Segaki and Salvation for Hungry Ghosts

With Obon Season coming to Japan in late July and August, this is also the time of the Segaki (施餓鬼) ceremony in many Buddhist temples.

In Buddhism, one of the six (sometimes five or ten) realms of rebirth that brings undergo based on accumulated karma is the realm of the Hungry Ghosts, called preta in India, or gaki (餓鬼) in Japanese.

Hungry Ghosts are those whose past lives were defined by extreme vice and craving. This could be alcohol, drugs, women, money, etc. The usual. This craving carries over and they lived as hungry shades, unseen by the living, surviving off of scraps in the shadows. Further, the foods they are forced to eat, garbage, feces, blood, etc, are never enough, so such ghosts are constantly hungry and living in misery. It is the second-worst realm of rebirth apart from the hell realms in the Buddhist cosmology.

Thus, the segaki ritual, practiced in all Buddhist sects except Jodo Shinshu, is meant to help alleviate their craving, at least for a short while, also in hopes (depending on sect) that they can be reborn in the Pure Land of Amitabha Buddha next.