The Preta — the “hungry ghosts” — are the tormented spirits of one of the six realms of Buddhist rebirth: beings consumed by an insatiable hunger and thirst they can never satisfy, the karmic fruit of greed and miserliness in former lives. They are among the most pitiable beings in the Buddhist cosmos, and their suffering is a profound teaching on the consequences of craving.
The Realm of the Hungry Ghosts
In Buddhist cosmology, beings are reborn through six realms according to their karma: the realms of gods, demigods (asuras), humans, animals, hungry ghosts, and hell-beings. The preta-loka, the realm of the hungry ghosts, is one of the lower, suffering destinies — the rebirth that awaits those whose lives were ruled by greed, avarice, gluttony, and the grasping refusal to give. As pretas, such beings are condemned to experience the very nature of craving as endless, unsatisfiable torment.
The Insatiable Hunger
The preta is the embodiment of frustrated craving. The classic image is unforgettable and grotesque: a being with an enormous, swollen, empty belly and a tiny, needle-thin throat and pinhole mouth — so that it is wracked by ravenous hunger and thirst, yet can never take in more than the smallest morsel, never enough to satisfy or even ease its agony. Food and drink turn to fire, filth, or pus as they approach its lips; the rivers dry up before it; whatever it seeks to consume is denied or transformed into torment. The preta suffers the perfect torture of desire that can never, ever be fulfilled.
Compassion and the Feeding of the Ghosts
The pretas are objects of great compassion in Buddhism, and the relief of their suffering is a major theme of practice. The festival of the hungry ghosts (the Ullambana or Ghost Festival, the Obon of Japan) is dedicated to feeding and releasing them through offerings and merit; the story of the monk Maudgalyayana, who sought to save his mother reborn as a preta, is its origin. Rituals offer food and merit to ease the ghosts’ torment and help them toward a better rebirth. The preta thus teaches both the karmic consequence of greed and the call to generosity and compassion. In the Preta, Buddhism gave form to craving itself made flesh — the hungry ghosts with their swollen bellies and needle throats, suffering the endless torment of desire that can never be satisfied, a fearful teaching on greed and a call to the compassion that would feed even the ghosts.
