Summer purification ritual: passing through the grass ring

Today is the summer solstice festival, a day to wash away the impurities of the first half of the year and pray for safety after summer.

It's nice to go to a nearby shrine and pass through the straw ring, but we can also hold a summer solstice festival at home.

Whether it's chanting purifying prayers, eating the Japanese sweet Minazuki, or cleaning the inside and outside of the house, if we do these things with feeling, all of them will become purifications and exorcisms.

Since I had already celebrated the summer solstice on June 21st, I didn't go to the shrine today. Instead, I chanted purification prayers at home and prayed for health and safety in the second half of the year.

I don't remember ever passing through a straw circle, so I'd like to try it once. I'm sure it would leave me feeling refreshed.

I thought it was a perilla leaf...

I found this while cleaning the gutters before the rainy season, and thought it was a shiso leaf, but it was actually a perilla leaf!

I ate it with chilled somen noodles and cold tofu as a side dish, but it didn't have much of a fragrance and I now understand why the texture was different.

Perilla leaves are shallowly incised, rounded, and red on the underside.

Perilla leaves had been shipped to the hometown market, and I realized that what I had replanted was not shiso but perilla, so I was glad to have the mystery solved.

When I searched, I found that shiso and perilla cross-breed well, and that they should be planted at least 200m apart.

Seeing is believing, so thank you.

Bhagavad Gita

Perhaps inspired by yesterday's Zoom study group, "The Search for God," or perhaps because it was raining, I picked up "神の詩", a Hindu holy book that I had purchased last November but had put away after reading only a few pages, and read straight through to the second chapter.

According to Edgar Cayce, there is a trinity of soul, mind and body. We are a part of the oneness, which is the vibration of life, and the mind is its expression, and the body is the temple of the soul.

Oneness: Whether it be Jesus Christ of Christianity, Shakyamuni of Buddhism, Krishna of Hinduism, or Kukai, the founder of Shingon Buddhism, all awakened human beings, across time and space, have realized the same thing and are saying the same thing.

It's not a question of whether we can do it or not, but whether we will do or will not.

Now that we know, all we can do is do it. In each place, without forcing ourselves, at our own pace and in our own way.

Live like you're dead. Always smile, and live that smile. These two words, which sound like opposites, are saying exactly the same thing, and it's a great thing to even realize that.

The only way to achieve spiritual liberation is to keep doing what is in front of us without worrying about the outcome.

We are not given any trials that we cannot overcome. Yesterday, Mr. Mitsuda gave us three tools to help us continue to strive to be mediums of love:

1.In order not to get caught up in phenomena, but to become a. channel for God's love, let us. stand firm in our determination. to cut off all unnecessary actions, emotions, and behavior and offer. them to the Lord.

2. Understand that the unpleasant. phenomenon ends here and that. this is the sublimation of karma.

3. Accept that you have been given. the ability to believe that the. Lord is always with you and will. always help you.

Mr. Mitsuda's guidance yesterday was appropriate and impressive.

I am deeply grateful for God’s constant guidance and blessings.

Life is beautiful

.

Life cures illness.

Life comes from God.

(by Edgar Cayce)

Spider plant

Yesterday, I found some Oritsururan at the local market and bought it.

I love the sound of the word "oritsururan" and the way its leaves sway in the wind as lightly as feathers.

I feel that it is one of my favorite summer plants, and is just as great a cool summer flower as moss balls.

I think I'll be able to get through this summer again this year by feeling the cool breeze from the orchid I placed on my windowsill.

I am grateful for the work of providence and guidance.