Well today is one of those days in which I realize how out of synch I am with Gringolandia.

We are in the middle of the 盂蘭盆会Urabanna or Obono festival – or the Buddhist version of Dia de los Muertos. The Japanese version of this festival usually starts in mid-July and runs until until mid-August. The Chinese version 中元節 the Ghost Festival begins in mid-August or in the seventh month of the traditional, i.e. lunar calendar. The date mirrors the Dia de los Muertos since it needs to be seen as a southern hemisphere festival -- the November date is the harvest date for the northern hemisphere. Both festivals evoke, for me, on a very deep level the ur nature of this ritual and the deep unspoken connection between Mexican indigenous culture and Asia.

At this time of the year, I fondly remember Okinawa circa 1959 -- a time when I first deeply recognized this pleathora of unseen threads of connections between two seemingly different weltanschauungs. I can still see Omoto sensei beating the taiko drums during the Obon festival in Seattle while folks from the Japanese Buddhist Church danced in the street. The reality is that we are, after all, simply calaveras going about our foolish ways, cycle after cycle, just moments away from death or as Posada would remind us in his woodblock prints.

Bueno…………………………..as the Azteca poet escribo:

Do we speak something truthful here, Giver of life?
We only dream, we only get up from the dream.
It is only like a dream...
Nobody speaks the truth here...

Paz