In Japan, it is August 13th, and Obon has started. In my house, we welcome our ancestors’ spirits on August 13th, and see them back to the spirit world on August 15th. The schedule might slightly varies depending on the area and Buddhism sects though.
While I was living in Japan, I used to hate the routine of August 13th. My parents would invite the Buddhism monk to chant a sutra for our ancestors at my parents’ house. Listening to the sutra chanting is just fine. I love it. The issue occurs after the chant.
The Buddhism monk turned back to us and search around the best victim to preach. I was the youngest female who was still single. He always chose me to be the victim of preach.
He would talk about me on how undutiful daughter I was, in front of my parents.
He was an old traditional thinking person. According to him, it is dutiful for children to have a good spouse and to have two children (preferably a boy and a girl). That is how we pass down our blood linkage, connecting from our ancestors to our descendants.
I was against his opinion. I didn’t keep quiet. I would always talk back to him some sarcastic comments.
In my opinion, human’s value cannot be evaluated by simple conditions such as married / single, or with children / without children. Such conditions are just a tip of icebergs that the soul chooses in their current lifetime. Nobody can judge other peoples’ life. We can judge only our own life after we finish this lifetime.
Besides, our ancestors’ spirits have much wider visions than humans. They never judge their descendants for not having their children. Because they know the physical family linkage is just this lifetime only. They have their own spiritual family linkage. Therefore, they respect each decedents’ free will and support them unconditionally.
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By the way, if I were at the same situation, I would not talk back to anybody else in my current age. I could talk back those days, because I was young and brave on speaking up my opinion. I kind of miss my younger days’ braveness in speech.
♬ Any feedback? (^^♪
three wisdom 