Hungry Ghosts.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

Lets talk about Buddhism.

I should first disclaim that I'm not a Buddhist nor an expert in Buddhism. And then there are many different interpretations of Buddhism, ranging from the Dalai Lama to Steven Seagal. This, I've reason to believe, owes more to the traditional Tibetan persuasion more than the New Age Hollywood chic interpretation. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I just like to kick it old school, yo.

To provide context for those of you whose idea of Buddhism is that fat gold statue of Taoist deities in Chinese restaurants, I'm going to sum up Buddhist cosmology in a few flippant sentences. Apologies all around.

So the basic Buddhist philosophy on life is that it's all about suffering. That might sound depressing to Westerners. But I figure if you spend all day sitting on the stone cold floor of a monastery at 11,000 feet with nothing to do but think about it, you probably tend to dwell on suffering.

Anyway, it isn't just about suffering in this life. Buddhists believe in reincarnation so, like a bad videogame, you get an infinite number of lives with which to enjoy suffering. Now reincarnation sounds silly to a lot of Westerners. Bring it up and you're likely to hear "when I die I ain't gonna come back as a duck-billed platypus. That's just stupid. Silly injuns." But there's a rhyme and reason to reincarnation. You don't just come back as a random animal.

It works like this. If you're a good person, you help the poor, and the sick, etc. you get to come back as a person, and a little bit better off then you were before. Not in terms of material wealth, mind you, but maybe just a little less suffering. And if you're a bad person, you don't call your mom, and you cheat on your taxes, well then you'll come back as an aardvark with gout, and you have to work your way back up the ladder to human. This, by the way, is the concept of "karma" which plenty of Westerners think is more like good luck. If I put extra change in the meter, maybe I'll get lucky at pull tabs during happy hour. It's a little more involved than that.

Now the after life, in Buddhist thought, isn't just more life. There's also a heaven and a hell. Several of them, actually. If you're a really, really good person then when you die you go to heaven for several thousand years experiencing all sorts of heavenly pleasure when just about the time you start getting born you get reincarnated. If you're exceptionally bad, say you're Al Capone, then you spend thousand of years in all sorts of interesting hells, then you get reincarnated as a flatulent tape worm and have to work your way back up the spiritual ladder.

Now, that's reincarnation, heaven, and hell. But there's something else. Something particularly nasty. If you're so evil, that hell and infinite suffering lives is to good for your sorry ass, you might just come back as a preta.

A hungry ghost.


Figure 1: Preta, or "hungry ghost."

A hungry ghost is just about the damn scariest thing in any religion, or mythology, or horror film, or any damn thing the human imagination has come up with. Stephen King would shit his pants if he came up with something like this. A hungry ghost is the soul of somebody so miserable that they're doomed to walk the earth in this miserable form. They've got great distended bellies, long sinewy necks, flesh thats mummified or falling off the bone, long dirty fingernails which result from the flesh of their fingers desiccating, bad teeth, you get the picture. They're incorporeal and invisible to people, so they're unable to get the help of good samaritans who might take pity on them. They experience searing pain or biting cold, regardless of the weather. But their overriding characteristic is their insatiable hunger. They make Sisyphus's labor look like a club med resort. All they do is roam the earth looking for something to eat. But they can't because their hands pass through it, or if they manage to pick it up it turns to pus and ashes, or if they manage to eat it their throat constricts and they choke on it. Pretty miserable existence if you ask me.

So a question presents itself. If pretas are invisible, how does anybody know what they look like? I don't know, but I can take a wild guess- people with really bad karma start turning into pretas before they even reincarnate. For example:


Figure 2: Hungry Ghost in Waiting.

Notice the emaciated body, long neck, and mummified flesh. There's an absence of the traditional distended belly, but buddhist monks make mistakes too. This is sort of what I mean by suffering. If the universe didn't want us to suffer, it'd go ahead and make this one invisible.


Figure 3: Notice the googly eyes and claws.

It's a Buddhist tradition to check under the table before sitting down to eat. You never know when a hungry ghost is going to pop out from under and grab the turkey.


Figure 4: Donald Rumsfeld.

Buddhist cosmology's greatly influenced Hollywood. Jedi knights and the Force, darkside and light, are something George Lucas totally co-opted from Buddhism. As near as I can tell, Rumsfeld inspired that scene in Poltergeist where Craig Nelson goes to the bathroom and rips off his face, exposing his skull.


Figure 5: Speaking of skulls, get a look at this guy's dome.

Basically, he's a tub of butter with a skull on top. You know, it's probably not very good karma to be talking about these people like this. That's alright, I don't really believe in this karma jazz. See note*.


Figure 6: Get a load of this fucker.

Alright, this guy doesn't look like a hungry ghost. Leading Tibetan scientists figure karma's got something juicy cooking up that knowbody's ever heard of before.

You may be asking yourself, BH, what's your point? Well my point is I'm asking you if you've accepted the Lord Buddha into your heart as your personal saviour...

No wait!

My point is, that regardless of what religion or secular moral code, be it Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Rastafarianism, Bokononism, whatever... These sons of bitches is just plain evil, and people have gone through great lengths and great imagination to suppose that they'll get just desserts in the hereafter.

My second and smaller point is that we've got the moral highground. Now in politics the moral highground isn't a hill of beans, but the first rule of war is don't get involved in a land war in asia, and the second rule of war is don't give up the highground. We haven't got a lot of highground. We're occupying Morality Hill and Factualness Ridge, which isn't much in a gun fight, but don't give it up.

By giving up moral highground, I don't mean don't go out and be naughty. I mean don't let anybody blow smoke up your ass about the moral highground not existing. You've heard it all before "Michael Moore is the liberal Anne Coulter, Bush is just the Republican Clinton, liberals are anti-semites and reverse racists, a radical liberal is as bad as a radical conservative, blah, blah, blah."

Just don't put up with that malarkey.

That's all I wanted to say.








* Dick reminds me of an old Buddhist story. There's this old high-powered monk sitting out in the woods doing his monkly meditations. Now this guys got so much karma and goodness saved up that he can do all sorts of amazing magic tricks, he's like a Jedi master (see above). And then this bird comes flying along and takes a shit on the monks head, and the monk is so furious that he got interrupted and shat on that he shoots the bird with laser beams from out his eyes. And as lightly singed feathers are gently falling to the forest floor, he realizes he's done fucked up. Killing a mostly innocent bird is really bad karma and he's going to spend a lot of lives climbing back up that ladder. It makes me wonder if he'd be better off just shooting his lawyer instead. Ba da dum.

[YOY]

1. Not unlike the Japanese 'Gaki'

Prolly one and the same...

[sweetheart]

2. A hungry ghost

comes from a world of hungry ghosts where, unlike this world, hunger cannot be
satiated no matter how much you eat, nothing is fulfilling, and the hungry
ghosts live in craving for human incarnation, tempting stupid souls to trade
away their life force for experience-craving-addiction.

And the hungry ghosts have a boss, the big king entity, the one who rules the
bush clan, and the republican tyrants. Buddhists know about that one too.

[unpossibles]

3. interesting, but two points:

1 - there is no "good karma" - karma is actually something you accumulate if you have done bad things, or cannot just Be. You know, like herpes.

2 - Buddha is not a god.

and while we're on it, life's not about suffering, per se - but close. Life is more of a pretty trap, something which can distract and prevent you from attaining true happiness only reachable through removing yourself from the wheel of reincarnation and reaching Nirvana.


that said, this is a very entertaining post, and I think you're onto something with the Ann "Hungry Ghost" Coulter.

peace!

[sam sarrha]

4. here is a Sufi story about Cheney.. there was a landlord that was so

greedy he taxed and refused to pay wages, the villagers fell into abject poverty.. their children were starving and sickness was everywhere..

they were burying a good woman who had starved to death giving her food to her children so they wouldn't starve themselves.. the village chief was putting pennies on the eyes of the dead woman and the landlord came by and demanded the pennies.. the people refused, they said they saved the pennies so the dead could pay the boatman in hell to take them across the river of death to heaven..

so he landlord schemes a plan to get the last pennies.. the next time someone starved he sneaked into the hut where the body was and removed it form the casket, and wrapped himself in a shroud.

when the chief placed the last 2 pennies the village had on the eyes of the corpse.. the landlord reached up and grabbed them shouting.. 'I Have Them.!!!' the chief immediately slammed the coffin lid and nailed it shut.. they them buried him in a very deep and cold hole..


one should mention the Four Noble Truths describing Buddhism... they are the first and fundamental principle of the Buddhism. http://www.buddhanet.net check out the 'Wheel of Life' there and the Four Noble Truths. pretty good job.. tho

[Laughing Mirror]

5. "These sons of bitches is just evil ..."

Couldn't have said it better myself.