(written on March 20th, 2010)
The spring equinox is the day where the sun’s angle (latitude&longitude) is at zero. It is a “beginning.”
It is a day to celebrate the sun and a perfect day to give thoughts to your ancestors. The tradition has been to pay a visit to your ancestral grave on this day. But it was originally a day to send gratitude to the sun. So it will give good means to pay a visit to a shrine on this day.
Visiting a shrine should really be about sun worship. That is the original idea. Worshiping a deified spirit, a spirit that has characters like a human being, has been going on in the last few thousand years. It is a pity that the original idea of worship has degenerated. The original religious idea was to simply pay respect to the Great Nature by sending gratitude. Humans started to grow ego more and more and desired personal gains. This resulted in worshipping deified spirits. However, in truth, this has strayed many people from the right path and no true spiritually power will come through worshipping these spirits who used to be humans.
The spiritual power becomes more effective when the sun worship and ancestral worship is practiced in a set. Many people don’t have the time to visit a shrine on a daily basis. So you can do it at home. The most important thing is to simply make a habit to send gratitude to the sun and to your ancestral spirits on a daily basis.
Today the TV news was showing the people visiting their ancestral grave. I thought it was a very good idea to keep reminding people that the day of spring equinox is a day to send kūyo to ancestors.
1. One should be aware that one is here only because of one’s ancestors.
2. One should be aware and grateful that one is led to live through the existence of kami.
These two very simple awareness would make your life so much smoother. It will bring coincidences and good luck that no theorist could explain.
Ikashite-itadaite arigato-gozaimasu
Thank you for letting us live
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