The Funeral of Humanity

At the end of 2023, I filmed the passing of a friend’s loved one—neither sorrow nor joy, just an extraordinary stillness. From a young age, I lived in a region where Hui and Han communities bordered one another; among them, I came to know the serenity that dwells within the Muslim faith: when everyone raises their hands together, palms turned upward at once, all the world’s inequalities—between rich and poor, noble and humble, class and caste—vanish. We cast off our masks and burdens, retreating to the most primal state of humanity. In that moment, we are truly one, for we are all the same—empty-handed yet utterly free.I haven’t read the book “The Funeral of a Muslim,” but I feel you can turn to it to glimpse the serenity of this religion.

In the Book of Genesis, God planted a garden in the east—Eden, a realm of abundance. Beautiful trees bearing sweet fruit flourished alongside all manner of birds and beasts. From Adam’s rib, God created Eve to companion him, and together they wandered through forest and meadow, living a life of effortless harmony and unclouded joy. It became humanity's archetype of paradise—an absolute purity unmarred by scarcity, hierarchy, or alienation.

In Islamic theology, a similar divine purity finds expression through sacred egalitarianism: "everyone" stands in absolute equality before the Divine, where lineage, wealth, and social status are stripped of all weight. Muslims raise their hands in prayer with palms turned upward before their chest, assuming an attitude of profound humility to signify earnest supplication and absolute surrender to the Creator. Open, upward palms mean one can no longer grasp worldly wealth or authority, willingly relinquishing control. Tibetan Buddhism similarly emphasizes “གཞན་ལ་དགེ་སྒྲུབ་བྱེད་པ” (gzhan la dge sgrub byed pa—facilitating virtue for others)—affirming that true spiritual merit is never a private hoard, but an unbundling of the self achieved by guiding others toward the good.

Humanity continuously crafts these grand narratives, even leaning on the "soft support structures" manufactured by modern spiritual industries to process systemic anxiety and rebuild life order. People rely on these narratives not out of blindness or ignorance, but as a form of psychological self-preservation and risk defense when confronting a vast, uncontrollable external environment. Yet, society has gradually drifted into this state where everyone is lost in nihilism, searching for direction. When narratives are reduced to commodities and faith freezes into dogma, these narratives become mere decorative sanctuaries, isolating human beings behind abstract concepts.

For in the bleakness of reality, we are all "centerless."

Once stripped of rigid faith, narrative becomes "centerless"—free from dogmatic constraints and unmoored from institutional power. Dislodged from divine patronage and stripped of genuine belonging, we drift as isolated components within a massive, indifferent machine. What people truly crave is not these floating narratives, but authentic human connection.

It is only when people discard their titles, guises, and prescribed scripts—like raising bare hands to relinquish control and defense—that genuine contact can occur. In that moment, when everyone raises their hands together, palms turned upward, all the inequalities forged by this world—wealth and poverty, status and lowliness, class and rank—simply vanish. We cast off our guises and burdens, returning to the most fundamental state of our shared humanity. Free from institutional intermediaries, commercial wrappings, or rhetorical ornaments, people who own nothing stand fully present to one another. Within each other's warmth and gaze, they embrace their shared vulnerability, discovering a freedom that is no longer isolated, but profound and real.

Yet perhaps even this insistence on "authenticity" remains perpetually unstable. In an age where even articulating pain requires borrowing language itself, we may never know with certainty whether we have truly unearthed the bedrock, or if we are merely wandering through the wilderness of nihilism, using our very hesitation and vigilance to forge a direction for one another.