The Educational Significance of Ye-su-jae

ABSTRACT

In order to escape from anguish of death, Buddhism provides a ceremony, called Cheon-do-jae. As one of Cheon-do-jae ceremony, Ye-su-jae is a preparation ceremony for death by accumulating merit for next life. It represents the world after death in order to teach death and afterlife to the living beings. It allows a person to experience the death in advance. As it contains the stories relating the enlightenment or satisfaction, Ye-su-jae can be identified as educational ceremony. This study analyzes the fundamentals of Ye-su-jae’s ceremonial procedure and the arising during the process. It explores the educational significance of Ye-su-jae represented by judgement and punishment, then the ways to foretell the death and its significance. After all, people, who have transformed through the experience of death, practically participated to Ye-su-jae and experienced the death through difference senses(sight, hearing, touch). In other words, a ceremony is a place and a tool to learn how to live better with structured expressions of gestures. This is Ye-su-jae’s educational design for life or the power of representation and recreation.