“I’m offering prayers of guidance,” the monk said as he opened a jug of water and poured a little into each cup. “Blessings that those lost to us might be treated favorably by the goddess Meng Po, whose task is to ensure that souls of the departed do not remember their previous lives. She does this by offering trapped spirits a cup of her five-flavored tea of forgetfulness—mai wan tong—the waters of oblivion. That the soul will forget everything from this life, and all the lives before. That the slate will be clean when she accompanies them to a long bridge of mist that the soul must traverse
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