NOBBYS
EQUINOX CELEBRATION
PRAYERS
FOR PEACE
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here for the Opening Address 2005
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here for the Opening Address 2004
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here for the Opening Address
2003
PRAYERS
FOR PEACE AND A CELEBRATION OF THE EQUINOX is held at sunrise around
March 22 every year. We forgather at 6:45am for 7:00am) at Nobby's foreshores
carpark for procession to Lighthouse for prayers, chants and readings
for peace from many World Scriptures and traditions.
A
set program is again complemented by an invitation to bring your own.
This event is designed to bring a much-needed balance to the World and
was inspired by the customs of two very different countries.
In
Japan the Buddhist Higan celebrates the beauty and balance in nature
and challenges people to bring that beauty and balance into their own
inner lives.
In
Iran the Equinox is celebrated as the World's most multifaith festival.
In almost every home a table is set with seven bowls filled with food,
seeds, coins, etc; two candles represent light and dark; a mirror reflects
evil; goldfish symbolise life ; and painted eggs depict fertility. Plus
Holy Books the Avesta, the Bible, the Book of Certitude, the Quran or
Torah according to the beliefs of the household.
In fact from time immemorial the Equinox has been a time for the religious
celebration of natural equilibrium and to this day the Equinox marks
the advent of many religious festivals throughout the World.
For
the AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINES it begins the Fruiting Season and many ancient
HINDU festivals occur then. For the HEBREWS it usually heralds the month
of Nisan and the Passover and while the ZOROASTRIANS celebrate the Persian
Naw Ruz the Japanese BUDDHIST festival of Higan begins.
Every
CHRISTIAN is aware that Easter falls between the equinox March 22 and
April 25. For MUSLIMS it often coincides with the Month of Pilgrimage
and on March 21-22 the BAHA'Is celebrate Naw Ruz as their New Year.
ALL
CAN CELEBRATE AND PRAY TOGETHER AND ALL ARE ENCOURAGED TO BRING SOME
BREAKFAST AND ENJOY THE BEAUTIFUL AUTUMN MORNING.
OPENING
ADDRESS
FOR
THE MULTIFAITH EQUINOX PRAYERS AT NOBBY'S UPON THE DAWN OF SATURDAY,
22 MARCH 2003 by Gregg Heathcote, Jodo Shin Buddhist.
Greetings friends of various faiths in good faith gathered here to offer
common prayers for peace at this significant time and place.
Let us together celebrate, for we meet in a location touched by great
natural beauty, before a landmark which is a distinctive and meaningful
emblem of our home city. Let us see and share in the light of Nobby's
here, once a steep offshore island, but now a long-standing causeway
crowned by a lighthouse guiding and guarding vessels arriving in our
harbour city from all over the world. Into the peace of such a port
may the many vessels of our faiths likewise safely sail.
Nobby's shelters the river's mouth. May we listen deeply and gratefully
to what the ancient river has to say. The body of water known firstly
to the local Aboriginal people as the Coquun, and then as the Hunter,
has flowed through and sustained countless generations living in its
great valley, of whom we are but the latest. After its long overland
journey the river water here merges with the incomprehensibly vast waters
of the Pacific Ocean, an immense expanse whose name literally means
the 'Ocean of Peace'. There is a wonderful, tangible sense that this
is indeed a place where our everyday world and a wider world intimately
meet.
We meet under a lighthouse at a time when so much of our world seems
to be foundering in shadows. We are all currently embroiled in one of
those recurrent periods of major crisis in international affairs, with
all the anxieties, animosities and bitter suffering that that entails.
In the midst of such a monumental battle for heart and minds it is wise
to remember that this is also a profound turning point in the natural
world, and a powerful time of spiritual opportunity, for now dawns a
day of equinox.
There are two annual equinoxes when the orbitting earth's axis of rotation
forms a right angle to the sun's rays. Sunlight then evenly illuminates
the planet's surface and all over the world day and night are of equal
length. In spiritual terms you might say that at these special times
all beings are quite manifestly equal under the sun. The equinoxes everywhere
denote comfortably temperate conditions, natural beauty and balance
in the trusty turning of the seasons. As such they are celebrated in
many traditions. In the Japanese Buddhist tradition, the source of my
own faith, the significance of the equinoxes goes deeper still.
The Japanese Buddhist festival of the equinox is known as Higan, a name
meaning the "other shore". Higan is thus a synonym for nirvana
and for the Amida Buddha's Pure Land of infinitely enlightening compassion.
Our world of ignorance and suffering is shigan, conversely meaning "this
shore". Symbolically the "other shore" is located to
the west while "this shore" lies in the east. On a day of
equinox like today the sun rises exactly at the eastern point of the
horizon and sets due west. The arc of the sun's transit therefore forms
a bridge of light between the 'shores' of east and west, directly spanning
the sky and the earth beneath. The opportunity is there then for people
to reflect upon where they stand on that bridge of light, to rediscover
the plain continuity of the ostensibly two worlds, and to refresh wholesome
relationships that help all on their way across.
The
attentive observance of Higan is above all the soaring sense of a time
when evenly irradiant light presents itself most vividly in our world
and when real peace is consequently most possible.
It is this sense that I pray now will lend wings to all our faithful
prayers for peace, returning to roost everywhere on this auspicious
day of equinox.
Namo
Amida Butsu
Gregg Heathcote,
Jodo Shin Buddhist
BAHA'I
BUDDHIST
CHRISTIAN
HINDU
HUMANIST
INDIGENOUS
JAIN
JUDAISM
MUSLIM
PAGAN
SIKH
SUKYO
MAHIKARI
TAOIST
ZOROASTRIAN
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