Smoke Offering in Ghost Festival
During the Ulambana Festival (Ghost Festival), Why Is Smoke Offering Even More Important?
The seventh lunar month, also known as the Ghost Festival, is believed to be a time when numerous “wandering spirits” roam the human world in search of food. During this period, people commonly perform ancestral worship and spirit offerings everywhere, and large-scale liberation and merit-transfer ceremonies are held...
Therefore, practitioners of compassionate smoke offering should cultivate boundless compassion during this special period. When worshipping ancestors or making offerings to wandering spirits, one should increase smoke offering practices by burning more offering substances. Through the method of “Mengshan food offering,” the smoke offering materials—blessed with food and medicinal substances—are transformed into fragrant smoke carried by the wind, spreading everywhere to benefit all hungry ghosts and suffering beings. This helps relieve their hunger, cold, and illness, and supports their liberation from suffering, which is considered a great act of merit.
In life, whether one is wealthy or busy, everyone inevitably encounters difficulties—things may not go smoothly, obstacles may appear everywhere, or illness may arise without clear reason. These conditions may be related to karmic debts from past lives, ancestral karmic burdens, or the karmic consequences of karmic creditors, including cases such as abortions or unresolved karmic ties with family and relatives.
What many people do not realize is that over countless lifetimes, beings in the hungry ghost realm, karmic creditors, and beings in the hell realms endure constant suffering of hunger, cold, and illness without assistance. Hungry ghost beings can only sustain themselves by the scent of burned food offerings. Therefore, this smoke fragrance becomes their form of nourishment. For this reason, we should maintain a compassionate heart and perform smoke offering practices daily for deceased loved ones, aborted infants, and suffering beings. Offerings of medicine, clothing, and food help them alleviate suffering. When these smoke offering materials are blessed by the mantras of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, they are believed to open the beings’ throats and relieve their hunger and thirst.
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