediately.