Who Is It That Comes Home at Obon?

The one you welcome at Obon is the very loved one you hold in mind.

Your own former life is also being memorialized by someone, somewhere.

Buddhist teaching and Japan's Obon customs do not contradict each other.

The equinox week (Higan) is not for welcoming ancestors, but for practicing the Buddha's path ourselves.

You may wonder how you can still welcome someone who might already have been reborn. Let me walk through the reasons step by step from the Buddhist scriptures and Shingon teaching.

"If they have been reborn, surely there is no one left to welcome at Obon." We feel that way when we picture a fixed core called a "soul" inside the body that slips out at death and moves into a new body. Once someone moves out, the old house is empty.

Yet Śākyamuni Buddha did not teach rebirth like that. When a disciple once claimed, "This mind that sees, hears, and feels is an unchanging soul that passes into the next life after death," the Buddha clearly rejected that view (Madhyamāgama, Sūtra 201).

To explain why, the Buddha used the image of fire. When you add fresh firewood to a campfire, the flame keeps burning. Yet no solid "ball of fire" jumps out of the old log to move into the new one; sparked by the earlier flame, a new fire simply lights on the fresh wood.

The continuity of life taught in Buddhism works the same way. No fixed package called a "soul" relocates into another body. There is no need to worry about tracking down "where a departed person's soul has gone right now."

Do our memorial offerings reach someone who has already entered a next life? The Ullambana Sūtra, the scripture behind Obon, answers this exact question.

Śākyamuni Buddha's disciple Maudgalyāyana once learned that his late mother had been born into the realm of hungry ghosts, a world of constant hunger and thirst. Unable to save her by his own power, he asked the Buddha what to do.

The Buddha told him: "On the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month, when the monastics conclude their summer retreat, set out food and daily necessities in vessels and offer them to the monastic community." Maudgalyāyana followed this teaching, and on that very day his mother was freed from suffering.

Directing the merit of our wholesome actions toward someone who has died is called ekō (dedication of merit). Preparing offerings at Obon, reading a sūtra, and inviting a priest are all acts of ekō. Whatever form of life your loved one may have now, the care and merit you send from here truly reach them.

Even so, the Ullambana Sūtra only states that our offerings reach the departed; it does not say that the deceased return to the house at Obon. What, then, does it mean when we light a welcoming fire and say, "Welcome home"?

When someone dies, we naturally feel that they have gone away to some distant place. In Shingon Buddhism, however, the living and the dead are never split apart into two disconnected worlds.

The central buddha of Shingon Buddhism is Mahāvairocana — Dainichi Nyorai, "the Great Sun." As the classical Commentary on the Mahāvairocana Sūtra explains, the sun in the sky still leaves night and shadows, whereas Dainichi Nyorai's light has neither night nor shadow and fills every corner of the universe at all times. Shingon views every living being in the world as an expression of Dainichi Nyorai's single vast life.

Both you who are alive today and the loved one who passed away are held within that one life of Dainichi Nyorai. When thick clouds hide the sun, our eyes cannot see it, yet the sun itself has not vanished. In the same way, someone who has died has only become unseen to our eyes; they have never vanished from the shared root of life that connects you.

Kōbō Daishi Kūkai expressed this connection in Sokushin jōbutsu gi (Attaining Buddhahood in This Very Body) as follows.

Shingon Buddhism calls this reality — "distinct beings, yet undivided at the root" — nini funi (two, yet not two). You remain you, and your departed loved one remains who they are, while always connected within the life of Dainichi Nyorai.

Lighting a welcoming fire at Obon and saying "Welcome home" is therefore not summoning a ghost back from a faraway realm. It is turning your heart toward a loved one from whom you were never separated, calling their name, and speaking to them. That is why the person you welcome at Obon is no stranger, but the very loved one you remember.

Next is your question: "If I too had a former life, is that former self of mine being memorialized by someone?" Those who saw you off in a former life surely joined their hands for you — and in Buddhism, memorials for your former life continue at this very moment.

Whenever priests chant the dedication verse at family memorials or Obon services, the liturgy always includes the phrase hōkai banrei or sangai banrei, meaning "to all departed beings throughout the entire world."

In other words, a Buddhist memorial is never limited solely to the ancestors of the household that requested the service. Every service also directs merit together toward countless departed beings whose names no one knows.

Whoever and wherever you were in a former life, you are still being memorialized through daily services held at temples everywhere. And whenever you join your hands at Obon, you too are offering memorial merit for someone else's former life.

Finally, regarding the equinox week (Higan): your understanding that it is "not a day to meet ancestors, but a period for drawing closer to the Buddha" is completely right.

Higan literally means "the far shore" — crossing from this everyday world of confusion to the Buddha's realm of awakening. The seven days of Higan in spring and autumn, centered on the equinox day, are dedicated to practicing the way across to that far shore.

Specifically, on each of the six days before and after the middle equinox day, we focus on one of the Six Pāramitās: sharing generously (giving), keeping our conduct upright (precepts), enduring calmly without anger (patience), making steady effort (diligence), quieting the mind (meditation), and cultivating clear understanding of how things truly are (wisdom).

Because the sun rises due east and sets due west on the spring and autumn equinoxes, this practice also merged with contemplation of the Buddha's realm beyond the western horizon, establishing Japan's Higan tradition.

Does that mean visiting the family grave during Higan misses the point? Not at all. Cleaning the grave, offering flowers and fresh water, and joining your hands in prayer is itself the very first practice — giving without seeking anything in return. Thinking of Obon as the time we welcome the departed, and Higan as the time we walk the Buddha's path — grave visits included — makes the difference clear.

The Head Priest's Answer

The one you welcome at Obon is the very loved one you hold in mind.

Your own former life is also being memorialized by someone, somewhere.

Buddhist teaching and Japan's Obon customs do not contradict each other.

The equinox week (Higan) is for practicing the Buddha's teaching ourselves.

Customs like the welcoming fire and Obon altar grew out of everyday Japanese life. Yet their foundation — that merit from wholesome actions reaches even those who have taken a new life, and that unseen loved ones remain connected with us at the root of life — comes straight from the sūtras and Shingon teaching.

Where our departed loved ones are right now, our eyes cannot see — and not seeing is completely fine. When Obon comes, light the welcoming fire as usual, set out offerings at the altar, call your loved one's name, and join your hands. Caring for them and turning your heart toward them matters far more than getting every ritual detail perfect.