An airplane flies over the Higashi Honganji Buddhist Temple in Little Tokyo, in downtown Los Angeles during a break in the circumambulatory dancing around a central raised platform in honor of the dead. Obon is a summer festival honoring the ancestors that includes prayers and offerings in the temple, ritual dancing, and summer foods. There have been comparisons in popular media comparing it to Dia de los Muertos, but I think that is just a way of saying that it has a high otherness factor for anyone from a Protestant tradition. The idea of celebrating the lives of our dead loved ones during a revelatory festival with dancing, games, and summer foods is to me, far better than bleak and dreary mourning .
Timothy Dahlum 