April 8
Evil may find me some day, hell’s demons
and earth’s savage beasts surround me.
Illness may find me, and other sadnesses.
Age and death may find their way to me.
But Kuan-Yin can find me too. I am never
hidden from her goodness, from her compassionate
glance, her infinite blessing, her perfection.
She sees everything and answers every prayer.
I bow my head to her, in perfect reverence.
-Buddhist prayer to the goddess of mercy
Today in Japan, children are celebrating the Buddhist feast of Hana Matsuri by bringing offerings of fresh flowers and hydrangea tea to the temples. Even before Buddhism arrived in Japan, this was the time of the spring hill-climbing festival, when the new wildflowers were gathered and brought back to bedeck the house and the family altar, where portraits of the ancestors were kept. In this way, the deep connection between life and death is emphasized, for those ancestors have become part of the great fertility of the earth, from which the new flowers grow.
There is a certain sadness to every springtime, for there are loved ones who cannot delight in it. Friends, lovers, family members pass into the great mystery of death, yet spring comes as though they had never disappeared. For those new in the grief of love’s passing, springtime can be unbearably painful; each flower is one that the dimmed eyes can never see, each fragrance lilting across the air is one in which the lost one can never rejoice. But later springs bring comfort as well as renewed pain, for within each new year’s growth is a deep reminder of the way in which nature brings all beautiful things back into the fragile glory of life. Kuan-Yin, the goddess of mercy, is most active in spring, for that is a season when her people feel their losses the most poignantly.