The 西方极乐世界 in Buddhism is actually Utopia as we know in today's language, there is no definite form or image of the place. It is just the place where people want to be, away from the realistic world. It is where people can have what they want, and can not have what they do not want in the real world. It is to aid people in their securing of religion. As for the place, it is only in existence if you believe in it.
It is rather amazing how things work when something spreads to another area. The acknowledgement of beauty in the sound of Chinese words strung together arises when Buddhism spread from India to China. This is because the Buddhist believers in China wanted to translate the scriptures and thus realised that the way scriptures are chanted is nice on the ear. The scholars wondered about the workings behind the beauty of chanted scriptures and discovered that words (due to their different ways of pronounciation) put together in different manners can bring about different effects upon reading out.
In the long time ago past, there is no such thing as burial for the dead. It only started to develop when past sage feel that it is just too much to leave the dead body out in the open like that. And there is an evolution process from just covering it up until the soil is on par with the ground, to making sure there is a small hill of soil over the body. This is to help in identifying the burial ground of the dead, where the next generation can then visit to pay respects.
Now we only have 姓 and 名, unlike the people in the past with their 字 and 号. This is because 姓 and 名 is very important to a person, and it is disrespectful to call a person by their 名. Thus after the parents come up with the 名, they will come up with 字 which other people will address the person by. When the person grows up, he/she can come up with 号 which is what they hope people to call them by instead.
I believe most of us have come to realise the fact that our brain normally likes to take the less taxing way out of new things, thus we link confusing and difficult concepts with the easier and simpler concepts which we already know. This can also explains the formation of prototypes (aka stereotypes). The way our brain works is good in the scientific sense as things can be more effective and efficient but the down side of this is the negative connotations which people associate with certain prototypes (like cancer equates to death thus should be shunned), bad impact on the emotional landscape among people.
11:09 AM
Yours Truly
A little girl
learning to live in a big big world
and trying not to give up things she believes in despite everything
