What do you want it to say on your tombstone?

Love --> Selflessness --> Purity --> Happiness

Would we find selflessness through love? Love is essentially a selfish emotion.

:)How about, I was the light which you now are!

Mostly referring to love for all so if you love all you will act selfless for the all and not yourself. You will be wiling to sacrifice for the many out of love.

Depends on what you mean by love. A mother's love for her child is anything but selfish - when her child is in danger, all sense of self is gone for her and all that is left is concern for the child.

Didymos Thomas,

I would say that the mother's sense of self is incorporated in or embraces the child, even the experience of compassion is an expanded sense of self. If one cannot see one self in another, one would have no compassion, no love.

I think you should ask a mother about that when you get a chance.

I am a father, works for fathers to!

Compassion is selfless, love is selfish. Compassion is love coalesced. So our intentions through this manner are virtuous in all respects being that of self benefit, and for other people.

Then don't sell yourself short with over-intellectualizing. Sense of self being incorporated - however you want to word things, the bottom line is that when you think your child is in danger, you stop thinking about 'Boagie' and are fixated on the child. There's no self in that, there's absolute concern for the child.

*edit* As for my tombstone:

What makes love seem selfish is that it is good for people, and they seek the good; but in love, no one considers their self without the other, or the other without their self. Just as with every form of relationship, people must sacrifice for the relationship, and almost always, what they sacrifice is part of their self, such as their immediate pleasure, or full control of their lives. So, few lose themselves in love, and many find themselves in love; but the self is blended with another, and the self is expanded in ones thought to two rather than one. Does that make sense to you?

On my tombstone? Maybe: Life equals death and crap equals fertilizer.
Or maybe: Get off my belly, and stay off my back.
Or maybe: Worms make a great garden and a smiling corpse.
Or maybe: I told you I wasn't going to put up with this bullshet!

love is what makes good people good, but you can give love to an ess whole; and it will not make him better, and yet, if you deprive a child of it, you can certainly make him worse. As with all things, enough is the magic number.
In a sense, bad people are bad because they cannot love, even themselves; and I know you have seen them, equally inclined to self destruction as injury to others. No, it takes a lot of strength to love, and courage. It is like loaning someone you think you can trust a great deal of money that you really need so they can go out of town and take care of business. If you cannot trust, you cannot love. You might understand that there really is no armor a person can wear that will protect them from the injury of love, but honesty is ones sole defense, because no one can be injured as much as the half hearted, those who try to hold back from total commitment, and investment out of fear. The reason for this is simple: The greatest injury we can bear is guilt, from knowing that we could have done better, or did wrong; but the next greatest injury is regret, of knowing in holding back out of fear, that happiness may have been cast aside forever. People have only one life. They may as well burn through it like a meteor. What is the point of being luke warm, half assed, or blindminded? There is only one girl who will work, and devotion is called for, and the greatest entertainment awaits lovers who love like the lovers of myths and magazines. Sure I am a romantic. No one on the planet has it as good as I do with my wife. People say I am lucky, and I am. But there is no limit set on my end of the relationship. I'm in for all or nothing.

Here is a tip Vid: If you can be rational about love, as you seem to be, you are not in it. Try to remember that while we talk of love as an objective reality we only know it subjectively, and none of us knows when we say love if we are talking about the same quality. We are not. Every two people are different, and every love relationship is different. Only those two people in love cooing sweet nothings into each others lips have some sense of whether they are talking about the same quality of relationship. There are a lot of people who speak love and mean hate. Beware of them, for their bite has no cure.

My Epitaph should read: This stone can love you more than I. Seek love and don't cry.

Since I will be cremated as 99% of the population in Asia is and scattered to the wind I guess it's not an option. However if I was for some reason stuck in the ground I would only have this to say: "What a waste of fertile land while so many of the living starve to death".

Fido,foreigner made a song on the subject. I don't know though, I think you sacrifice some level of cogency by postulating in poetic prose.

Chris,But seriously, this is a question I have never had a sufficient response to. What is exactly entailed in a Buddhist funeral? Specifically, what kind of emotions are displayed in a Buddhist funeral? When I was a freshman, my world religions teacher thought (so in essence didn't really know) that it was a removed and stoic affair. But somehow, I think given the nature of Buddhism, it would be different than that.

As in most religions funeral rights will vary depending on the group. Personally I am a Ch'an (Zen) Buddhist and I could care less about a funeral it's not like I get to attend the party and from my prospective dead is dead. Anyway here is a decent link to Buddhist funereal rights, it should give you a good idea about them.

Buddhist Ceremonies and Funeral Rites for the Dead

I want to be creamated and put in a coffee can. My mom one time told me she wanted to have her ashes used for a pottery glaze. Fertilizer is a good use for ashes(depending on the plant, there is lye in there, so soap is another thing).

Put pennies on my eyes and light the pyre. Scatter my ashes on the harbour by which I was born and from whose waters I feasted on fish. No engraved messages required.

I want a monument in chunky frosted glass - a statue of myself holding a globe in my two hands staring purposefully into the middle distance, 100 feet high - stood outside World Hall in Capital City.

Across the plinth I want it to say '...belonging to a species with a future.'