Ancestors Ceremony
In the Divine Message of Return of the Soul to the Spiritual World it states, “All people must someday lose their physical body, but they do not die. Man is a child of God and therefore deathless. The form of your temporary existence will change according to your thought’s musical score. The temporary existence of all people will differ according to the differences in their thought. When a major change occurs in the form of your thought your temporary existence will manifest itself in another world and your physical body—the manifestation of your thoughts until now—will quickly disintegrate. People call this ‘death,’ but it is not death. It is as if Life has finished the performance of one musical composition on the strings of thought and turned to another.” Our true selves which are children of God will never die; therefore, from the standpoint of the True-Image World, death means just an end of one performance by a child of God. He begins another performance in a different time and place.
Human Beings Are Not Physical Bodies
To know that we are not physical bodies but spiritual existences is the quintessential reason for us to memorialize our ancestors. If some of these spirits didn’t realize that their physical bodies had died, they would still believe that their physical lives continue in this world. For example, classic literature, religious texts and world folklore depict ghosts who continue to suffer from their illnesses or injuries that existed before their death.
Since physical human bodies do not exist anymore in this physical world, the sufferings of human’s physical bodies should not exist. Then, why do ghosts suffer? Many spiritual communication dialogues describe the condition of spirits or ghosts who are still suffering in the spiritual world. This is because these spirits do not realize that they are children of God and that their physical bodies have already ceased to exist and became ashes. Therefore, those spirits need to be taken care of by others to be awakened to the Truth.
Those spirits who have not realized the Truth ask for help from their immediate family members or relatives in this physical world. Through memorializing our ancestors, these spirits will realize the Truth that they are already healthy, wealthy children of God as they are by reading the Holy Sutra at the memorial services. Reading the Holy Sutra is a great help for those spirits. At the same time when they realize their true selves, they will increase their spiritual power and help and guide their descendants like guardian angels.
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Two Important Things for Ancestor Service
We now need to clearly realize two reasons of the importance of performing the Ancestor Memorial Service. First, we are all children of God; therefore, in essence all spirits do not need to be memorialized. However, some spirits do not realize this truth, so for the secondary reason we memorialize them to help them to realize the Truth.
We also need to understand that there are two meanings of our everlasting lives. First, I already described earlier by quoting the Divine Message of Return of the Soul to the Spiritual World that we are deathless. Just like the possibility of musical arrangements is fluid and infinite, so are our thoughts that lead us from the phenomenal to the spiritual world to continue fulfilling lives.
Second, it means our lives are the result of our ancestors. We cannot exist without our ancestors. If one of my parents had not existed in this world, I would not have been born in this world. In the same way, if one of my grandparents or great grandparents had not existed, I would not have existed here right now. When I trace my family back to my great grandparents, I realize that 14 individual spirits exist. When I trace ten generations of my ancestors, I can statistically figure that there are 2,046 individual spirits. Likewise, I can figure, going back 30 generations, that there are 2,145,386,496 spirits. My current existence flows from my ancestors’ lives.
I would not exist today if one of my over 2 billion ancestors was missing. Likewise, my phenomenal life which is the expression of my everlasting life is not only my own individual life, but the unique infinite life endowed to me through the stream of the lives of my ancestors. So, I feel deep gratitude towards all of my ancestors who, along with God, are responsible for my existence, and my infinite life, and who provide me with enduring strength and support. Therefore, we must memorialize our ancestors to awaken them to their infinite individual lives and at the same time to show our gratefulness because our lives are a part of their infinite life stream.
Ancestors Memorial Service
Seicho-No-Ie memorial service
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The SNI memorial service consists of reading the Holy Sutra which contains the words of Truth. When you read it to your ancestors, you need to read it with great respect and gratitude.
Memorializing spirits who are unrelated
Oftentimes our members ask me questions like “May I memorialize a person who is my husband’s sister’s friend’s mother?” You may, but you should first think if you really need to do it. Founder Rev. Taniguchi uses a metaphor of a rich person to explain this. To memorialize unrelated spirits is like a rich person giving charity to homeless people. He can afford to support a few homeless people, but cannot help the entire homeless population. I once read a magazine which had illustrated that a rich man decided to give 5 dollars to each homeless person that he encountered. He asked a few homeless people to bring a friend the following week and promised that he would give $5 each to all of them. So, this rich guy prepared one hundred $5 bills for that day. When he opened the door of his home, about 3000 people had lined up in front of the door. This was a hilarious but sad story. I’m not sure if it was a true story, but it illustrates what I really want to explain here. There are many suffering spirits seeking to be memorialized so they can become enlightened. If an SNI member memorializes an unrelated spirit, potentially thousands of unsaved spirits will rush to be saved by this person. Therefore, at our Ancestor Memorial Service we basically memorialize our immediate family members who passed away on to the spiritual world.
If you are interested in our Ancestral Memorial Service, every second Friday at 7 PM we have Ancestral Memorial Service and everyone is welcome.
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