Held a burial service of sorts for my wife’s parents, Richard (April 28 2018) and Mary (April 15, 2016) Buchin. My wife, Mary, and her brother, Robert, each read poems. For my part, I lit two sticks of incense and inserted them in the dirt in front of the cremains. Before reciting the Jiga-Ge verses, I read this excerpt from Nichiren’s Hōren-shō, Letter to Hōren, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Volume 6, Followers I,
Pages 56-57:

“As you read and recite the ‘jiga-ge’ verse, you produce 510 golden characters. Each of these characters transforms itself to be the sun, which in turn changes to Śākyamuni Buddha, who emits the rays of bright light shining through the earth, the three evil realms (hell, realm of hungry spirits and that of beasts), the Hell of Incessant Suffering, and to all the directions in the north, south, east, and west. They shine upward to the ‘Heaven of neither Thought nor Non-Thought’ at the top of the realm of non-form looking everywhere for the souls of the departed.”

After completing the Jiga-Ge verses, I chanted Namu-Myoho-Renge Kyo three times.

My wife’s mother was Japanese. She meet and married Richard Buchin in Tokyo in 1950. He was in the Army; she worked as a translator. Neither were Buddhists or particularly religious. Still, one of my favorite aspect of my Buddhist practice is the opportunity to transfer merit to the departed.

I have a traditional memorial tablet for my wife’s mother and a somewhat nontraditional memorial for her father.