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(Holiday History) From harvest to haunting: How Samhain (like ancient Japanese Buddhist Obon and seasonal Mexican/pan-Latin Dia de los Muertos or "Day of the Dead" celebrations) became Halloween for wandering spirits, fairies, elves, ghosts, ghouls, and goblins.
OBON (お盆) or just Bon (盆) is a fusion of the ancient Japanese belief in ancestral spirits and a Japanese Buddhist custom to honor the spirits of the ancestors.
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| We'll be together again: samsara |
This syncretic Folk (like the Shinto "kitchen god") Buddhist custom has evolved into a family reunion holiday.
During it people return to visit ancestral family places and clean ancestors' graves because this is when the spirits of ancestors are revisiting household altars [like Mexican ofrendas prepared for the Day of the Dead].
- Buddha, how can the Living HELP the grateful Dead? Transferring merit to the dead
If only Buddhists could help the Dead
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| The Ghosts in Japanese Buddhist-Shinto art (Utagawa Kuniyoshi, c. 1850) |
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| The Buddha's chief disciple declared "foremost in psychic powers" among the monks Ven. Maha Moggallāna (comparable to the Buddhist nun Ven. Uppalavanna) saves his Brahmin mother from hell by transferring merits to her after she has died: "Mulian Rescues His Mother" |
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| Folk Buddhists pray soul out of purgatory (Silver) |
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| Day of the Dead, Mexico, 1995, cemetery prep |
Such a "transfer" is a physically enacted deed with its sharing done mentally. The recipient (or another relative stuck in a purgatory such as the realm of hungry ghosts) can receive this merit when they rejoice (feel gratitude, literally becoming the "grateful dead") due to the meritorious acts being done and shared with them on their behalf.
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| Ah, they remember me! I'm grateful for their help! |
This is necessary because in the realm (plane of existence) in which the recipient(s) have been reborn, the opportunity to generate beneficial karma by any other means is extremely limited or altogether absent.
In any case, the person offering, sharing, transferring merit produces more and more merit (wholesome karma). In Buddhism, sharing merit is seen as a far better alternative to mourning. More
The Grateful Dead of the afterlife?
According to bassist Phil Lesh, singer Garcia: "In that silvery elf-voice, he said to me, 'Hey, man, how about the Grateful Dead?'" [27]
The definition found in the Britannica World Language Dictionary is "the soul of a dead person...showing gratitude to someone who, as an act of charity, arranged their burial."
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| I'd be grateful for help when I pass away |
According to Director Alan Trist of Ice Nine, the Grateful Dead's music publishing company, Garcia found the name in the Funk & Wagnalls Folklore Dictionary, when his finger landed on it while playing a game of Fictionary [28].
In her Jerry Garcia biography Captain Trips, author Sandy Troy states that the band was smoking the entheogenic psychedelic DMT (also known as "The Spirit Molecule") at the time [29].
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| DMT: The Spirit Molecule |
Scholar Michael Kaler has written that the Dead's participation in those Acid Tests was crucial to the development of their improvisational vocabulary and to their bonding as a band, with the group having set out to foster an intra-band musical telepathy [34]. He says this coincided chronologically with adoption of the same goal by acid rockers Pink Floyd, Jefferson Airplane, and the Velvet Underground [35]. More
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| Ghosts in the past? Spirit of the Dead Watching (Paul Gauguin, 1892) |
- Holiday History (video); Crystal Q., Pat Macpherson, CC Liu, Dhr. Seven, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation) (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly Wiki edits
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