Page 215 - Creating Spiritual and Psychological Resilience

184 Creating Spiritual and Psychological Resilence

remembering the true death of a man or woman is the denial of his or her
humanity and the wholeness of our interconnectedness. How might this
kind of ritual be helpful in disasters?

The O-Bon Ceremony

From my interest in Zen Practice and how to learn from bearing wit-
ness to suffering and disasters created by people, in July 2001 I traveled
to Hiroshima to train in a Zen temple, interview survivors of the atomic
bomb about their experience of resilience, and participate in their O-Bon
ceremony on August 6. Sixty-six thousand people died in August 1945,
when the atomic bomb was dropped. Each day I practiced meditation and
ritual at the temple, then I would head to “ground zero” to interview sur-
vivors. Through the interviews with survivors, it became clear through
shared answers that those who were able to heal and become whole again
were able to do this through shifting their understanding from the victim
to just a person to whom something terrible had happened as one event
in a full life. They were able to put it in context. When I asked them what
was helpful in their healing, the answers were also incredibly similar: to
tell their story and be heard at the yearly O-Bon ceremony. By telling their
story, they meant the whole story—the event, the story they created, and
the life they created from it.
One woman told me the story of being a little girl and losing everyone
she loved. She herself was badly scarred and deformed from the blast. It
was through the consistent loving actions of the temple priest who coun-
seled and prayed with her that she began to see that her other life faded
and she began to find the life of a young woman who deeply appreciated
that the cherry blossoms bloomed again and again, year upon year. Each
year at O-Bon, she gathers with her fellow hibaksha (ones affected by the
blast) and tells stories and chant together, and they write poems on paper,
light lanterns, and set them into the river.
The O-Bon ceremony is a Japanese Buddhist custom to honor the
deceased spirits of one’s ancestors. This Buddhist custom has evolved
into a family reunion holiday during which people return to ancestral
family places and visit and clean their ancestors’ graves. Each morning I
would see families in the temple graveyard talking and cleaning graves in
the temple cemetery. While traditionally the festival of O-Bon lasts for 3
days; these 3 days are not listed as public holidays, but it is customary that
people are given leave from work. What a delightful and respectful aspect