Good morning. Wonderful, rainy morning. And let's see, the zendo is filled with all kinds of strange beings, and there also are people in costumes. So, welcome to you all. So today we celebrate Sajiki, and we'll have, the talk will be blessedly short, and then Sojin Roshi will conduct the Tsujiki ceremony, which is the ceremony of feeding all of the hungry ghosts and the wandering beings that migrate between our world and other worlds. It's part of a Japanese several day festival called Obon, which is usually held on a lunar schedule in the summer and that involves dancing and singing and feeding the hungry spirits, but it's more a way of remembering and welcoming and calling forth those who have

[01:24]

gone to another world or other worlds before us. So we do it generally around Halloween time, which has a certain logic. Halloween is a time in the darkening of the year, which marks this kind of liminal period between the light and the dark season. And so we've moved it to this time so that it sort of fits with the culture that's evolved here. But the ceremony that we will do is quite traditional and common, and you'll all have a chance to participate in it and to remember those who have gone on before us, and to make offerings. Everybody will have a chance to make an offering.

[02:26]

So tsujiki actually means the offering of food. And I just want to say a little about the legend and then invite you to sing a song. According to the original early Buddhist story, the Buddha's disciple Moggayana, who was the foremost in clairvoyance and supernatural powers, he dreamed of his recently deceased mother. Now the Buddha had lots of disciples and particularly the early disciples, each of them was foremost in something, you know, in wisdom or meditation or mindfulness or skateboarding or bread baking. Okay, you have to edit that out of the tape.

[03:28]

At any rate, we have two psychoanalysts in the front row. The Moggayata dreamed of his mother and the Buddha said he could see her in a realm where she could not eat or drink, where food would turn to fire and water would turn to blood. And this was the realm, she was in a realm of what we call hungry ghosts. Hungry ghosts are, the word is gaki, who are depicted as having long, very skinny necks and throats that are too small for swallowing, and large bulging stomachs, kind that you see in photos of people with malnutrition, severe malnutrition.

[04:51]

And so they could never get enough food in, So the Buddha said, well, he asked the Buddha why was she there? And it turns out that when Moggayana had left the lay world to become a monk, he gave all of his money to his mother and instructed her to use it to feed and benefit traveling monks who might come along, because each one of them was like her son. And it seems that she kept the money for herself and lived in luxury. And so that's the reason that she was reborn in this realm. But the Buddha said also that he said to Moggayana, you should go down there and feed her and release her.

[05:57]

And so Moggayana traveled down to this hell realm to try to rescue her personally. And on his journey, he broke the lock to this realm. And in breaking the lock, he made it possible for there to be a kind of jailbreak. And so all of the hungry spirits who were in this realm were free to come up into our world. And they're wandering about in this realm of women and men. Some of you have seen them. and some of you and some of us are them. And so this festival was designed to satisfy their hunger and to appease them and to feed them and bring them peace.

[07:02]

And to convince them to go to whatever realm they needed to be in. So we began to do this ceremony quite a while ago, and my Dharma sister, Vicky Austin, she explained that her memory is that it started to do it at the suggestion of Kopan Chino Roshi. I don't know if Sochin remembers that, but that's what Vicky said. And he thought it would be helpful Colvin thought it would be helpful for us to have a deeper relationship to what we see as the negative aspects of our life. Negative happenings, negative parts of phenomena. So what Shino Roshi said was, so this is a kind of reminding ceremony, expanding

[08:07]

our awareness to the darkness, awareness is expanded to existence which is unseen, unknown and unthought, because the negative is another positive side. He said awareness is already round and pure. So we can expand our practice of compassion in space as well as time with this ceremony. It's just a wonderful teaching. So awareness is already round and pure, and yet we do a ceremony both to acknowledge it and to be completing this act of roundness, so that we are included in it, so that all of us, all of what we think of as negative, all of what we think of as positive, it's all included in the totality of our practice.

[09:20]

So I'd like us to sing a song together, and then we will have our ceremony. You're looking lovely today. So this was written by a wonderful singer, Krishna Das, and he wrote it in conversation with Roshi Bernie Glassman for an occasion just like this. Calling out to hungry hearts Everywhere through endless time You who wander, you who thirst I offer you this holy vine Calling out to hungry spirits

[10:59]

everywhere through endless time. Calling out, you hungry hearts, all that lost and left behind. Gather round and share this meal, your joy and sorrow I may find. Calling out to hungry hearts We're no different in our way We all wander, we all thirst We understand there's no place to stay Calling out to hungry spirits

[12:01]

Everywhere, in your endless time, calling out to your hungry hearts, all of the loves that are left behind. Gather round and share this meal Your joy and your sorrow, I make it mine Calling out to hungry spirits Everywhere through endless time Calling out to hungry hearts All the lost and left behind, gather round and share this meal. Your joy and sorrow, I make it mine. Your joy and sorrow, I make it mine.

[13:05]

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