A DAWN EQUINOX ADDRESS AT NOBBY’S
SATURDAY 19 MARCH 2005

Shaku Jo’on Gregg Heathcote

Greetings friends and neighbours of, and in, variously good faiths gathered here once again to together celebrate this special time at this special place. Now four of our dawn gatherings have here seen in equinoxes and allowed us to reflect upon the spirited splendour of meaning that such auspicious natural events may entail.

Twice during its annual orbit the tilted Earth’s axis squarely faces the Sun’s light, and day and night are then evenly balanced all over the world. These equinoxes are thus times of a true equality under the Sun. They are also the impressing points of balance to which the turning seasons of life on Earth continually refer and inevitably return.

The sense of this deeply impressive natural balance is the beauteous sense behind the Japanese Buddhist festival of the equinox known as Higan. As I have shared with you before, ‘Higan’ means the ‘other shore’ and as such is a synonym for the world of enlightenment, a world in the depths of experience so palpably proximate to our own. Just as the Earth is at equinox, at Higan the moment is ripe for us to squarely face the real light of all our lives, however it might individually be seen ; to embrace the equality of all warmed within its brilliance ; and to feel the impress of the eternal in the pointed ephemera of experience. Higan’s inviting vision in this case is one of that ‘other shore’ of enlightenment illuminating and coming home to our own wide world, as is, right now.

When first we gathered for the equinox here in March 2003 the inception of the Iraq War was imminent, lending still greater significance to our proceedings. Peace in its broadest sense is yet a great work-in-progress which our gathering here, and tomorrow’s Palm Sunday congregations, and Monday’s Harmony Day events cannot but assist. May it ever in good spirits and in good faiths be so. Namo Amida Butsu.

Shaku Jo’on Gregg Heathcote
(NB Shaku means “Follower of the Sakyamuni Buddha”. Jo’on means “Pure Music”, describing the deep way enlightenment in beauty fluently speaks to us all)

Anangel Splendor passes by