Simplicity in Burial节葬

In Mozi's time, a noble's funeral was a display of wealth: nested coffins, gold and jade, horses and chariots buried with the body, sometimes people too. Mourning lasted three years, during which the dutiful son lived in a hut, did no work, and grew so weak he needed help to stand. Confucians saw this as filial devotion. Mozi saw the other side: what went into the ground was the living's grain, and what stopped for three years was the household's labor.

Lavish burial "buries the people's wealth." Prolonged mourning "forbids the living from working." The state grows poor, the population shrinks, order breaks down. And none of it does the dead any good.

His alternative was what he took to be the burial practice of the ancient sage kings: a coffin three inches thick, enough for the body to decay; three layers of clothing, enough to cover it; a grave deep enough that water does not seep in and shallow enough that no smell escapes; mourners who weep, go home, and return to work so the living can be fed. He called this "the way of the sage kings."

The heart of 节葬 (jiezang) is not disregard for the dead. It is responsibility toward the living. Real remembrance lies not in the size of the funeral but in how you treat the people and the work the dead person left behind. Mozi put benefiting others before benefiting oneself, and benefiting the living before benefiting the dead.

In practice at 墨门

• The simple memorial format. 墨门 publishes a memorial format: a gathering of no more than an hour; a reading of something the person loved or a passage from the Mozi; the care-pair partner tells what this person did; family and friends speak freely; then everyone shares a plain meal. No ritual, no display, no hired officiant.
• Caring for the living as remembrance. For the following year, the deceased's care-pair partner turns their care toward the family: helping with practical matters, keeping them company through the first holidays without that person. 墨门 regards this as the weightiest form of mourning.
• Memorial gifts to the care fund. We suggest that friends and family give what they would have spent on wreaths, banquets, and display to the 兼爱基金 in the person's name, to help someone in need. The fund's record notes "in memory of." That is the only monument 墨门 keeps.
• The moderation standard applies. The 节用 standard has a section on funerals with an "enough line." Going over it is allowed if you can say why.
• Every family's own way. 墨门 does not interfere with how a Mohist's family arranges a funeral according to its own tradition. We offer a choice, not a requirement.

Mozi called lavish burial and prolonged mourning "neither humane nor right, and not the work of a dutiful child." We believe the best farewell leaves the world the dead person left a little better than they found it.