Hungry Ghosts
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It’s possible to be surrounded by abundance and never notice. It’s hidden in plain sight, and we miss it in the day to day grind—burdened by responsibility, meetings, traffic—waiting for some kind of relief. We miss it as we go about our usual way of thinking and doing, playing the role we’ve been cast in, or the one we’ve cast ourselves in. Too often we just accept the script that is handed to us by our parents, our society, even our churches, without much thought for what’s truly possible. We sigh, and concede to limitations that are embedded in the script we’ve been given.
If we listen to this kind of advice too often we can feel cold, lifeless, alone. We yearn to take in the world, to love and be loved, and this is so hard sometimes. It takes a level of trust we can hardly imagine.
The Buddhist tradition understands this painful predicament. The tradition teaches about a malady where we can be surrounded by life’s abundance, and yet lack the ability to take it in—to let it touch our heart, our soul. We can lack the ability to digest the beauty and possibility that is surrounding us. The tradition refers to these creatures who can’t take in life’s greatest gifts as hungry ghosts. Hunger is a painful thing. It’s horrible to hunger for something that is not available. It is even more painful to hunger for something that proves to be right in front of you, but which you can’t take in or digest. It gets missed. These hungry ghosts are depicted with long necks and distended bellies, showing the limitations of what they can swallow, and showing the toll a narrow neck or a narrow perspective can have on us.
It’s part of the reason I think we need church. We want to live, and we know living can feel small and limited, but we have a sense that perhaps there is a way to live with more freedom, more courage, more love. Perhaps we can find ways of seeing which show us the abundance that is waiting for us, but we’ve been too busy and bogged down to notice. We need help to get fed. In our shared hunger, our shared plight, even our shared sense of scarcity, we have a chance to stumble across something that truly satisfies.
Buddhism holds teachings on re-birth, and tradition says that these hungry ghosts will continue to be in a state of constant hunger until the day they find a way to allow in some kind of satisfaction and be re-born. I have thought a little bit about re-birth, and this is what I’ve come to: Every day is a chance at re-birth. We may feel we were born into a certain kind of life, a certain kind of story, and yet re-birth is possible every waking moment of our lives. We have a chance to wake up and see the life we’re actually living, a life that is expansive, mysterious and connected to every living thing. This is possible, and it’s not based on belief. It can be your experience or mine at any minute, on any given day.
I think this kind of re-birth has potential to show us a truth that is incredibly obvious but commonly missed—by feeding others, we too are fed. We can’t find satisfaction by stubbornly trying to feed and satisfy ourselves. Our culture teaches us that we can, but it’s a lie. The spell can be broken. All it takes is a little imagination. When we begin to develop the ability to listen to the growling stomachs in the world, we see something truly awesome and ordinary—our own hunger. And instead of wallowing in our own dissatisfaction and failed attempts for fulfillment, we reach out and we touch another. And the ghosts find what they were hungering for, and we are reborn.
- Hungry Ghosts - May 1, 2019
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