The festival of Segaki is held every Autumn in the larger temples of our order, usually in October. Gaki means Hungry Ghost in Japanese, and Segaki is the Festival of the Feeding of the Hungry Ghosts. The origins of the festival go back to the time of the Buddha, when the Buddha’s disciple Maudgalyayana (Pali: Moggallāna) wanted to rescue his mother from the Hungry Ghost Realm where she had been reborn, and asked the Buddha’s help to do so.

The story of Maudgalyayana rescuing his mother is told in the Ullambana Sutra:

This is what I heard, at one time the Buddha was living at Shravasti in Anathapindika’s Park. One of the Buddha’s chief disciples, the Venerable Maudgalyayana, had deepened his practice to the point where he had developed the Heavenly Eye which can survey other realms, and he used this Heavenly Eye to look for his deceased parents, as he wanted to find out which world they may have been reborn in. Maudgalyayana managed to find his father in a heaven realm, but he couldn’t find his mother anywhere, and asked the Buddha for help. With the benefit of the Buddha’s guidance, he eventually found her in the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts, where she had been reborn.

Hungry Ghosts are beings who are unable to accept the nourishment which they need to sustain themselves, which can be understood both in terms of physical food and in terms of Dharma teaching. They are often depicted as having large bellies, which they are desperate to fill, but very thin necks which are too constricted to get any food down.

When Maudgalyayana saw his mother in the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts she didn’t have anything to eat or drink, and as a result she was just skin and bones. Maudgalyayana felt a deep wish to save her from this suffering in order to repay her great kindness in raising him.

Feeling deep compassion and sadness, he filled a bowl with food and travelled to the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts in order to give it to his mother. As soon as she received the food, she took some of it and raised it to her mouth. Before it entered her mouth, however, it turned into fire and she couldn’t eat it. Maudgalyayana cried out in anguish on seeing this, and quickly returned to the Buddha to tell him what had happened.

In reply, the Buddha said, “Maudgalyayana, your mother’s karmic tendencies are strong and deep-rooted. On your own you will not be able to liberate her from them. Your true wish to help your mother resounds throughout the earth and all of the realms, but even the Four Guardian Kings would not have the strength of practice to achieve this. If you wish to help your mother you must gather together the Sangha of the ten directions to offer the merit of their practice on her behalf. I shall now give you a Teaching of Liberation which allows all those in realms of suffering to leave their grief and pain, and to dissolve the obstacles caused by their past harmful actions.” The Buddha then spoke as follows:

“The fifteenth day of the seventh month marks the end of the annual Rains Retreat for the monastic Sangha, and is known as Pravarana Day. To offer merit for the benefit of seven generations of your parents and grandparents, as well as for living fathers and mothers who are experiencing suffering, you should on this day prepare an offering of hundreds of bowls full of different flavours of vegetarian food from the mountains, the fields and the sea. You should also offer incense, fragrant oil, lamps, candles, cakes and tea, all of the best quality, to the assembled monastic Sangha who have travelled from all directions to meet here.

“On this day, all members of the Sangha should gather together, whether they have been practising in seclusion in the mountains or beneath trees, or offering the Dharma to all beings; whether they have been living as monastics in temples or as lay Buddhists in towns and villages; all abiding by the Buddha’s Precepts and wholeheartedly practising the Buddha Way. All these virtuous members of the Sangha should gather together in a great assembly and with one mind receive the offerings of food that have been prepared.

“If these offerings are made in this way to the assembled Sangha, the merit of this great act of generosity will be dedicated to one’s present father and mother and parents of seven generations past, as well as other close relatives. All of these will be liberated from the three lower realms of existence; the Animal Realm, the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts and the Hell Realm, and they will receive food and clothing to support them in their practice. If parents are still alive they will receive wealth and great blessings. Seven generations of your parents and grandparents will be born in the heavens. They will be born by transformation, and will enter the heavenly flower light and experience great contentment.”

The Buddha then instructed the assembled Sangha who had come from all directions to recite mantras and vows, and to offer the merit of these for the benefit of the donor’s family; for seven generations of parents and grandparents. After sitting together in a period of meditation, the members of the Sangha then accepted the food. When they received it, they first placed it before the Buddha as an offering, and once they had recited the mantras and vows they then took the food and ate it.

When all of this had happened, Maudgalyayana and the assembly of Great Bodhisattvas were all very happy and Maudgalyayana himself managed to stop crying. The Buddha revealed that as a result of the offering of merit made by the Sangha, Maudgalyayana’s mother had now been freed from eons of suffering as a hungry ghost. Maudgalyayana knelt before the Buddha and said, “My own dear departed parents have received the merit and virtue of the Triple Treasure because of the generous offerings of the assembled Sangha. If in the future any of the Buddha’s other disciples make such a food offering, will they also be able to liberate their own fathers and mothers, as well as those of the previous seven generations?”

The Buddha replied “Yes, Maudgalyayana, they will. If female or male monastics, female or male lay Buddhists, kings, crown princes, great ministers, officials, cabinet members, or any ordinary citizens wish to make such an offering for the sake of the parents who bore them, as well as for the sake of seven generations of parents and grandparents, they should do the following. On the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month, the day of the Sangha’s Pravarana, they should prepare an offering of hundreds of bowls full of different flavours of vegetarian food from the mountains, the fields and the sea, and offer them to the monastic Sangha. They should wish that their present fathers and mothers have long lives free from illness, and without sufferings and anxieties. They should also offer the merit of this practice to seven generations of parents and grandparents, so that they too may be liberated from the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts, be born in a human or heavenly realm, and be able to practise the Buddha Way.”

The Buddha then spoke to all those who were present, saying, “Those disciples of the Buddha who wish to cultivate respect and gratitude for their parents and grandparents should bring to mind their present fathers and mothers when making any offering, as well as seven generations of parents and grandparents. For all their sakes they should prepare the many flavours of food which are described above, and give these as an offering to the Buddha and the Sangha. This is how they can repay the immense loving kindness of their parents, who selflessly raised and nourished them.”

Maudgalyayana and the four-fold assembly of disciples listened attentively to what the Buddha had said, and wholeheartedly put his teachings into practice.

This is the end of the Ullambana Sutra.

***

Over a thousand years after the Buddha spoke the Ullambana Sutra, this story became very popular in Tang dynasty China, and many variants of it emerged. Maudgalyayana was known as ‘Mulian’, which is the Chinese version of his name, and the story was often know as Mulian rescues his mother.

The Chinese retelling has many elements in common with the Ullambana Sutra, but also quite a few additional ones, and the story starts in the years before Mulian became a monk:

Whilst he travelled away on business, Mulian had given his mother some money with which to feed monks and other mendicants, but she had decided to keep it for herself. Soon after Mulian returned his mother died, and Mulian grieved deeply for her. What he didn’t know, however, was that she had been reborn in a hell realm because of her meanness and deceit. Once Mulian became a monk and developed the Heavenly Eye he tried to find her in all the different realms, and eventually discovered her in great suffering in one of the lowest realms of hell.

Mulian travels to that hell realm, where he witnesses the immeasurable suffering of the beings that have been reborn there. His own mother has been nailed down with iron spikes, and Mulian doesn’t have any way to free her. He asks for help from the Buddha, who gives him a rod to smash the walls of hell and release all who are held captive there. Unfortunately, Mulian’s mother is only released as far as Hungry Ghost Realm, where she is never able to get enough to eat as her neck is so very thin. Mulian brings her a bowl of food, but every spoonful catches fire just as she is about to put it to her mouth.

As in the Ullumbana Sutra, to rescue her from this realm the Buddha tells Mulian that he must provide a great feast for the monastic community of many different flavours of food. This must be done on the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month; the day on which monks end their summer retreat. Mulian prepares the feast as instructed, and as a result of this offering of merit from feeding the whole community, his mother is successfully liberated from the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts. Again she is not reborn in the Human Realm, but instead is reborn in the Animal Realm, as a black dog. Mulian then has to recite Buddhist Sutras day and night for seven days in order for her to be reborn, at last, as a human being again.

In this Chinese version, there is a great emphasis on the relationship between the mother and son, with Mulian’s mother calling him ‘my filial and obedient son,’ and Mulian sobbing with grief at her suffering. Some commentators even think that the story was deliberately adapted to emphasise filial piety, which was a very important aspect of Confucian teachings. There was a feeling in Chinese society that Buddhism was against filial piety, since Buddhist monks left their families and went to live in monasteries and so couldn’t venerate their ancestors in the traditional way. Mulian’s story was a way to counter this idea.

***

The story talks a lot about other realms of existence where beings are reborn, but perhaps the most important teaching is the open-hearted empathy that Maudgalyayana/Mulian has for his mother, and his willingness to make whatever offering is needed in order to help her. It is relatively easy to feel this for someone who is close to us, but the aspiration of the Bodhisattva is to see all beings in this way. We see that all beings suffer as we do, and we offer the merit of our practice to all beings, wishing that they may be able to realise the true nature of existence, that they may let go of their attachments and have calm and contented minds.

The different realms can also be understood as different states of mind, or states of being, that we can experience within our human existence. If we deliberately cause harm to others, for example, then we will feel separate and isolated from them, and as a result may find ourselves in a hell-like realm of our own making. Similarly, if we continually indulge our greed and anger, and act on our selfish tendencies, then we may feel like we are living in the animal realm, controlled by our urges, rather than in the human realm.

It is very easy for us to take for granted the life that we have, and even to complain about it when it feels even slightly inconvenient, or doesn’t live up to our ideals. But if we have experienced states of suffering that are far worse, then we are likely to be very grateful for the life that we do have, rather than complaining about it. There is a good example of this in one version of the story, in which Mulian’s mother, when reborn as the black dog, is very grateful even for this lowly existence. She says,

“Even though life as a dog is very difficult, nevertheless I can come and go as I please, and I can sit up or lie down when I want, unlike when I was nailed to the ground in a Hell Realm. If I’m hungry I can always eat human excrement from the privy, and if I’m thirsty I can drink water from the gutter. In the morning I hear my master make offerings to the Three Treasures of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, and in the evening I get to hear his wife reciting the Buddhist Sutras. Although to be a dog means to live in a realm of impurities, it is still a life of great ease and luxury compared with the sufferings of the Hell Realm, or the desperate unfulfilled yearning of the Hungry Ghost Realm.”

Next time we find our life uninteresting, or inconvenient, perhaps we should reflect on how much more difficult it could be for us, and the difficult circumstances that so many other beings are enduring. We are so fortunate that right here and now we have all we need to put the Buddha’s teachings into practice.

Sources:
“The Buddha Speaks the Ullambana Sutra” can be found at:

http://www.cttbusa.org/ullambana/ullambana.asp

There is discussion of the Chinese versions of the story on the following Wikipedia pages:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maudgalyayana
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulian_Rescues_His_Mother