Mmmm, earwax!
Sep. 15th, 2010 10:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gurdymonkeyNo, this is not about unfortunate flavors of Bertie Botts All Flavoured Beans.
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
baronalejandro mentioned today that September 19 is Remembrance Day or Segaki, and reminded us to feed the hungry ghosts. (The actual date varies depending on what region or flavor of Buddhist observance is involved. One local congregation near here does it around Halloween!)
The gaki (Japanese) or preta (Sanskrit) are not ghosts, per se. As punishment for greed in a past life, their karmic fate is to be reborn as creatures who are insatiably hungry, usually for such things as excrement or rotting corpses.
Don't click on the link which follows if you are easily grossed out. The Tokyo National Museum owns a 12th century Japanese picture scroll known as the Gaki Zoshi, or Scroll of the Hungry Ghosts. The scroll contains some incredibly detailed scenes of daily life, an aristocratic banquet with music, the birth of a child with the anxious father peeping in one door while a priest chants outside the other, even a scene of common folk relieving themselves on a street corner designated for the purpose. People go about their business, unaware of the desperate, grotesque gaki lurking next to them. (The earwax gaki appears in the banquet scene.) The Kyoto National Museum also has a Gaki Zoshi scroll from about the same period, which shows scenes of the gaki entreating Buddha and being fed their Segaki offering by priests.
I think it's time to send a couple bucks to the food bank again.
baronalejandro mentioned today that September 19 is Remembrance Day or Segaki, and reminded us to feed the hungry ghosts. (The actual date varies depending on what region or flavor of Buddhist observance is involved. One local congregation near here does it around Halloween!)The gaki (Japanese) or preta (Sanskrit) are not ghosts, per se. As punishment for greed in a past life, their karmic fate is to be reborn as creatures who are insatiably hungry, usually for such things as excrement or rotting corpses.
Don't click on the link which follows if you are easily grossed out. The Tokyo National Museum owns a 12th century Japanese picture scroll known as the Gaki Zoshi, or Scroll of the Hungry Ghosts. The scroll contains some incredibly detailed scenes of daily life, an aristocratic banquet with music, the birth of a child with the anxious father peeping in one door while a priest chants outside the other, even a scene of common folk relieving themselves on a street corner designated for the purpose. People go about their business, unaware of the desperate, grotesque gaki lurking next to them. (The earwax gaki appears in the banquet scene.) The Kyoto National Museum also has a Gaki Zoshi scroll from about the same period, which shows scenes of the gaki entreating Buddha and being fed their Segaki offering by priests.
I think it's time to send a couple bucks to the food bank again.
