Answering Questions About Spiritual Scams

After a series of traffic accidents and wallet thefts, someone received a purification at a local temple. Afterwards, they were told, "Your family karma is bad," and "A spirit that hasn't become a Buddha — from a suicide several generations back — is attached to you." They are asking about the connection between the accidents and thefts and this spiritual claim, and whether they need to visit the family grave more often.

Also, a friend who had been having persistent fevers and health problems consulted at the same temple and was told: "People in the year after an unlucky age are prone to serious illness," "The spirit of a felled tree is cursing you," "An old doll has accumulated psychic energy and is draining your vitality," and "The front of your house lies on a spirit path." They were also urged to buy expensive "purifying salt" to sever the bad karma. The question is: are these explanations and solicitations based on Buddhist teaching?

It's just spirits, or energy, or whatever. It's nothing.

That is a spiritual scam.

From here, we'll look at what the Buddha and Kōbō Daishi Kūkai taught, as keys to understanding how to come to terms with what happened.

The Buddha taught that people are born, die, and are born again — this is called "rebirth." But he did not say that "the 'me' I am now turns into a soul that lingers after death and moves on to the next life." A sūtra called the Madhyamāgama preserves an episode about exactly this point.

We think "this is me" as we see with our eyes, hear with our ears, think, and feel. In the sūtras, this activity — of sensing and thinking — is called "consciousness" (viññāṇa).

Long ago, there was a monk named Sāti. Sāti thought: "This very consciousness is the soul that passes unchanged into the next life. Even when it leaves the body, it speaks, feels, and receives the results of its actions." In other words, he believed, "Even after death, the self doesn't disappear." How did the Buddha correct this view? Read the passage that follows.

The Buddha's answer is the opposite of what Sāti thought. Consciousness does not exist on its own, beforehand. It arises when the necessary conditions for consciousness to function — such as the eye and a visible object — come together, and when the conditions change, its functioning changes too. It is just like a fire, which comes to life when fed with wood or grass as fuel, and goes out when the fuel is gone. So the claim that "the consciousness of someone who has died remains in the house as an unchanging spirit, causing accidents and theft" — this claim is nowhere to be found in this sūtra.

Then, if no soul transmigrates, how do the results of our actions continue? Buddhism teaches that it is not a soul that carries the results, but rather that our actions themselves become the conditions that give rise to the next results. Let's confirm this way of thinking in the Saṃyuktāgama.

The Buddha taught that our actions have results. But he did not teach that an unchanging soul carries those results. Read these sūtras, and they do not add up to a claim that "an ancestral spirit remains in the house, causing accidents and theft."

The claim that "an unattained spirit is attached to you" says that a person who has died remains in the house and is the cause of accidents and theft. Yet, as we just confirmed, the sūtras do not teach that the dead become unchanging spirits who remain in a house.

Remembering the departed, placing our hands together, and making offerings is a different thing altogether. At Obon and the forty-ninth-day memorial, we make offerings to the Three Treasures — the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Saṅgha — and perform "dedication of merit" (ekō), whereby the merit of those offerings is directed toward the deceased. This is not done to blame the deceased as "a cause of misfortune remaining in the house" or to drive them away. It is done to treasure our connection with the departed, and to turn the hearts of those left behind toward the Buddha's teachings.

Words that call a departed person an "unattained spirit" and label them a cause of misfortune burden the deceased and the surviving family alike with guilt and anxiety. The person who wrote to us was deeply hurt when a junior colleague who died by suicide was spoken of this way. There is no need to treat the death of a loved one as a cause of misfortune.

Next, we turn to the Unjigi (The Meaning of the Letter Hūṃ) by Kōbō Daishi Kūkai, the founder of Shingon Buddhism, to examine the habit of declaring that "invisible spirits caused the events before your eyes."

In the Unjigi, Kōbō Daishi called the view that "self," "person," and "sentient being" truly exist in all things "superimposition" (zōyaku). It is the habit of assuming that people and things have a fixed, self-sufficient essence that exists on its own.

Note: The term zōyaku ("increase") in the context of the "zōyaku goma" refers to a rite that prays for the increase of blessings, longevity, and so on. This is a different meaning from the "superimposition" discussed in the Unjigi.

The claim we are examining places an unchanging essence — a "spirit" — onto a person who has died, and makes it the cause of accidents and theft. That outlook overlaps with what the Unjigi calls "superimposition."

When frightening explanations are repeated to us, the words can lodge in our minds, making everything that happens seem terrifying. Kōbō Daishi illustrates this suffering with the parable of the painter.

The painter is frightened by the demon he himself painted. Kōbō Daishi's parable describes how our assumptions magnify our fears. When you hear a claim that "spirits are the cause" and feel your anxiety growing, it urges you to first question the claim itself.

You might feel that "what they told me sounds right." If someone gives you an explanation based on things they asked you earlier or things you told them yourself, it can feel as though they have seen right through you. But that impression alone does not prove the existence of spirits or determine the cause of misfortune.

Looking back on the accidents or thefts, if there is something you can be more careful about going forward, use that to prepare for the future. There is no need to keep worrying about things that are in no way your fault, blaming them on spirits or karma. Don't keep holding yourself or the deceased responsible for what happened — look ahead and keep living your life.

If you feel unwell, please see a doctor. When your heart feels heavy, talk to someone you trust or reach out to a counseling service.

When unease still lingers in your heart, the Heart Sutra teaches how fear comes undone.

The Priest's Answer

"It's fine. Just as even poop washes away when you flush it, all things pass and change. Bad karma doesn't accumulate in a house, and spirits don't come and attach themselves to you. If you ever meet someone who says that kind of nonsense, just think of it as stepping in dog 💩 and forget about it."

It is perfectly fine to distance yourself from a temple that tells you frightening things. Just because you had a frightening experience at one temple, there is no need to avoid all temples. Most temples are not places that use talk of curses or spirit afflictions to corner people. Don't blame yourself or your departed loved ones. If you feel unwell, please see a doctor. When your heart feels heavy, talk to someone you trust or reach out to a counseling service.

Truly, it's all right.