This is a great story, and I'm glad that a simple tradition helped comfort a fellow human. But while I do understand that most people likely do not take the religious reasons behind rituals too seriously, I find the following wicked:
> According to Buddhist belief, a baby who is never born can’t go to heaven, having never had the opportunity to accumulate good karma.
I'm no scholar in these matters, but almost every religion has some sort emotional torture built in for parents of miscarried/aborted children :(
The Mormons have a clever hack for this - on Fridays they have a group that "baptizes the dead" to make up for it. The true believers around here set great store by it.
> According to Buddhist belief, a baby who is never born can’t go to heaven, having never had the opportunity to accumulate good karma.
I'm no scholar in these matters, but almost every religion has some sort emotional torture built in for parents of miscarried/aborted children :(