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The Chinese Ghost Festival Explained · Abide Meditation App

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Sponsored by ground News. This month, roughly one point four
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: billion people will prepare offerings for total strangers, offerings ranging
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: from fruit, to smartphones to fake paper money. Why because
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  Speaker 1: it's the seventh month of the lunar calendar and that
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: means it's time for the annual Ghost Festival in China.
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  Speaker 1: So the offerings are for ghosts of people you might
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  Speaker 1: not even know. But why go through all the trouble
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  Speaker 1: and expense for ghostly strangers? Also, does this mean that
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  Speaker 1: everyone in China believes in ghosts? Today we'll be talking
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  Speaker 1: about what the Ghost Festival is, why and how it's celebrated,
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  Speaker 1: as well as how it got started in the first place.
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  Speaker 1: Also known as the Feast of the Middle Prime or
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  Speaker 1: the Yulon Bowls Festival and Buddhism, the Ghost Festival falls
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  Speaker 1: on the fifteenth night of the seventh month of the
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  Speaker 1: lunar calendar. At the time of publishing this video in
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  Speaker 1: twenty twenty three, that's August thirtieth. On this day, all
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  Speaker 1: of the dead returned to earth, the righteous, wicked, and
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  Speaker 1: everyone in between, and ideally they returned to their families. However,
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  Speaker 1: since not every spirit has a family to return to
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  Speaker 1: or has an unfilial family that doesn't offer them sacrifice.
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  Speaker 1: People offer offerings for their ancestors and prepare offerings for
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  Speaker 1: any other ghost who happens to be in the neighborhood.
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  Speaker 1: Many cultures have similar Day of the Dead holidays where
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  Speaker 1: the spirits of the dead are temporarily allowed to return
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  Speaker 1: to the world of the living. You might be familiar
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  Speaker 1: with Dia delos Maertos in Mexico, or how some might
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  Speaker 1: say that the spirits come out to play on October
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  Speaker 1: thirty first, aka Halloween. Since Buddhism and Confucianism spread to Vietnam, Korea,
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  Speaker 1: and Japan, it's not surprising that those countries also traditionally
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  Speaker 1: celebrated a ghost festival on the fifteenth of the seventh month.
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  Speaker 1: For example, in Japan, it's called Oban. But today we're
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  Speaker 1: focusing on the Chinese version as part of our series
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  Speaker 1: on Chinese religions. So where did this festival come from?
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  Speaker 1: In the Confucian Analecs, Confucia says revere the ghosts and spirits,
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  Speaker 1: but keep a distance from them. This summarizes a recurring
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  Speaker 1: theme that we see throughout Chinese history regarding ghosts, the
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  Speaker 1: spirits of the dead, deserve respect, but beware of their
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  Speaker 1: ambiguous and potentially dangerous power. Since as far back as
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  Speaker 1: we have written records in China that's to say, twelve
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  Speaker 1: to fifty BCE, at least, the elites believed that their
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  Speaker 1: ancestors continued to exist after death as spirits. We know
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  Speaker 1: this because the kings of the Shang dynasty had beliefs
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  Speaker 1: and practices about ancestors and ghosts recorded on bones or
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  Speaker 1: tortoise shells. These are the so called oracle bones, a
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  Speaker 1: body of archaeological evidence critical for understanding ancient Chinese beliefs
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  Speaker 1: about ghosts. From the Shang oracle bones, we learned that
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  Speaker 1: ghosts were believed to cause illness to the king and
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  Speaker 1: his family. But we also learned that the spirits of
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  Speaker 1: the ancestors were powerful because they could communicate with D,
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  Speaker 1: the original ancestor and the most supreme deity at the time.
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  Speaker 1: Humans couldn't do this because D was too far removed
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  Speaker 1: to contact directly, So the king would make offerings to
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  Speaker 1: his ancestors and request that they in turn asked D
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  Speaker 1: for the rain to fall on their crops, or share
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  Speaker 1: insider information like whether or not the king would win
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  Speaker 1: an upcoming battle. Things changed a bit in the subsequent
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  Speaker 1: Joe dynasty. D was replaced by heaven as the primary god,
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  Speaker 1: and people made offerings of rice, alcohol, and meat to
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  Speaker 1: the spirits, placing them in specialized bronze offering vessels like these,
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  Speaker 1: which were often inscribed with the name of the giver
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  Speaker 1: and their good behavior. Confucius references people making sacrifices to
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  Speaker 1: the ghosts, but seems to admonish people from making sacrifice
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  Speaker 1: to a ghost that is not one's own ancestor, calling
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  Speaker 1: it an act of sickophancy. His criticism seems to imply
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  Speaker 1: that this is something that people were doing by the
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  Speaker 1: Han dynasty. In the early second century BCE, the belief
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  Speaker 1: that people lived on after death as spirits was held
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  Speaker 1: by people in all levels of society, and ritual experts
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  Speaker 1: such as shamans and exorcists were employed to either communicate
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  Speaker 1: with them or expel them. So from the Shong Oracle
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  Speaker 1: Bones all the way up to the Han dynasty we
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  Speaker 1: see evidence that indigenous Chinese religion involved giving offerings to
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  Speaker 1: the spirits of deceased ancestors, but also a concern for
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  Speaker 1: malicious ghosts that can cause harm. But why are ghosts
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  Speaker 1: bothering the living so much. Well, it's because they're unhappy ghosts.
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  Speaker 1: And there are many many reasons to be an unhappy
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  Speaker 1: ghost throughout Chinese history. Didn't get a proper burial, unhappy, died, unmarried, childless,
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  Speaker 1: or died violently. Unhappy, don't get enough offerings from your
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  Speaker 1: unfilial kids. Also, unhappy and unhappy ghosts are dangerous ghosts.
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  Speaker 1: Some feed on the vital essences of humans to maintain
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  Speaker 1: their own existence, which can cause illness or death. Others
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  Speaker 1: seek vengeance against their killers. Less overtly threatening ghosts beg
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  Speaker 1: for necessities. These are the so called hungry ghosts. Some
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  Speaker 1: may feel hunger and thirst, but food and drink burst
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  Speaker 1: into flames upon touching their tongues. The point is, all
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  Speaker 1: of these ghosts cause trouble or can cause trouble for
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  Speaker 1: the living in some way. The solution was to conduct
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  Speaker 1: sacrifices at special shrines dedicated to these unhappy and in
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  Speaker 1: many cases, unburied dead. These were accompanied by rituals designed
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  Speaker 1: to bind one soul to the spot while helping guide
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  Speaker 1: the other soul to the afterlife. Yeah, that's right, two souls.
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  Speaker 1: According to Chinese tradition, it was believed that a person
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  Speaker 1: had two souls, called the po and the hun. The
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  Speaker 1: Hun is the soul that goes onto the afterlife and
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  Speaker 1: has a nice time with the gods. The Poe is
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  Speaker 1: the more physical side of the soul that stays in
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  Speaker 1: the tomb and enjoys all those sweet things that you
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  Speaker 1: buried with the body. These concerns also probably became more
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  Speaker 1: urgent several hundred years later when traders from Central Asia
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  Speaker 1: started telling people in China about this new religion called Buddhism.
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  Speaker 1: With Buddhism came concepts like hells and reincarnation, which might
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  Speaker 1: have caused some concern before. In Chinese tradition, bad people
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  Speaker 1: were punished and the good rewarded by heaven in this life.
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  Speaker 1: But now people are saying that maybe there are bad
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  Speaker 1: things you can do that sends you to a bad
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  Speaker 1: afterlife one of many Buddhist hells. If you watched our
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  Speaker 1: earlier video on the subject, Buddhist hells can be pretty scary.
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  Speaker 1: There are cold hells and hot hells, and hells where
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  Speaker 1: you get stabbed a lot. We're stuck there, maybe for
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  Speaker 1: thousands of years, until you burn off those bad things
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  Speaker 1: and you get reborn and you're not guaranteed to be
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  Speaker 1: reborn as a human if the things you did were
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  Speaker 1: bad enough. The Ghost Festival emerged out of this encounter
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  Speaker 1: between indigenous Chinese religion and Buddhism. It dates back to
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  Speaker 1: the Tong dynasty and originally was a Buddhist holiday. By then,
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  Speaker 1: Buddhism was firmly entrenched in Chinese society, and a very
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  Speaker 1: popular Buddhist story seems to have inspired the festival, a
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  Speaker 1: story called Mullian Saves his Mother, which is found in
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  Speaker 1: the Yulon Pan Sutra. As the story goes, the Buddhist
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  Speaker 1: disciple Mullian discovers that his deceased mother is in the
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  Speaker 1: realm of hungry ghosts. Distraught by this realization, he asks
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  Speaker 1: the Buddha for help, who instructs Mullian to make offerings
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  Speaker 1: to the monks on the fifteenth day of the seventh
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  Speaker 1: lunar month in order to help her. The merit of
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  Speaker 1: this action would be great enough to liberate seven generations
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  Speaker 1: of ancestors from hell and grant them a better reincarnation.
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  Speaker 1: Mullian makes the offerings, and thus his mother is saved.
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  Speaker 1: We have evidence to the late five hundred CE that
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  Speaker 1: the Yulan Pen Festival was celebrated in South China, but
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  Speaker 1: gradually throughout the Tong Dynasty, the strictly Buddhist version of
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  Speaker 1: the festival and indigenous Chinese beliefs about ghosts were combined
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  Speaker 1: to create the Ghost Festival as we know it today,
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  Speaker 1: where everyone regardless of religious association or belief is expected
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  Speaker 1: to participate and many of the offerings are made directly
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  Speaker 1: to the ghosts, not only to Buddhist monks and nuns.
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  Speaker 1: A Japanese monk named Enin gives us a first hand
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  Speaker 1: glimpse of the Ghost Festival when he traveled toward the
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  Speaker 1: Tong capital in eight forty CE, and all of the
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  Speaker 1: Buddha halls, pavilions, and cloisters were arrayed displays. Their radiant
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  Speaker 1: colors dazzled people, and their offerings were splendorous. Everyone in
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  Speaker 1: the city had come out to perform the ritual tour.
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  Speaker 1: This snapshot from medieval China shows that people from surrounding
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  Speaker 1: areas congregated in cities where large seasonal markets popped up,
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  Speaker 1: kind of like what happened on major Christian holidays in
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  Speaker 1: medieval Europe. During the subsequent Song Dynasty, the Ghost Festival
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  Speaker 1: expanded to include all of the dead by incorporating new
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  Speaker 1: universal salvation rituals. For example, liturgies were dedicated to wandering
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  Speaker 1: spirits focused on the liberation right of water and land,
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  Speaker 1: an extensive ritual in Chinese Buddhism that aims to liberate
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  Speaker 1: beings from suffering. During this period, offerings were made to
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  Speaker 1: the Buddhist monks and nuns to generate merit, but also
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  Speaker 1: to pay for these liturgical services and prayers for the dead.
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  Speaker 1: In this medieval period, theatrical performances of Mullian Saves His
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  Speaker 1: Mother were also held. By the end of the nineteenth century,
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  Speaker 1: the Ghost Festival was a flourishing communal holiday throughout China.
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  Speaker 1: A Dutch ethnographer visited southeastern China during the festival in
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  Speaker 1: eighteen seventy seven and wrote a detailed account of what
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  Speaker 1: he saw. Offerings of incense, food and flowers piled on
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  Speaker 1: tables outside of houses, with monks leading processions throughout the
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  Speaker 1: city holding lanterns and banners while reciting mantras, and families
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  Speaker 1: feasting together in the evening. While the festival was suppressed
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  Speaker 1: during the Cultural Revolution in the sixties and seventies, it
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  Speaker 1: regained its position in the later twentieth century as one
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  Speaker 1: of the most important festivals in Today, many Chinese people
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  Speaker 1: consider the entire seventh month to be a free for
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  Speaker 1: all when it comes to ghosts, so sometimes you'll see
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  Speaker 1: the Ghost Festival described as lasting an entire month, and
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  Speaker 1: it's even sometimes called the Ghost Month, with the most
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  Speaker 1: important activities happening on the fifteenth day itself. In fact,
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  Speaker 1: someone's schedule might be filled with several overlapping celebrations throughout
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  Speaker 1: the entire month, sponsored by the government or private associations
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  Speaker 1: like clubs, minority communities, and businesses. In practice, this means
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  Speaker 1: someone might leave out simple offerings for the ancestors every day,
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  Speaker 1: but save the major offerings for the fifteenth Anything that
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  Speaker 1: brings pleasure is considered an acceptable offering, both actual and
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  Speaker 1: paper versions. Standard offerings include food and alcohol, but can
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  Speaker 1: also include flowers, paper houses, and hell money. Hell money,
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  Speaker 1: also called jos money, is imitation money made from paper.
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  Speaker 1: Generosity matters, and you can never give too much or
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  Speaker 1: too expensive of stuff To capitalize on this, Taiwanese supermarkets
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  Speaker 1: hold major sales during the Ghost Festival, and overseas, Chinese
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  Speaker 1: communities in Singapore and Malaysia as well as Hong Kong
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  Speaker 1: and parts of Taiwan. Entertainers put on shows for the
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  Speaker 1: benefit of ghosts. These shows could be popular plays or operas,
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  Speaker 1: but also could be things like pole dancing. I'm not
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  Speaker 1: making this up. Pole dancing for ghosts is a thing.
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  Speaker 1: All of the physical offerings from the larger events are
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  Speaker 1: given to the poor after the end of the day's ceremonies,
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  Speaker 1: while the paper versions are burned in a large bonfire,
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  Speaker 1: sometimes along with the effigy of the King of the dead.
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  Speaker 1: In some communities, people set off firecrackers to scare away ghosts,
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  Speaker 1: though firecrackers have been banned in some urban areas. Famously,
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  Speaker 1: Beijing banned firecrackers in two thousand and eight during the
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  Speaker 1: run up to the Olympics, but bands have been in
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  Speaker 1: place off and on since the nineties. Some might attend
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  Speaker 1: rituals at the local Buddhist monastery, where the monkst lead
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  Speaker 1: lay people in the recitation of the name of Buddha Amitaba,
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  Speaker 1: the most prominent Buddha in pure land Buddhism. In some monasteries,
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  Speaker 1: a portion of the offered food is ritually set aside
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  Speaker 1: for the hungry ghosts. Placed outside of the hall on
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  Speaker 1: a special altar. Monks and nuns may also recite Buddhist
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  Speaker 1: scriptures for the benefit of the dead. Here we see
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  Speaker 1: nuns performing the precious penance of the Liang Emperor, a
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: popular ritual during the Ghost month. Of course, with all
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  Speaker 1: these ghosts wandering around, there's some things you'll need to
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  Speaker 1: avoid to stay safe. Taboos range from region to region,
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  Speaker 1: but include things like avoiding swimming at night, hanging clothing
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  Speaker 1: outside at night, and whistling at night. In fact, just
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  Speaker 1: avoid doing things outside at night in general. Oh, and
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  Speaker 1: don't make any big purchases or life decisions that's inauspicious.
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  Speaker 1: The Kid's version of the South China Morning Post published
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  Speaker 1: a list of things like don't wear red or black
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  Speaker 1: clothing because spirits are attracted to these two colors. Or
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  Speaker 1: don't pick up a coin on the street because it
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  Speaker 1: could belong to an evil spirit or be used to
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  Speaker 1: possess a person. Pregnant women and infants are the most
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  Speaker 1: at risk of ghost possession, so if you can avoid
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  Speaker 1: being one of those things during the Ghost month, that
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  Speaker 1: would be great. The festival ends with paper boats and
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  Speaker 1: lotus shaped lanterns being released on the water to guide
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  Speaker 1: the spirits back to the afterlife. Some of these paper
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: boats can be extremely elaborate. This one, made in Malaysia
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  Speaker 1: for the twenty twenty two Ghost Festival was sixteen feet long.
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  Speaker 1: So does the ghost festival mean that everyone in China
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  Speaker 1: believes in ghosts? Scholars of religion don't generally like questions
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: like this because answering questions about belief in the supernatural
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  Speaker 1: can be very difficult to answer without a million caveats.
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  Speaker 1: This is especially true in China, where religiosity is famously
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: difficult for sociologists to measure. Now, sociologists have tried to
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: measure Chinese religiosity by asking whether or not someone follows
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: Chinese popular religion, but this is an academic category invented
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: by academics for academics. Religious practice as it's practiced on
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  Speaker 1: the ground in China is too complicated to put under
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  Speaker 1: a single umbrella like this, because there's generally no exclusivity
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  Speaker 1: in any of the Chinese religions. Popular religious belief in
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: practice have no set doctrines can vary by region and
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  Speaker 1: absorb and intertwine with elements from Daoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism. Moreover,
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  Speaker 1: China is generally characterized as a very atheistic society, but
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  Speaker 1: at the same time, rates of people participating in popular
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: religious practice like making offerings to ghosts are very high.
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  Speaker 1: As with any big cultural there are likely a range
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  Speaker 1: of responses to the idea of the existence of ghosts.
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  Speaker 1: What I can say is that for at least one
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  Speaker 1: month of the year, hundreds of millions of Chinese people
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  Speaker 1: act as if they believe in ghosts. So remember no
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: outdoor activities at night, leave plenty of food and you'll
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: have a great ghost festival. When it comes to contemporary
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• 13:22
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• 13:26
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• 13:30
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