(click image to enlarge)
See other photos of the Shingon Shu Obon this My Obon Album.
Last weekend’s (18-19 Jul) Bon dance at Haleiwa Shingon Mission was one of two that I felt invited to go to this year (that had become my criterion; if not invited, for Pete’s sake don’t go!). The other, and my original intention, is the Haleiwa Jodo Misson one this coming weekend (Jul 25-26). The Shingon lineage is the Japanese secret school, and they can be diplomatically sophisticated. I think it comes from their highly beautiful and effective protocols for dealing with the spirit world. So there were repeated announcements of their Bon dance at the Jodo Shu dance classes that I was attending, which wound up not only making me feel invited, but that I would be ethically defunct if I were not seen at that dance. The Jodo Shu minister and my beautiful dance instructor were also on the mission of me going there. I think they wanted me to get more practice for the Jodo Shu dance this coming weekend.
Last year, I had been intercepted at the bus stop on my way to Chinatown by a Shingon emmissary, with the advisement that I had been “missed” at Obon. She got summarily sent back to her handlers with the news that I had taken a vow never again to enter a temple polluted with human remains. But Obon is different. Since Obon is for ancestors, you can actually take the ashes into the temple on that occasion without ill effects. I even went into that Shingon temple with its resident ashes on this occasion, and the vibes were fine, unlike the pollution that I’ve experienced from this practice at the Jodo and Jodo Shinshu Betsuin in Honolulu.
Maybe Japan is different too. Maybe Japanese ancestral remains in Japanese temples on Japanese soil are OK. But human ashes in the main Buddha halls of temples doesn’t work in either China or America, and the result of this deviant practice has been that many of these temples have died, or are dying as I write, and I guarantee you that there is nothing that makes me more sick and crazy than the death of a Buddhist temple, even an heretical one, on American soil. This is absolutely not what we need whatsoever at all.
I think it would be fair to say that “a good time was had by all” at the the Haleiwa Shingon Shu Bon dance this year. Was it fun? Sure, for those who value successful diplomacy, it was plenty of fun. But for hoi poloi, some of it was kind of boring, I fear!
Namu Amida Butsu
Xing Ping
