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12 EASTERN HORIZON | FEATURES

FEEDING HUNGRY

GHOSTS ON

HALLOWEEN

By Lilly Greenblatt

Lilly Greenblatt is the assistant digital editor of LionsRoar.com. She is a graduate of Ryerson University’s School
of Journalism and lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

Hungry ghosts try to enjoy a treat at Dharma Rain Zen Center’s Segaki Gakis enter the zendo.
ceremony.

At Dharma Rain Zen Center’s Segaki ceremony, “The coming of autumn seems to encourage turning
celebrated each year around Halloween, “hungry inward and confronting our own hungry ghosts, and
ghosts” enter the zendo to feast on sweet treats and this kind of introspection is part of our practice during
learn to behave in a Buddhist temple. Photo courtesy Segaki retreat,” says Shin’yu Vitells, a monk at Dharma
Dharma Rain Zen Center. Rain.

At Dharma Rain Zen Center in Portland, Oregon, In Buddhist art, hungry ghosts are depicted with
Halloween and traditional Buddhist practice come malnourished, swollen bellies, and thin necks that
together in the annual Segaki festival, celebrated every leave them incapable of swallowing anything. They are
year in late October. For one weekend, ghosts, costumes, considered to be a metaphor for the craving, greedy
and treats enter the zendo for a meaningful and joyous state of mind humans many of us are familiar with. On
ceremony enjoyed by both children and adults. a spiritual level, hungry ghosts represent the state of a
person who “desperately wants to know the Truth, but
“Segaki,” which means “feeding the hungry ghosts,” is who cannot accept the teaching.”
one of the most important festivals on Dharma Rain’s
calendar. The celebration is used as a time to honor As the late Kyogen Carlson, the former Abbot of Dharma
deceased friends and family and to turn inward and let Rain, wrote in “On Segaki”, the festival is said to have
go of the “hungry ghosts” — also referred to as gakis — begun when a disciple of the Buddha, Moggallana,
within ourselves. deeply connected to his deceased mother, had dreams
of her suffering in a world where she couldn’t eat or