Closer to Kabunian and spirits

HAPPY WEEKEND

Gina Dizon

SAGADA, Mountain Province -- Here in this cultural-knit town and neighbouring  Besao, the Appais  revere  ‘inayan’ as an influencing  factor in  thoughts, acts  and decisions.

Inayan simply means don’t do anything bad but the local context is as notable and spiritual as one’s reverence to  the earth around  --  plants, rocks, waters  “inhabited” by  spirits  and Kabunian (God) who lords over everything.  

Along with reverence to nature, Appais in their community upbringing come face to face with rituals as they relate with family members, relatives, peers, and community from birth, marriage, death and in socio-agricultural practices.

One’s birth begins with a ritual of attachment to home and roots of where one belongs. The umbilical cord cut off from one’s navel and buried under the house or near the very home of one’s parents reminds one of remembering home, ancestors, community where one comes from.

Naming a child is again a ritual called  ‘gubbao’  -- the  giving of a name derived from a grandmother or a grandfather’s name  traced from a great- great- grandmother or a great- great- grandfather’s name; and so with acts guiding his/her childhood and practices during marriage and death keeping a person close to his roots and the psyche of his being.

And so a name taken from the very genealogical lineage of a person shall  let the person  know who his/her  grandparents  and  ancestors  are and  to keep them close to him/her as a kin, a clan, and a community. It is a plus factor to know that the good traits of a name derived from who formerly had the name  who may be  wise, industrious, kind, brave, full of laughter and wit, storyteller etc are traits  maybe passed on to the child.

It follows that from birth to marriage to death, it is a cycle of rituals that happens in the life of a person born in a cultural knit place where everyone knows everyone. A very natural and most genuine way of living and dying that is life to a person born in a cultural village.

Such that an act which happens not of the very nature and normal practice is questioned, negated and condemned. Along with this is the “inayan” of the matter for an act done alien to the very customary manner of why an act is being done.

Practices are meant to be done the true, natural and normal the way as the people normally breathe and not for something else.  

“Inayan,”  this very basic thought process ingrained in the mind of an iSagada or an iBesao revolves  around a distinct value of  what  is revered  as  a basis of  behavior  to preserve one’s person, family, clan  and community. A Christian may associate “inayan” with a similar practixe of “doing unto others what one wants others done unto you.”

This very thought and act of revering what is valuable  and is also related to material possession. What one eats and sleeps in  makes  a most distinguishable  aspect of the  being of a person living in a community which collectively considers what is sacred and practices  that have to be respected.

Practices done over the test of time by a people over a period of time have been done with the beliefs over nature and spirits as people conversed and moved around the unseen in the most intricate manner of being one with nature and spirits, thus the practice of rituals to bridge the gap between the seen and the unseen.  

For even God cannot be seen but His overpowering presence is not denied. And so with lesser spirits who have their own influence to matters that happen and challenges the realist who sees with his physical eyes.

Such that the very violation of a practice, a ritual most especially  is much revolting to see. A violation which could be a re-enactment of a death ritual equated to making lesser and diminished of value a time tested and long- time practice.

For one, the re-enaction of a death ritual by a foreign firm late July this year aided by an elder, the municipal secretary, and a lead  guide, that of  the conduct of a ritual, hauling  a coffin atop the rocks of  Baw-eng  at Echo Valley across Calvary Hill and no dead body to go along with it  was seen as most condemnable.

Even the legislative body of the town, the Sangguniang Bayan, has condemned this in one of their regular sessions for being violative of the peoples’ customary practices.