Ramadan and Hungry Ghosts

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 8:08 pm by Robert Hunt

Ramadan and Hungry Ghosts 2015-03-13T20:08:58-06:00 Robert Hunt

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

On August 1st here in Singapore, where I am currently teaching a seminar, two religious holidays began simultaneously. One was Ramadan, the fasting month of Islam. During Ramadan all healthy and sufficiently mature Muslims abstain from any form of food and drink from the sunrise to sunset. The fast is simultaneously a an act of obedience to God and remembrance of those who are hungry all the time. And when the evening comes it binds the community together in celebratory feasting. The other holiday was what is commonly called in English the Festival of the Hungry Ghosts. In Chinese traditional religion it is believed that on the first day of the 7th month the gates of hell are opened up and all the discontented spirits return to earth. They are hungry because through either an unnatural death, or through human neglect they have not been offered “soul food” in their otherworldly home.

This month while mosques across Singapore hold Iftar dinners to break the fast and offer hospitality to their non-Muslim neighbors Chinese associations will take over pieces of vacant property to hold banquets for the ghosts. Large tents with stages, temporary altars, and dozens of tables will be erected. Spirit mediums and Taoist priests will invite the spirit armies of the generals of four points of the compass to provide security. The altars will be filled with offerings for the various heavenly deities. And then night after night everything from Chinese opera to Canto-pop music shows will be performed. Human guests will take the tables further from the stage and the gods will look on from above while the “little brothers” will take the tables up front. They will enjoy for a fragment of their long deaths what they were likely denied in life: being served before even the paying guests. There will even be porta-poties set aside specifically for them: male, female, ghost. (Gender differentiation has not been noted in the latter case in my experience.)

It is hard to imagine, if one moves between and among these religious rituals, what they could possibly have in common other than the random confluence of two irregular calendar systems. Yet, remarkably, they do co-exist without visible problems in a single nation bound to a small island. If they are both a witness to some single truth it is this: the remarkable capacity of the human heart to reach to the limits of a reality far wider than the human religious imagination. One cannot be both a Muslim and a Chinese religionist any more than one can go east and west at the same time. The beliefs, the worldviews, the orientations are too different. Choices must be made. Nor can adherents of any other religion judge between them or harmonize them. The fullness of human seeing is knowing that it is always no more than partial blindness. Our bent world turns upon itself, and even the light of revelation curves under that gravity to fall into a human sphere. Yet still it is the same heart that beats in Muslim and Taoist, Christian and Hindu, Buddhist and Jew. And all know hunger, and long to be fed.

Home Page

Uncategorized

Previous Post

June 25, 2011

Daniel Pipes an Islamophobe? Really? Really?

Next Post

August 12, 2011 Analysts, Religion, and Ideologues

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Christian Identity Christian Muslim Relations Home Page Inter-Religious Dialogue Uncategorized

Select a Month September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 July 2010 May 2010

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz