Hello! Today and yesterday were two interesting days I suppose. It was my first time taking part in a 7th month prayers. To those who don't know, the 7th lunar month is also known as the hungry ghosts festival. It's celebrated in different names, for example Buddhists celebrate is as Ullambana, Japanese as Bon and for east asian countries, it's known as hungry ghost festivals.
Basically we believe that the gates of hell are opened in this month and there are many spirits roaming around earth. Spooky? Haha. Well in east asian culture we pray to our ancestors. So in this month we pray for the spirits who don't have anyone to pray for them (for whatever reasons). And for spirits who died suddenly, and so on. It's believed to cultivate good Karma to pray for them.
In the temple of my hometown we celebrated it by doing prayers and also having this food donation drive where people donate rice/noodles/food goods etc to make offerings for these spirits, and then they are donated for people in need. The prayers took two days, yesterday and today. Yesterday we began praying at 7 PM for about an hour and then continued today at 8 AM.
It was raining super heavily last night so there were not many people who attended the prayers. Only seven! Haha. I feel bad actually, cause I was planning not to go for the prayers today since it started so early T_T but last night one of the monks was like "See you tomorrow morning!" and I was like alright hahaha. Well with only 1.5 hours of sleep, I survived 5 hours of chanting and prostrations! :D
Anyway we chanted (I think) part of the Diamond Sutra and along with the name of about 300 Buddhas. For each name of a Buddha we did a half prostration, since we're kneeling on the floor. The ladies (on the left) will do a prostration, followed by the men (on the right). We take turn for every Buddha name. It was quite tiring. But I feel it was quite a meditative process.
And we chanted other Sutras too like the Great Compassion Sutra and Prajnaparamita. My habit of chanting every night for a year has paid off. I memorised them mwahaha.Then we went to chant in the room where there were offerings as well. Not sure how to explain it but I always feel like the room is very crowded even though there were only 7 of us last night inside.
Perhaps there are lots of other "people" inside the room. If you get what I mean.
We chanted from 8 - 10 AM for the first session, break for an hour, and then 11 - 12 PM, lunch break and then 1 - 3 PM. It was a great time chanting to be honest. Just hope that whatever we do today will bring benefit to all beings on earth. Especially in this month. May all being be free of Samsara!
Well if you ask me whether I believe in spirits and ghosts.... Yes I believe they are there. I've seen and experienced some unexplainable things before, and I believe in the afterlife. To whether they truly exist or not, like what I read from Faithfully Religionless, some things cannot be explained and it's really okay not being able to get the ultimate truth in this unexplainability (new word!).
So yup. It's such a Buddha-ful day today. New experience, and I'm glad to have joined in although I was planning not to (oops). Well perhaps it's my karma to join in! And it's my karma to cultivate good karma for them. May all beings be happy and wishing you a wonderful last week of August ahead! :D
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