*** We will show our appreciation to our Buddhist statues along with celebrating Sakyamuni’s attainment of Enlightenment. Please have your statues ready on hand and I will bless via your screen. ***
Rev. Shoda Kanai holds ceremony marking Śākyamuni’s enlightenment under the bodhi tree.Today I attended the Nichiren Buddhist Kannon Temple of Nevada online service celebrating the enlightenment of Śākyamuni (traditionally marked on Dec. 8) and Rev. Shoda Kanai’s special blessing for Buddhist statues on home altars.
In Sacramento, Rev. Kenjo Igarashi incorporates a mass-blessing of home altars during the service held after midnight on January 1. While I brought my statues in to Rev. Igarashi to be blessed years ago, in Sacramento we don’t bring the statues in again each year and so I jumped at the opportunity to have Rev. Kanai’s blessing.
For the blessing ceremony I set my Nichiren statue on boxes on my laptop so that he could participate in the Zoom session.This is what we looked like to Rev. Kanai and the others on the Zoom session.Here are some of the statues others were getting blessed in the service.
