SEEING CHEN-YEN BUDDHISMSaving the hungry ghostsBoth Amoghavajra and his spiritual grandson Kiikai are plain about the role of
Chen-yen: it is the one tradition which promises success both in the achievement
of enlightenment and in the pursuit of worldly concems.^40 Most Chen-yen appli-
cations combine both goals. A large proportion of Chen-yen works are ritual
texts used to promote or to stop rain, to control heavenly phenomena, to exorcise
illness and epidemics, to protect the state, or to aid in the salvation of beings in
the hells or in other unfortunate places of rebirth.
The single most visible fact concerning Chinese religion from the Sung
dynasty onward is that of rites for the dead. This is not the place to detail the
variety of rites for the dead or the pre-T'ang rituals.^41 Rather, I will focus on the
rituals for "hungry ghosts" (eh-kuei; Sanskrit, pretas) performed according to
texts written in the generation or two after Amoghavajra and elaborated in
rituals which permeated every comer of Chinese religion, including folk reli-
gion, Taoist ritual, and all versions of the modem-day p 'u-tu (rites of "universal
crossing" to salvation). The rites for hungry ghosts constitute the single most
visible manifestation of the Vajrayana in China, a fact which has seldom been
remarked. Even Stephen Teiser's fine work, The Ghost Festival in Medieval
China, does not deal with the central ritual texts of the Ghost Festival from the
mid-T'ang onward.^42
The folk celebration at whose heart is the Vajrayana rite for the salvation of
suffering beings is a prominent and colorful part of traditional Chinese life. On
the evening of the thirtieth day of the sixth lunar month one walks the streets with
care. For it is believed that on this night the gates of the underworld are thrown
open; the boundaries between levels of the cosmos become permeable, and
various ghosts or kuei are free to return to their lifetime haunts. This begins the
avalambana festival, the Yii-lan-p 'en hui, the "Festival of the Hungry Ghosts."
Celebrated in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Hawaii, Indonesia, and in other overseas
Chinese communities as well as to a limited degree in the People's Republic of
China and in Japan (Bon), the festivities, which may stretch out over the month,
focus on the fifteenth day of the seventh month. The rite is second in stature only
to the lunar New Year and encompasses a wide complex of rituals, including the
nourishing, propitiation, and exhortation of wandering spirits and spirits in hell,
merit making for oneself and one's ancestors, and the promotion of communal
harmony and prosperity. These rites may be performed by Buddhist monks or by
Taoist masters in remarkably look-alike rituals colloquially termed "Universal
Crossings" (to salvation) or P'u-tu.^43
Vegetarian feasts for ancestors and other dead have their roots in the com-
munal feasts of Six Dynasties Taoism, in folk tradition, and in the pre-T' ang
offerings to the samgha based on the story of Mulien's (Sanskrit,
Maudgalyayana) attempts to save his mother from the preta gati. These celebra-
tions became the occasion for new rites devised by Amoghavajra and his follow-
ers for the salvation of imperial ancestors.^44