What are Hungry Ghosts?

Source: Lion’s Roar Magazine

Pretas, or “hungry ghosts,” are beings who are tormented by desire that can never be sated. They are often portrayed with tiny mouths and throats and the swollen bellies of the starving, meaning they can never consume enough to ease the suffering of their hungers

Pretas are described in many different Asian mythologies. In Buddhism, they are considered one of the six realms of cyclic existence (samsara), along with devas (gods), asuras (warring gods), humans, animals, and hell beings. Enlightenment can be defined as freeing oneself from these realms entirely.

Although the beings in them believe these realms are real, they are only subjective experiences created by mind. Each of the realms is characterized by a particular mental obscuration or klesha (see Buddhism by the Numbers). The preta realm is defined by attachment, and the truth that we can never end the suffering of unquenched desire, no matter how much we consume.

Because humans are not as solidly fixed in a particular mental state as other beings, our realm is defined by choice and the possibility of enlightenment. Moment by moment, we move from the bliss of the god realms to the anger of the hell realms to the stupidity of the animal realm. When breaks or gaps occur—spontaneously or cultivated in meditation—we glimpse the open, awakened mind that is always present but has been obscured by the fixations of the realms.

___________

“Hungry Ghost, Let Go of This Woman!”

– Renshin Buncej 

Zen priest Renshin Bunce tells the dramatic story of the time she performed a successful exorcism. The key was respect and compassion—for the haunted woman and the spirits

I doubt that many priests, let alone chaplains, have had the opportunity to perform an exorcism. I did once, and the best thing was—it worked.

A social worker called to ask me to help a young Japanese woman. She told me that the doctors were working on controlling the pain that came with the patient’s cancer, but the patient said that spirits had taken over her mind. That’s where the social worker thought I, as a hospice chaplain, might be able to help. I was glad that she trusted me, and I hurried to her office so we could talk about the case.

She explained that sometimes the patient was silent, head tilted, listening as the spirits spoke to her, and at other times she shouted in Japanese, apparently becoming the spirits and giving them a voice. She was living at home with her mother, who had come from Japan to take care of her. The spirits weren’t evil. The problem was their talking kept her awake all night. She and her mother were both exhausted.

I said that of course I’d do it—in fact, I had time to see the patient that very afternoon. I didn’t mention that, although I’d been thoroughly trained as a Zen priest, exorcism had never come up. But I felt sure I’d performed enough ceremonies that I could create one for the patient that would be convincing. We speculated about the cause of the phenomenon of the spirits, but what we thought in the safety of the office and what I saw when I entered the patient’s house were completely different.

I heard the patient before I saw her. She was at the end of a hallway, in the kitchen, howling and leaning forward on a walker, the top of her head pressed against the wall. I hurried to her, dropped my bag in a chair, and sat on the floor so my face was close to hers. I could see her arms quiver from the stress of holding up her body. Her face, when she turned it toward mine, was surprising; I hadn’t expected her to be so young and pretty.

I told her I was a priest, and that the social worker had sent me to help.

She answered, “They want to go to heaven.”

From this moment on, we were in her reality—and it was a relief to hear that the spirits were ready to go. Now all I had to do was provide a pathway for them.

I asked her whether she’d like to sit down. She agreed, and her mother and I helped her lower her body into a white plastic chair. I never learned why she had been standing in that tortured way.

She sat on one side of a large kitchen table. Her cellphone, wallet, pill bottles, notepads, Japanese newspapers, and other clutter were spread out before her. Her mother stood facing her, by the stove. She was a small, anxious woman, a long way from home.

I cleared off a couple of square feet on the short side of the table and said it would be our altar. I set out my ritual items: two fancy incense bowls filled with ash, a lit piece of charcoal in one; a candle; a figure of Manjushri poised to cut through all delusions with his sword; and a small figure of Kwan Yin, also known as Kanzeon, the bodhisattva of compassion.

I asked for flowers, and her mother rushed to the other room and brought back a vase with camellias and pine boughs. Realizing I’d left my bell in the car, I asked if they had one. They did not, and I decided to go ahead without it. What mattered now was maintaining momentum.

I cleared off a couple of square feet on the short side of the table and said it would be our altar. I set out my ritual items: two fancy incense bowls filled with ash, a lit piece of charcoal in one; a candle; a figure of Manjushri poised to cut through all delusions with his sword; and a small figure of Kwan Yin, also known as Kanzeon, the bodhisattva of compassion.

I asked for flowers, and her mother rushed to the other room and brought back a vase with camellias and pine boughs. Realizing I’d left my bell in the car, I asked if they had one. They did not, and I decided to go ahead without it. What mattered now was maintaining momentum.

The compassion of Kwan Yin was what we needed. I chanted, and suddenly the patient stepped toward me, shaking her head violently and yelling, “No! No! No!”

The rakusu is the garment that shows I’ve taken priestly vows. To begin, I put it on my head and said, as I have done hundreds of times when entering a sacred space: Great robe of liberation / Field far beyond form and emptiness / Wearing the Tatagatha’s teaching / Saving all beings.

I explained that I was going to perform a Buddhist ritual to help the spirits inhabiting the patient go to heaven. I asked the patient and her mother to do three bows to the altar with me. Lighting a stick of incense, I pressed it against my forehead and the foreheads of the Manjushri and Kwan Yin statues, and placed it upright in the first incense bowl.

Then I began chanting and putting pinches of incense chips on the red-hot charcoal in the second bowl to create clouds of smoke. The room began to smell wonderful. My voice filled the space as I chanted to Kwan Yin: Kanzeon / namu butsu / yo butsu u in / yo butsu u en / buppo so en / jo raku ga jo / cho nen kanzeon / bo nen kanzeon / nen nen ju shin ki / nen nen fu ri shin.

That is, in English: Kanzeon! At one with Buddha. / Related to all buddhas in cause and effect. / And to Buddha, dharma, and sangha. / Joyful, pure, eternal being! / Morning mind is Kanzeon. / Evening mind is Kanzeon. / This very moment arises from mind. / This very moment is not separate from mind.

The chant is simple and can be repeated endlessly. The compassion of Kwan Yin was what we needed. I chanted, waiting to see what would happen, when suddenly the patient cried out, rose from her chair, and stepped toward me, shaking her head violently and yelling, “No! No! No!”

A drawing of a skeletal figure with long black hair. 

Illustration from the Bakemono zukushi scroll, 18th or 19th century Japan, artist unknown.

She clutched my upper arms. I leaned forward and grabbed her above the waist to keep her from falling. I kept chanting. She kept shaking her head. Her short black hair, inches from my face, smelled clean and fresh. I somehow held her body with one arm so I could use the other to put more incense on the charcoal. The smoke billowed in the room and I spoke to the spirit, loudly, firmly, invoking all of the authority I had in me:

“You hungry ghost, haunting ladies on this plane, it’s time for you to be released. Follow the smoke to heaven! With this ceremony you can let go and your wish will come true! The time is now!”

She continued to shake her head. She cried out that he couldn’t let go. I was still bent forward, holding her. “Don’t be afraid!” I called. “You have courage! You know courage! Use that courage now to let go of this woman. Let go and go to heaven at last!”

Now, I can’t say how long this went on. Then, it seemed timeless, the two (or three) of us locked in this quasi-embrace, incense smoke and my voice filling the kitchen, her mother nearby, watching us, crying and wringing her hands.

My back hurt from supporting the patient, but I continued until she calmed. Then I signaled to her mother to move the chair forward so I could gently maneuver her into it. I pressed my back against the kitchen wall to ease the pain and continued the chant to Kwan Yin in a softer voice.

Finally the patient looked up at me and smiled. She nodded her head.

“Is he gone?” I asked.

“Yes.” Then she said, “But the others are still here.”

Oh. I hadn’t known that there were others.

I stepped back in front of the altar, threw more incense on the charcoal, resumed the chant in a louder voice, and called out to the lesser spirits, saying that they could follow the boss’s example and go to heaven. I told them this was their chance. Much more quickly this time, she nodded her head and said they were gone. I finished the chant, offering a dedication of gratitude. Then the three of us did three bows to close the ceremony. I passed the figure of Kwan Yin through the remaining incense smoke and gave it to her.

I was exhausted.

The magic I’d brought that day resided in my vow as a priest, in my beautiful Japanese ritual implements, and in my willingness to believe the young woman’s description of her reality. We trusted each other, and it worked. I phoned the social worker from my car to report on our success, and she and I cried together.

The following morning, I spoke to the patient. The spirits were gone, and she and her mother had been able to sleep through the night.

The doctors admitted her to the hospital that day and, to my relief, she was referred to the medical ward for pain control, not to the psych ward for the spirits that had inhabited her.

She died at home two weeks later. The spirits never returned.

__________

When Ghosts Come Back to Haunt Us

The rite of feeding hungry ghosts reminds us that good deeds cannot undo past karma, but we can still turn things around.

—Sallie Tisdale

The word segaki means “feeding the hungry ghosts,” and the rituals and practices done for this festival contain a great deal of teaching about training in Buddhism. (Hungry ghosts are called gaki in Japanese and preta in Sanskrit.) Segaki is a time for remembering the dead and resolving our karmic connections with those who have died. It is also a time for resolving our own internal karmic difficulties and for letting go of the obstacles and blockages we carry around with us. During Segaki, we call to all karma—our own and that of others—throughout the universe. Segaki is not about making karma go away. When we talk about “cleansing karma,” we sometimes have this illusion that we’re going to wash it all off and it’s going to go away. But what we really do is cleanse our relationship with it. We come to not being deceived by karma. We drop our old ways of responding and our old traps of habit energy. All these things that happened in the past are still with us in some respects. We acknowledge that; we call to them and find a way to respond to them.

The tradition is continued every year in Buddhist temples by making an offering on a table far away from any statue or picture of the Buddha or bodhisattva. For those who reject religious teaching, kindness is offered without doctrine—the truest form of generosity. During Segaki, we put doughnuts on the altar. The hungry ghosts can’t accept the dharma. They choke on it. A lot of people are that way. You try to give them religion and their throat just constricts. So you give them a doughnut. The profundity of that dharma is amazing: just give something. For an offering to be genuinely one of dharma, it must be given in forms that can be accepted. This principle applies to so many situations we encounter in everyday life. Such an action naturally expresses all-acceptance in a way that touches and deeply affects all concerned.

Segaki is a time of deep, personal spiritual renewal. Here, the main Segaki ceremony features an altar laden with food. The ceremony involves an invitation to all ghosts of every stripe anywhere to come join us—in effect, asking all the unhappy, unresolved karma in the universe to come to the altar to receive the dharma in the form of food. During the chanting and procession we offer incense, and the names of people who have died in the past year are read aloud. After the ceremony, we help the gakis by eating the food on the altar ourselves! Next, a couple of teenagers dress up as hungry ghosts and visit the Dharma School children, grabbing food and walking around with their shoes on. This annual visit always brings joy (and a bit of apprehension) to the little ones, who must teach the ill-mannered gakis the way to behave in a temple—and a little of the dharma, if possible. The closing ceremony, Segaki Toro, is done in the evening. It is an intense, symbolic ritual of cleansing. During the ceremony, a fire is lit in the fireplace. Slips of paper with the names of people who have died in the past year, along with the year’s transfer-of-merit cards, are fed to the fire. Anyone who wishes to can write down some karma or problem that they wish to let go of or cleanse, and one by one they put the slips of paper on the fire themselves.

The festival is said to have begun when Moggallana, a disciple of the Buddha, was plagued by dreams of his recently departed mother suffering in a world in which she could neither eat nor drink. Food would turn to fire and water would turn to blood or pus whenever it touched her mouth. Moggallana went to the Buddha and told him of his dreams, which tormented him every night. The Buddha explained that Moggallana was seeing the suffering of his mother in the world of the gakis. Gakis are usually depicted as having long skinny necks, with throats much too small for swallowing; and the bloated, bulging stomachs common with severe malnutrition. This imagery is a fantastic description of a spiritual state that can be seen every day, right here in the world of living women and men. It is a condition that everyone suffers from, to one degree or another, at some point in life. On the most spiritual level, it is the state of someone who desperately wants to know the truth but who cannot accept the teaching. He knows he is suffering and that religious practice can be of help, but he just can-not stop resisting and holding on to his personal opinions. Wanting the dharma, he goes to drink, but his throat will not open to accept it. Each time he tastes the teaching, it turns to fire in his mouth.

Moggallana’s dreams were due to his deep connection with his mother, and the Buddha’s advice to him was that he should make an offering to her of whatever food she could most easily accept and digest. This was to be done in a ceremony, dedicated in her name, at the time when the monks conducted their regular gathering to confess their transgressions. This part of the story shows profound wisdom and upaya—“skillful means.” Linking the offering for the deceased mother to the time of confession, the Buddha built a bridge for Moggallana to the mind of repentance and forgiveness, helping him let go of his own entanglements.

According to Chinese legend, Moggallana was accomplished in supernatural arts, and he traveled down to hell to try to rescue her personally. He broke the lock on the gate to hell, and because of this all the hungry ghosts in the realm of the gakis got loose and wandered about in the human world. The festival was then done to satisfy the ghosts and to convince them to return to where they needed to be.

After giving aid to his mother, Moggallana made a vow to once again enter hell. He vowed to do his own practice there for the sake of those suffering in that realm. “If I do not do so, who else will?” he said. He became a bodhisattva, an enlightened being dedicated to helping others, offering dharma to all those suffering in the netherworlds, before enjoying final enlightenment himself. To this day, he is venerated for this act of great compassion.

If you apply this process to yourself, looking at your own past actions as that which must be released, it is easy to see the connection between Segaki and personal karmic cleansing. The self of the past can become a ghost in the present. The concept of past lives is not just fanciful, and it is much more than a metaphor. We don’t need to go back years and into previous existences to do this. Just looking carefully at each day brings up all kinds of past karma and previous lives, because the past is, indeed, held in the present.

Looked at this way, what do we mean by past lives? I often use a simple example of a man having an argument with a coworker late on a Friday afternoon. After a pleasant weekend with friends, our worker returns to work on Monday in a good mood, feeling at peace with the world. Then he sees his adversary, they lock eyes, and in an instant the “self” from Friday is reborn on Monday. The “seed of predisposition” left over from Friday sprouts on Monday. This is the first of the twelve steps of dependent origination leading to rebirth on the wheel of samsara. The rebirth of former “selves” happens all the time, moment by moment, day by day, year by year, and these rebirths become quite obvious when we pay attention to them.

Gakis, hungry ghosts, are not the only ones to be remembered at Segaki. It is also a time to remember all those who have died, to be thankful for their having lived, and to give thanks for the teaching their lives give to us. It is also a time to let go of those who have died, to realize that their practice goes on in whatever form it now takes and that they do not need us pulling them back to this world through our attachments. By letting go of those who are now gone, we can also resolve the painful memories that sometimes linger to become the nuclei for a multitude of other problems. All-acceptance is really the key, for if we completely accept those who have died as they were, we can understand them better and offer them what they need to go on, which is quite often our forgiveness and blessing.