We are entering the season of wandering ghosts, tormented by insatiable hunger, celebrated as Sejiki in the Buddhist tradition. Our greatly westernized version of this is Halloween. In Buddhist lore these ghosts, called gaki, have escaped the gates of hell and are restless, continually seeking but never satisfied. Insatiable.
Is there anything in your own heart that fits this description? In our psychological culture, we reflect on our addictions, or maybe even just the vague feeling that something is missing, a craving that we are not quite able to satisfy. We have a world economy built on maintaining this dissatisfaction, and—to the extent that we only know the way of desire—we are caught in an endless wandering. It’s often what leads us to Zen practice.
In the upcoming Sejiki ceremony we offer rootless, restless disembodied beings candy to open the door to the sweetness of Dharma. It is an enactment that addresses a deep human longing to find healing and ease, and to comfort ancestral spirits and karmic hungry ghosts. We’ll be joining with Seido’s ZenWest sangha for a Saturday retreat to investigate unresolved karmic energies and then to celebrate this powerful ceremony out in the field, with the forces of nature and the turning of the season to lend power to this practice. Please join us.
Please note:
At the end of the ceremony, we read the names of all those who’ve died in the last year. Please send Mushin (abbydharma@gmail.com) any names you would like included in this reading, whether you are attending the retreat and ceremony or not.
