A mendicant might wish: ‘When deceased family and relatives who have passed away recollect me with a confident mind, may this be very fruitful and beneficial for them.’ So let them (the mendicant); fulfill their precepts, be committed to inner serenity of the heart, not neglect absorption, be endowed with discernment, and frequent empty huts.
Ākaṅkheyya ce, bhikkhave, bhikkhu: ‘ye maṁ ñātī sālohitā petā kālaṅkatā pasannacittā anussaranti tesaṁ taṁ mahapphalaṁ assa mahānisaṁsan’ti, sīlesvevassa paripūrakārī ajjhattaṁ cetosamathamanuyutto anirākatajjhāno vipassanāya samannāgato brūhetā suññāgārānaṁ.
MN6
The succinct āsavanirodhagāminī paṭipadā in the second half is what led me to this qoute, but I thought it was remarkable with regards to the first half to reflect on how different the conception of the dead is in this passage when compared to our contemporary way of thinking, where we assume somehow that they can’t think about us because “they” are dead.
I’m fairly confident that when it talks about deceased family members it is talking about those reborn in the ghost or heavenly realms. Being able to spy on us from there is fairly straightforward Buddhist doctrine.
And I’m not sure who you are including in “contemporary,” but among westerners it’s not that unusual to find those who believe that relatives in heaven kind of “watch over us.” It may have more to do with wishful thinking than some specific belief about how the world works, though.
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But the tense that’s intended to be shown by the past participles petā and kālaṅkatā is ambiguous. Your quoted phrase could just as well mean that your presently living relatives will, after having passed away, remember whatever your accomplishments as a samaṇa were and of which they came to know while they were still alive.
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But doesn’t that imply the assumption that the dead (maybe only some dead?) have the cognative faculty of memory? Or is even that not implied?
It says somewhere (though I forget exactly where) that all opapātika beings can recall their former life. So that means all devas, asuras, petas and denizens of hell, along with some humans.
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