Santa Cruz Zen Center Zendo (also on Zoom)
 
The Sejiki Ceremony (or the Hungry Ghost ceremony) has two purposes. First, we remember people close to us who have died. And second, we invite the Hungry Ghosts of ourselves to be fully fed, fully welcomed, and fully nourished. The hungry ghosts of ourselves might be parts of ourselves that we don't like too much, maybe parts of us that we're little ashamed of and try to ignore or push away. By inviting them fully into our hearts, we are saying to ourselves, "I acknowledge my whole self, and I want to address the parts of me that might be harmful to myself or others."

The ceremony is a loud and riotous affair with drums, cymbals, and chanting. We will do this ceremony in the zendo, and filmed on Zoom. All beings in the Human Realm and in the Hungry Ghost Realm are invited. Snacks will follow.

“Our alienation from unacknowledged, rejected parts of ourselves is addressed in a ceremony called the ceremony of nourishing the hungry ghosts. In Buddhist cosmology, a hungry ghost is described as the state of mind of lost, wandering beings absorbed by endless desire. When we are in this state of mind, we look outside ourselves to be satisfied or confirmed. In this ceremony we invite all these hungry ghost parts of ourselves to come forth and be nourished. The enactment of the ceremony makes vividly real the turning to the dark, rejected parts of ourselves, as well as to the rejected parts of society, and helps open our hearts, inviting those parts into our consciousness.

We have to return to earlier states of innocence to do this practice of inviting forth the despised parts of ourselves. But it can be done. We never know when our practice will touch our own innocent heart”

(The Truth of This Life by Katherine Thanas, former abbot of Santa Cruz Zen Center, page 93).