Tonight, I want to talk about, actually, the events, special events we're having the next two Sundays. So this coming Sunday, we're having our annual sagaki ceremony to feed the hungry ghosts. a very traditional ceremony that goes back to the Obon Festival in Japan, and before that to China, which we do every year to honor those who've passed in the past year, but also to ease restless spirits. And so it's a very interesting ceremony. But I also want to talk about, well, read from a tale for the time being from Ruth Ozeki, who will be here the week after next, November, actually November 5th and 6th, Sunday the 6th here at Ancient Dragon, and Saturday the 5th in the afternoon at DePaul University.

[01:09]

So I'll start by talking about Her book, which, so Ruth is a Zen priest ordained by Norman Fisher, who's been here, priest in, teacher in Tsukiroshi lineage. Ruth is a novelist and a filmmaker and switches, shares her time between British Columbia and New York, where she's affiliated with the Brooklyn Zen Center, although she teaches now at Smith College. Massachusetts. This book is extraordinary. Some of you have read it. It's, as the title says, A Tale for the Time Being, has to do with the time being and Dogen's writing about being time. So the book has a lot of stuff about zen and being time and temporality. But it's a novel. There are sort of two main characters.

[02:13]

One is sort of an alter ego of Ruth herself, a character named Ruth who lives in British Columbia and is a novelist and finds washed ashore on her little island in British Columbia in a series of sealed plastic bags. Something that seems to have come from the typhoon that damaged Japan and that set off the Fukushima nuclear meltdowns and has a diary in it, actually a series of diaries. But the main diary is from a young Japanese girl named Nao, N-A-O, but also it's now. This is a young 16-year-old, 15-year-old girl who's grown up in Silicon Valley in California, but as the story is revealed in this diary, her father lost her job, they have to go back to Tokyo, and she's sort of displaced, and I know of other Japanese children who go back to

[03:34]

Japan and are outcasts because they're no longer Japanese. They're polluted by being grown up in a foreign culture, ours. Anyway, she's bullied mercilessly. So I'm going to give away some of the plot stuff and it doesn't matter. It's a really interesting book. There's a little Zazen instruction in the middle of the book. It turns out that In the middle of being bullied mercilessly, she discovers that her great-grandmother is a 104-year-old Soto Zen Nun, who lives on the top of a mountain in a monastery in northern Japan in the area where Fukushima is. And part of what happens in the novel, which is told through this diary that Ruth finds, is that now goes to visit her great-grandmother. And various things happen. So I won't give away everything that happens in the novel.

[04:39]

It is a novel, but there's also a lot of stuff about war and peace, relevant to Tom Hayden whose memorial service we just did, relevant to World War II, relevant to Japan and American culture, relevant to Japanese history, And also relevant to some of it, the part I want to read tonight is relevant to this ceremony we're going to do Sunday. So this sagaki ceremony, sagaki means to feed the hungry ghosts. In Japan now, they call it sajiki because sagaki means hungry ghosts, and hungry ghosts are one of the six kinds of beings in our world, along with humans and heavenly beings and asuras, powerful titans, and hell beings and animals. And hungry ghosts are always dissatisfied and very kind of pitiful creatures.

[05:43]

And in Japan now, gaki, meaning hungry ghost, has become a pejorative term for homeless people. So I think rightly so, Japanese Buddhists have stopped using that term because it feels like they're using the N word or something. But here, that doesn't mean that. It's not, you know. maybe for Japanese-American communities, it would have some connotation. So I still call it Sagaki, although at San Francisco Zen Center, they've used Tsujiki. Because I think the teaching about hungry ghosts is very relevant for us because we live in this consumerist society that encourages us to be endlessly wanting more. Anyway, all of that is prefaced to talking about Obon in Japan.

[06:46]

So we do a one-day ceremony where we call forth what we'll do this Sunday morning, and the children are welcome. And we have treats on the altar, which we share afterwards with the hungry ghosts on our seats. And we say the names of people who've passed in the last year. out of respect. It's quite an elaborate ceremony, including Dharanis to pacify restless spirits and to ease the suffering of the departed. And that's part of Obon, but Obon in Japan is a kind of a longer event. It's a couple weeks or a month in which, and it happens in the summer. We do it around Halloween because it has some of the same meaning as the original Halloween. But in China and Japan, they have observed that, at least in that part of the world, restless spirits do come back at that time of the year, in August, and varies a little bit from place to place.

[07:56]

So what I want to read from Ruth Ozeki's fascinating book, A Tale for the Time Being, is a few sections of Nao, this young Japanese girl, up on this mountaintop with her great-grandmother, who's named Jiko. There's one more nun up in this mountain monastery named Muji, who's Jiko's assistant. Nao is there for the first time on her summer vacation. So this is Nao talking. Sometimes I think that the spirits of the ancestors live in the breezes, and you can feel them swishing around. It was coming up to Obon, and the spirits were cruising about like travelers, arriving at the airport with their suitcases, looking for a place to check in.

[09:02]

Obon was their summer vacation too, when they could come back from the land of the dead to visit us here in the land of the so-called living. The hot air felt pregnant with ghosts, which is a funny thing for me to say since I've never been pregnant. But I've seen women on the train who are about to pop. And I imagine it must feel like this. They heave themselves around, belly first. And if someone is nice enough to give them a seat, they plop down. And then they just sit there with their legs open, rubbing their bellies and fanning their sweaty red faces, which is just how August feels as Obon approaches, like the whole round world is pregnant with ghosts. And at any moment, the dead will burst through the invisible membrane that separates them from us. When I wasn't sitting on the veranda zoning out, I was following Jiko around the temple, carrying stuff for her and bugging her with questions about our ancestors. How about Grandma Emma? Is she coming? Did I ever meet her? I'd like to meet her. How about Great Aunt Sugako and Great Uncle Haruki?

[10:05]

I'd like to meet them, too. Do you think they might want to meet me? I was excited because even though none of my dead relatives had ever bothered to show up for Obon before, at least to my knowledge, I had a feeling that this year would be different. First of all, I was in Ikki Sudama now. And as a living ghost, I figured the dead ghosts would feel more comfortable with me. So she's in Ikki Sudama because when she was being bullied by her classmates in Tokyo, Amongst the terrible, terrible things they did to her was they, right in her presence, had a funeral for her and posted it on the internet. So the description of the things she goes through is pretty dramatic anyway. So she considers herself a living ghost. And I figured, too, that they would be more likely to come here to Chico's temple, where everyone was expecting them and knew how to treat them properly, than to Sunnyvale, say, where the neighbors would simply freak and treat them like tacky Halloween spooks.

[11:06]

Jiko and Muji are awesome party planners, and we spent every Buddhist nanosecond preparing the altars and arranging the flowers and dusting and deep cleaning even the tiniest corners and cracks of the temple so it would be spotless for the spirits and ancestors. We also made different kinds of special food to offer them because they get hungry after their long journey back. And if you don't feed them, they might get angry. Food is a big part of Obon. In Japan, there are thousands of different spirits and ghosts and goblins and monsters who can do tatari and attack you. So just to be on the safe side, we were going to kick things off with a big osagaki ceremony with lots of guests, as well as priests and nuns from a nearby temple who are coming to help us feed the hungry ghosts. So that's the ceremony we're going to do Sunday, our little version of. Muji told me the story behind this about how back in the old days, Lord Buddha had this one disciple named Mokuren who got really upset when he happened to see his mother hanging upside down like a side of beef in the hell realm of the hungry ghosts.

[12:22]

He asked Lord Buddha how to rescue her, and Lord Buddha told him to make special offerings of food, which seemed to do the trick and which just goes to show that kids have to look after their parents' well-being, even when their parents are dead and hanging upside down from meat hooks in hell. Old Mokaron was a pretty amazing dude with lots of superpower, like being able to walk through walls and read people's minds and talk to the dead. I would like to walk through walls and read people's minds and talk to the dead. That would be cool. I'm just a beginner, but as you know, I think it's important to have concrete goals in life. And walking through a wall seems doable, don't you think? So she learns to do zazen when she's up on the mountain, and she decides that that's her superpower. Anyway, finally we had everything ready. And the night before the first guests arrived, Jiko and Muji and I took a bath together so we would be clean and extra spiffy. And I got to shave both their heads with a razor. Jiko and Muji are super strict about personal hygiene, and they never let their hair grow for more than five days, which is about an eighth of an inch.

[13:30]

Sometimes they'd let me help. I liked doing it. I liked the way the stiff little stubbles came off in front of the blade, leaving the skin all nice and smooth and shiny. Muji's stubbles were shiny, tiny, and black, like dead ants falling off a clean white page. But Oljiko's stubbles were bright and sparkling silver, like glitter or fairy dust. There's a prayer for shaving heads, too, that goes like this. As I shave the stubble off my head, I pray with all beings that we can cut off our selfish desires and enter the heaven of true liberation. That night, I was so excited thinking about the arrival of the ghosts, I stayed up until Muji finally made me go to bed. But as soon as she and Jika were asleep, I sneaked out again. I don't know what I expected. I walked through the garden and went to sit on the top step of the temple under the gate to wait. The stone step felt cold and damp through my pajamas. And all I could hear was the sound of the frogs and the night insects singing. Some people think that the night is sad because it is dark and reminds them of death, but I don't agree with that point of view at all.

[14:37]

Personally, I like the night, especially at the temple, when Muji turns off all the lights and only the moon and the stars and the fireflies are left, or when it's cloudy and the world is so black you can't even see your hand in front of you. Everything seems to grow blacker as I sat there, except for the fireflies whose tiny pulsing lights drew arcs through the dark summer air, on, off, on, off, on, off, on, off. The longer I stared, the dizzier I got, until I felt as if the world was tipping and pitching me forward down the mountainside into the long throat of the night. I put my hand down to touch the step to steady myself. But instead of the cold stone, I felt something prickly that moved like electricity under my hand. I screeched and pulled away. But of course, it was only Chibi, the cat, who had come out to greet the ghosts with me. He froze like a cartoon cat with his green eyes as round as glowing coins. But when I laughed and petted his electric fur, he pressed up against my knee and pushed his head into my hand.

[15:43]

Baka ne, Chibi-chan, which means, idiots, aren't we, dear Chibi? I said, my heart's still pounding. Even though I could barely make out his shape, it felt good to have him there. A gust of wind rattled the bamboo, and it felt like spirits moving. What would a ghost look like anyway? Would it even look human? Would it be big and fat like a daikon monster? Would it have a tremendously long nose like a red-faced tengu? That's a supernatural red-faced demon, one of the kinds of demons that's described in Japan. Would it be green like a goblin or disguised like a fox? Or would it be more like a headless man-sized lump of decaying human flesh with massive slabs of fat for arms and legs and a hideous smell? These ones are called nupepo. Muji told me about them. They hang around old abandoned temples and graveyards, and they enjoy long, aimless walks after dark. Maybe my dad was turning into a new Pepo. And there are other ghosts who look like dead human men with bad haircuts, whose bloodshot eyeballs pop from their sockets, and whose skin peels off their bones like lichen.

[16:54]

They are dressed in cheap polyester business suits, and they hang from trees like in the suicide forest, slowly turning. These are the ghosts that scare me the most because they look a little like my dad. And just when I was starting to freak myself out, I thought something settled beside me. I turned and there he was. Dad was sitting there next to me on the stone step. And even though his eyes weren't popping and he wasn't dressed in his business suit, still I knew that he was dead, that he had killed himself at last. And this was his ghost coming to let me know. And then there's a description. Well, OK, I'll read a little bit. Dad, I tried to whisper, but my mouth was so dry that no sound came out. He stared off into the darkness. Dad, is that you? And it turns out, so I'm giving away some of the plot, that her dad is named after his uncle, who had been a kamikaze pilot in World War II. So I'm giving away even more of the plot. But it turns out that Douglas is shaking his head, no, you've read this and you don't think I should.

[18:01]

Well, it's based on actual historical evidence. diaries that have come out from kamikaze pilots. Anyway, I won't say too much, but it turns out that a lot of the kamikaze pilots were forced to go into, to become kamikaze pilots. Some of them were actually college students, some of them were Zen monks, some of them intentionally did not fly into American ships. Anyway, I'll read one more section and then say a little bit more about, just in general, about this, this is also during the Obon season and now is again sitting at the top of this steep mountain with a steep set of steps and the gate is at the top of a long steep set of steps and she's sitting there in the gate looking down the steps and when I looked down to the very bottom of the steps I could see there was a ghostly monster climbing toward me

[19:29]

It looked like a gigantic brown and gray caterpillar. Tatari, I thought. Spirit attack. I jumped up and ran behind the pillar before it could see me, holding Chibi, the cat, tight to keep him from darting out. The monster had white spots and bristly bumps and lots and lots of legs jutting out to the sides. And it moved in a kind of winding, galumphing way, slowly rising and falling up the steep stone steps. I watched it, trying to figure out what it was. It was too slow to be scary. And at first, I thought maybe it was an ancient and very pathetic dragon. Sometimes temples have dragons, and maybe because Jika was so ancient, her dragon was too. But when it got closer, I could see that it wasn't a dragon or even a caterpillar monster. It was just a long line of very old people from the Donca, from the congregation. And from above, their round, humped backs and wobbling white heads looked like caterpillars' body, and their arms and their walking sticks looked like jutting legs climbing up through the darkness.

[20:43]

I ran back into the temple and announced that the guests were coming, and things went into overdrive, with Muji running around and bowing and showing people into the shrine room. Across from the main altar for Shakyamuni, we'd set up a special osagaki altar for the hungry ghosts, and all Jiko sat in a fancy golden chair. There was a whole bunch of chanting and praying and incense offering. And then Jiko unrolled the scroll and started reading all the names of the dead. So that's what we're going to do on Sunday. They were all names of family and friends that people from the Danka had put on the list, and the scroll was really long. And Jiko's old voice droned on and on. The room was still and hot and quiet, and nothing was moving except for the names. And it was kind of boring, but just as I was starting to drift off, something strange happened. Maybe I was half asleep and dreaming, but it seemed like the names were alive, like they were alive and floating through the shrine room. And nobody needed to feel sad or lonely. or afraid of dying, because the names were here.

[21:50]

It was a nice feeling, especially for the old people, who knew they were going to be names on the list very soon. And when Jika was finally done reading, everybody got a turn to stand up and make an offering of incense, which took forever, but was nice too. So anyway, that's a little bit about from A Tale for the Time Being, a little bit of now's kind of voice and a little bit about Obon and Sagaki ceremony in Japan. And it gives you the flavor of what it's like in these big temples. And one of the things she said, usually in a large temple, what they do is set up an altar opposite the regular altar, so it's a little complicated to do that here in our quaint little store front temple, but we would, do they do that at Green Gulch? Yeah, so they have the altar opposite the monastery altar.

[22:53]

Oh, because they have a big Jesus. The idea of it is that the hungry ghost might be afraid to show up on the main altar or to take food from the main altar where the Buddha is, but they might be willing to come to an altar opposite. So if we were going to do it that way, we would have an altar here and cover that altar. But we'll just have the hungry ghost come in. Our altar isn't that intimidating, I don't think. So they'll probably be okay coming in. We'll have little side altars with food too. So anyway, that's a little bit about what it's like in Japan. So we do our little version of it and we'll do that Sunday and then Ruth Ozeki will be here the following Sunday to talk more about, well, in her novel, it talks about Japan and about and the difference between America and Japan.

[23:57]

And she talks about time a lot. And so the thing about Buddhist nanoseconds and how I think there are 62 what they call kashinas in a finger snap. So somebody figured that out back in India a long time ago. Anyway, comments, questions about Japan or Japanese Buddhism or hungry ghosts or feeding hungry ghosts or ghost stories. Yes, David. A little louder, please. back to their home village. Everybody comes back to their birthplace. And it's a happy time. And that's the thing, you know what? Here I am at 4 in the morning, you know, oh, well, I'm pretty good then.

[25:02]

And everybody's actually happy. And they're going back and making all kinds of offerings and preparing special foods, which we are leaving in the offing for their ancestors to come back. And it's a really joyous time. It's like they're celebrating with the spirits That's the key. That's the key. Yes, that was my experience too in Kyoto.

[26:05]

I was living in an old house and there was a kind of alleyway next to it and they set up a Jizo altar. And there are Jizo altars all over, not just in old cities like Kyoto, but in Tokyo too. special altar and there was a priest who came and did a chant to Jizo, but one night there were, mostly there were old people living in the block where I lived, but there was a a ceremony where there were a bunch of old people, and Anne Overton, who comes and visits here occasionally when she's in town, she grew up in Chicago, lived near me, and we were sitting there with these old Japanese ladies with a mala of jizo beads. It was very, very, very long. There must have been about a dozen of us sitting around passing this one long mala through our hands in a circle around us and chanting.

[27:08]

And there were lots of food and cookies and so forth for the children on the candy on the altar. And then at the end of the two weeks or so, In Kyoto, there's this festival, big festival, and there are lots of these festivals that happen during the year, but everybody's out on the streets. And there are, so in terms of the fires burning away the names of the people so they don't come back, but there are fires on the hillsides, there are mountains on three sides in Kyoto. And the one in the northeast where I was, forget what the Chinese character is, but there's a big Chinese character burning on the mountainside. And also along the river, the Kamo River, there's wild dancing. So this is sort of the end of the Oban's season. Yeah, it's a kind of joyous festival to welcome and send off the dead.

[28:14]

Yeah, gratitude to the ancestors is very, very deep in East Asian culture. And it's part of our tradition, too, in terms of chanting to the ancestors and telling stories about the Zen ancestors. And we'll talk about it more when we talk about cultivating the empty field and practice period next spring, because he talks about it, too. Other comments, questions, or thoughts? Yes, Ben. It doesn't really have to do with Hungry Ghosts, although I guess in a way it does. And it's about the number 108. Oh good. And it has some significance in Buddhism as an auspicious number and inauspicious number. And actually while you were talking about Hungry Ghosts, three friends of mine, Should we look forward to 108?

[29:44]

It's an auspicious number, it's the number, it's also the number of, I think, well, okay, it's, I was told it's an important, this weekend by someone, that it's an important number in the Kabbalah too, because it's two squared times three cubed. So in terms of numerology, that's kind of cool. But it happens to, I think according to some, Abhidharmic thing there are, I forget what it's based on, but it's the number of defilements we have. And somewhere I can figure out what that's based on, but then that means it's the number of defilements that we can purify. So there happen to be 108 beads traditionally in a Buddhist mala. And I understand there are also 108 beads in a Catholic rosary. So we have a number of Catholics or former Catholics in the movement, I'm sure.

[30:44]

And it also happens to be that there are 108 stitches in a baseball. And 108 years since the Cubs won the World Series. So we'll see, starting tomorrow night, what happens. And we will be reciting the names of people who have passed in the last year and some venerable ancestors before that on Sunday morning. So we have a list of names. It's a long list. story that now talks about, but we can add more. So if you have people that you would like to add to our list, please just email info at ancient dragon.org and we will add them. Other comments, questions? So one of the things that happens in our ceremony is that we use

[31:51]

Sound. So bring percussion instruments if you'd like. Rattles and bells and we will bring forth the restless spirits. Yes? I haven't done that, but if you'd like I could do that. Is that something they do at Ringel? Okay, well if Steve did that, I'll work that in. I usually talk to them very gently and encourage them to come, you know. But okay. Okay, he's on our list, you know. So we'll see, maybe he'll show up. Any other comments or responses? So that's this Sunday.

[32:56]

And then the following Sunday, Ruth Ozeki will be here. And there's so much that's so interesting in this book. And she's written other books that are really interesting, too. And there will be books for sale here, just to plug that. Anyway, anything else before we close? It's a really cool book. I just finished reading it for the second time and it was even better the second time. Okay.

[33:30]

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