Thai Coffin Ritual

Wat Proman, a Buddhist temple in Thailand offers a deeply extreme and bizarre ritual for the living, a sense of the cycle of death and rebirth. This ritual is believed to help people solve their life's problem. The ritual is simple, participants just need to die, die in a sense; they have to lie in a coffin and be born again in a new life, free of bad karma.

Lying in a coffin, in Thailand is believed to bring good luck and free people of their torments, also to prolong life and prevent morbid possibilities throughout the life. Just think of relaxing in a coffin as a source of some remedy for your stress in life. The ritual involves participants lying in coffins while monks perform death rites on them as if they are already dead. This is then followed by a chant of new life. Many participants had said they felt as if they were reborn after the ritual – with all their bad karma buried behind them. Some claimed that the ritual helped fool the spirits that they’re already dead so they could start their new lives afresh like newborns.

There are also reports that participants met the spirits of their dead loved ones while they are lying in the coffin. Some people believed that lying in a coffin is a bad omen or sign making this ritual bizarre, but many Thai believers practice this tradition in a belief of good luck.

Some practitioners request their "dead body" to be bought to several temples in Thailand and be performed with the death rite, while they are inside the coffin.

"The Coffin" (2008)

This ritual is also featured in a Thai film titled "The Coffin"(2008).

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coffin