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Thus why Master Sheng-Yen forbids his monasteries in Taiwan from doing funeral ceremonies.
… 16-year-old Sheng-yen was contracted out day after day to do jingchan or “rites of repentance and scriptural recitation” for paying laity. Usually this involved performance of the colorful Ceremony for Release of the Flaming Mouth Hungry Ghost (fang yenkou). In his autobiography, Guicheng (The Return), Sheng-yen recalls this period with special bitterness. He had already been a Buddhist novice for several eral years, but his family was too poor to afford the Buddhist robes that Langshan shan required them to supply at the time of his novitiate ordination. As a result, Sheng-yen continued to wear his tattered lay-clothing, over which he would put the ceremonial red-patched robes. Day after day, from morning to night, the young monks of Dasheng Monastery were dispatched to do funeral services at the homes of laity. Often they would be forced to run back and forth between as many as two or three different performances that were taking place concurrently rently at different locations. They were never taught the meaning of the litanies that they chanted; and there was no time for any other form of study or practice. tice. In the meantime, money came into the temple as remuneration for its work, but no one bothered to think of providing monks such as Sheng-yen with suitable able robes and equipment. To this day, he regards this kind of foshi or “Buddhist rite for the dead” as one of the most despicable degradations of the Buddhist monastic ideal and forbids his monasteries in Taiwan to engage in it as a means of financial support.
Master Sheng-yen. Hoofprint of the Ox: Principles of the Chan Buddhist Path as Taught by a Modern Chinese Master
Everything has Buddha-nature because it is all pervading and indiscriminate, hence why it is the fundamental nature. Drawing distinctions between things as has having Buddha-nature using the mundane mind is as foolish as trying to cut water with a pair of scissors.
Brahma?