Q.
What is the meaning of September 22nd,
the day of (O)higan?
A.
It is the day to celebrate the sun.
It’s around the autumnal equinox. The length of the day and the night becomes
just about the same. It’s one turning point of a season. At such time, it will
be easier to reach the ancestral spirits. The daytime = this dimension of
reality = the soul in a physical body. The nighttime = the dimension of the
spirits = the souls are hidden. In Ko-Shinto (ancient Shintoism), we believe
that the soul is eternal. And even after the death of the physical body the
soul lives. It is simply hiding in the dark (night). It returns at some point
just like the sun returns in the morning (daytime).
In Japanese
Buddhism, we celebrate this Ohigan as
a holiday. I believe it’s the unification of Buddhism and the Japanese idea in
the Shintoism of ancestral worship. There are only two days in a year when the
length of the day and the night becomes the same. So it is in fact very
special. Spiritually speaking, it’s a special turning point that is influenced
by the sun’s orbit. It would be a great time to send gratitude towards your
ancestors in such occasion.
The length of the day and
the night become equal in the middle of ohigan.
It gradually reaches to the middle and few days around this time is a perfect
time to send gratitude to your ancestors. The ancestral worship is to send
honor and blessings to them. Sun=Amitāhba(the one who has the infinite light)=
Amida-nyorai=Amaterasu-ohomikami. And when you send blessings to your ancestral
spirits the esoteric implication is that you are sending back the spirits to
their ultimate home, the sun. But the truth is that many of the spirits are not
able to return home because they still carry in their unconsciousness some
desires and/or attachments. The
energy of those desires is heavy and will be captured by the gravity from the
moon. It’s hard to explain by words, but many people are still sort of
strangled by their own wishful thinking. And those who were captured by the moon
will have to return to Earth once again and experience the opposite life they
had before. There are still many of our ancestors who are captured on the moon.
In the Western world, there is a legend that bad people would be sent to the moon.
The gravity from the moon
influences the great nature on Earth. But it also influences the lives after death.
The moon takes part in the development of the soul’s journey. The spirit body is
in fact an electro magnetic energy. Therefore, when you have any attachments or
obsessions, your soul’s vibrational frequency becomes rough. The rougher it is
the more influence you receive from the gravity from the moon. And you will be
captured. The moon is a perfect spherical devise created by the Great Spirit in
the super ancient time.
Let us send gratitude and blessings to our ancestral spirits
during this Ohigan time. When you heal your ancestors you heal yourself. We are
all connected and in oneness.
Ikashite-itadaite
arigato gozaimasu
Thank
you for letting us live
