In August, in the majority of Japan, there is a 3-day festival known as Obon (or just Bon, but with the “O” as an honourary prefix). In some regions, Obon takes place in July, as a result of regional differences which arose during the change from Japan’s old lunar calendar to the Western Gregorian calendar.

During Obon, it is said that the spirits of the departed return to visit their families; lanterns are hung to guide spirits back to their ancestral homes, they visit family altars and their graves, where their living family feel able to communicate with them, update them on the news of this realm, and ask them for their ongoing protection from adverse forces. At the end of the festival, floating lanterns are placed in rivers and streams, and in the ocean, to help guide the spirits back to their world.

In addition to the opportunity for these family-oriented spiritual practises, Obon is a time for celebration, because the offerings made at family altars also represent those which set the spirit of a Buddhist monk’s mother free from an unfortunate state after she had passed; his joy at her liberation is celebrated in the Bon Odori, a hugely-popular festival of dance, which is a national holiday in Japan.

This combination of the opportunity to commune with one’s deceased relatives and make offerings to ensure their support in this world and their well-being in the next, and celebrate the entire process, is a heady mix, with which we are quite unfamiliar in the West. For Kendo, though, Obon is a fine example of a novel way in which Western people can conceive of their ongoing relationship with their ancestors, which is communicative, mutually-supportive, spiritual, and joyous.

Kendo would counsel that perhaps the most important aspect of an Obon perspective is that it is spiritually dynamic: the wisdom and benevolence of one’s pre-deceased family are considered to be ongoing and highly available, able to continue to serve the living as example, motivator, and even counsel in one’s continued striving for the highest expression of oneself on the earthly plane.

During this Obon, Kendo would recommend that you consider thinking anew of your family who have gone ahead of you from this life to the next; think of what they stood for, how they would comment upon your actions and situation now, and how you would make them proud of you. If you still your own mind sufficiently, you will hear them, and not yourself.

However, remember that the wise counsel of an ancestor may not be “all sweetness and light”! It may be that you need to re-think something, shrug-off old ways of acting or thinking, re-consider much, and even cast comfortable yet unproductive circumstances to the flames! During Obon, the objective wisdom of your ancestors could be your best ally in empowering, progressing, evolving your entire life: it’s an opportunity for the most profound and incisive reality-check on who, what, and where you are – the kind of radical approach that Kendo would always encourage.