BUDDHISM IN CENTRAL ASIA AND CHINA 215The baby Buddha stands with his right arm upraised as he announces that this
is his final birth. Worshipers ladle three dippers full of water or tea over the
image, pay reverence three times, then ladle three dippers more.
Vegetarian feasts are meals donated by a lay person to accomplish a karmic
purpose or to fulfill a vow. Donors invite a certain number of monks or nuns
to these meals for a certain number of days in a row, often seven. Lay societies
also hold communal vegetarian meals, which take on the aspect of a church
potluck supper. Image procession is simply the parading of an image of the
Buddha or a bodhisattva either around a temple or monastery grounds, or
through the streets of a village or town. The occasion can be the Buddha's
birthday or any other special event.
All Souls' Day is the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month. Patterned
on the Ullambana Sutra (a text composed in China), it commemorates the
arhant Maudgalyayana's (in Chinese, Mulien) search in hell for his mother.
Lanterns are lit, placed on little boats, and set adrift on a river to float where
they will. If there are no rivers, lanterns are made for the occasion and lit for
everyone's enjoyment. The festival, although still a commemoration of the
dead, is a happy get-together. It is the one festival in the year when Buddhists
can express in a Buddhist way their Confucian filial duties by aiding the dead
in their proper journey, keeping them from becoming malevolent and thereby
dangerous to the living. The dead are even taught the Dharma, to give them
proper direction in their interlife sojourn.
Releasing living beings is an ancient practice. Monastic compounds had
ponds in which the laity put fish, turtles, eels, and other aquatic creatures orig-
inally destined for the cooking pot. Caged birds were also released, the pious
lay person buying them from_ a vendor and then setting them free.
One notable feature of these public festivals is that, with the exception of
funeral services, all are very joyful, with the feeling of a neighborhood party-
which, indeed, many are. The laughter and chatter do not indicate lack of re-
spect for the religion but rather its genuine integration into one's life and
outlook.
The keeping of merit books was a practice that developed somewhat later,
especially during the Ming dynasty. Detailed lists of good and bad deeds were
evaluated in terms of relative merits and demerits so as to help the faithful
keep track of their spiritual progress. This practice reflects the bureaucratiza-
tion of the Chinese view of the afterlife. Yama, the Buddhist king of the un-
derworld, was portrayed as a mandarin; his minions kept the sort of detailed,
petty record books that bureaucrats are famous for keeping. Thus Chinese
Buddhists wanted clear information on the official standards against which
they were to be judged after death.
In the worldview of a typical Chinese lay Buddhist, like that of a Thai (see
Section 7.5.1), karma is not necessarily the primary explanation for the vicis-
situdes of life. There are also the forces of yin and yang--the cosmic principles
of receptivity and activity-as well as the world of spirits and of one's ances-
tors. If a person is taken ill, his/her family might resort to a spirit medium to
see which variety of force is causing the particular illness, and then take ap-
propriate action: making merit to improve a poor stock of karma, making