A traditional chinese culture that is bound with religious beliefs and mystery, which falls on the fifteenth night of the seventh month in the lunar calendar annually.
This festival is widely celebrated by most chinese (usually Taoists) in Singapore and other countries, where the livings established this practice of
The chinese believe Hell is the first place to be after departing from the living world, as Hell is where the Holy Supreme Court of Justice is located where souls will be judged if you will be reincarnated, promoted to become a Deity in Heaven or to be subjected to torture and sufferings in Hell.
will be opened during this month of the year, as the Taoist chinese believe.
During this festival, the chinese believe that the dead become ghosts who wanders about
These spirits without descendants to make offerings to them are also fed during the hungry ghost festival. so that they may not cause trouble to the living.
This custom, a widespread of the traditional Chinese inclination of
‘universal love’, was originated after the legend “Mu Lian Saving his mother from Hades”, giving the Hungry Ghost Festival an element of filial piety, where this traditional value is extended to ancestors even after their deaths.
孝道
According to this legend,
a young and kind person, always ready to help anybody who was in need lived with his widowed mother who, during her living existence was regarded as a wicked and selfish woman who often turned away beggars who came to her door asking for food.
Mu Lian then, decides to become a monk and this did not please his mother and was being scowled by her as being an useless son who did not earn more money for her to spend or support her materialistic way of life.
Apparently, Mu Lian’s mother did up a plan to play a trick on the monks just to on them for taking away her son. Therefore, instead of offering vegetarian food to the monks, the mother slipped in some non-vegetarian items for the monks.
Specifically one version of the legend, this wicked woman was immediately
SENT TO HELL.
As a filial son, Mu Lian wanted to save his mother’s soul as he had visions of her sufferings torments in hell. Hoping to save and ease her eternal agony, he tried to make offerings of other comforts and food to her, but was distressed when he witnessed the further torments from these actions, where the food he send to her would turn into fire that would burn her and cause more sufferings.
Feeling hopeless, Mu Lian began to pray for his mother, and it is said that Buddha heard his prayers and was touched by his compassion.
Thus Buddha decreed that every month of a year, the gates of hell be opened so that the lost souls will be able to roam the earth and be fed by their loved ones. Where it falls on every 7th lunar month of the year, origin of the Hungry Ghost Festival.
Incense paper, offerings & wayang
Traditionally, during this festival, the livings will prepare ritualistic offerings of food, and burning hell notes and luxury paper-made products to please the visiting souls and spirits of one’s ancestors as well as other deities and “stray ghosts” to
accumulate some good karma.
Other activities includes, releasing miniature paper boats and lanterns in rivers to signify “giving directions to the lost ghosts”, performances such as “Getai”, singing performance as well as Chinese opera and puppet shows are performed to entertain these souls.
To appease the souls.
In actual fact, participants celebrating this festival are subconciously involve in the process of giving. We buy incense paper, fold them, we burn them, hopeful that it will reach to our loves ones in the other world. In turn, we gain virtue, we gain a filial heart and we gain an understanding from it.
As we fold a square incense paper, it loses its initial shape, we choose to give up its shape, and in turn, we gain another form from it, a form of a yuan bao.
We burn the yuan bao, we ‘give it’ to the souls in the other world. We share what we have to them. In turn our action gain us virtue.
this slogan literally means that as ones’ give and distribute rectangles/squares
gain oneself a heart. This phrase sum up my whole concept of the essential action of burning 方 (incense paper) during the Chinese Ghost Festival as “giving” where then 心 (heart) is gained, the core that included all the values and virtues attain from this activity.