Some mythological phenomena can now be explained by science, and can not explain the mythological phenomena that is because we still need to develop science, but not here to believe in God!

Here's some knowledge about the Ghost Festival:

Origin of the Ghost Festival

The Ghost Festival originated from the story of the rescue of his mother by Meilian: "There was a monk named Meilian, who was a great man of magic. When his mother fell into the path of hungry ghosts, her food was transformed into flames when she entered her mouth, and she suffered too much from hunger. Unable to save his mother, Meilian sought the Buddha's advice, and he spoke the Bon Sutra, teaching him to make a bon on the 15th day of the 7th month in order to save his mother." It is said that at that time, after going through a lot of hardships in the underworld, Meilian met his dead mother Liu and found that she was tortured by a group of hungry ghosts. Meilian tried to give her vegetables and rice in a pot with a mantle, but the vegetables and rice were taken away by the hungry ghosts. Meilian had to ask the Buddha for help. The Buddha was moved by Meilian's filial piety and granted him the Bon Sutra. According to the instructions, Meilian used the Bon on the fifteenth day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar to make offerings of precious fruits and veggies to his mother. The starving mother was finally fed. In honor of Meilian's filial piety, the Buddhists held a grand "Bon Festival" every year, which is now known as the "Ghost Festival".　

Books say that on this day in ancient times, people would set up a venerable seat in front of the village in front of the entrance to the street and a stage for the giving of alms. In front of the seat of the Venerable Master is the Bodhisattva Jizangwang, who is responsible for overcoming the ghosts of "hell", and underneath are plates of noodles, peaches, and rice. There are three spirit cards and a soul waving streamer on the Shi Kuotai. After noon, each family puts a whole pig, a whole sheep, chickens, ducks, geese and various kinds of cakes, fruits, melons and so on onto the Shi Kuotai. The master of each offering were inserted into a blue, red, green and other colors of the triangular paper flag, inscribed with the words "Bon Festival", "Manna door open" and so on. The ceremony begins with solemn temple music. Immediately afterward, the priest rings the bell and leads the monks in chanting various mantras and true sayings. Then food is given, and plates of peaches and rice are scattered in all directions, repeated three times. This ceremony is called "fireworks". The Qing Dynasty literati Wang Kaitai once wrote a poem: "Dojo Pu Du Tou ghosts, the original Yu Lan ancient intention to survive. However, it is strange that the red paper is pasted on the door, and a mountain of meat and a sea of wine are used to celebrate the Chinese New Year." The poem describes the customs of the Ghost Festival along the southeastern coast of China.　

This shows that the "Ghost Festival" is due to the traditional virtue of filial piety. Nowadays, people in the north of China still burn paper money on this day to pay homage to their ancestors who died long ago and to express their nostalgia for their loved ones. Although the way of worship is simple, it basically preserves the simple meaning of the Ghost Festival. The call of blood, the extension of feelings, and the reminder of one's future all give the Ghost Festival a rich humanistic connotation. Even though the age is different, and the gifts burned away are different, the living can never finish sending endless condolences and deep nostalgia to their distant loved ones. But "people of different ages have different feelings about this special holiday, because, the future of the holiday is coming to them relentlessly, from hazy to clear, from thoughts to fears, from fear to openness, miss the past people, in fact, also thinking about their own experience of today's live, content, way and the pursuit of living."

The Chinese language with "ghosts" composed of words such as "ghosts, ghosts, ghosts, ghosts," and so on, and folk legends about ghosts can not be collected exhaustive. China's ghost culture has a long history and has reached a level of near-perfection.

Ghost festival culture

In the ancient myths, it is difficult to see the depiction of the world after death, and the word "ghost" did not mean what it does now. In the oracle bone inscriptions, the word "ghost" was originally an ideogram, with the word "man" underneath and a scary head above, meaning a monster that resembled a human being. Later on, it gradually evolved into something that was transformed into a human being after death. The Book of Rites? Sacrifice" has made it very clear: "All beings will die, and death will return to the scholar, and this is called a ghost." The Book of Rites? Sacrifice Law" is further pointed out that: "commoners commoners no temple, death is said to be a ghost." That is, the dignitaries have a temple to worship after death, year-round sacrifice, then become a god, ordinary people die without a temple to enjoy the sacrifice, wandering around, is a ghost. China's first dictionary "Shuowen" explains that "ghosts, people are categorized as ghosts" is the current meaning. Pre-Qin canonical texts involving the "ghost" of the text is a lot, Confucius has a famous sentence "respect ghosts and gods and far away", visible Confucianism is a believer in ghosts and gods, but only "respect" only. Later, although there is no ghost theory of the Eastern Han Dynasty Wang Chong, but always can not shake the superstitious beliefs of the people of the country on ghosts and gods. To the Qing Dynasty Pu Songling pen, although there are fierce and vicious ghosts, but more is heavy love, know the etiquette of young and beautiful female ghosts, read the "Liaozhai", not only do not think that the ghosts are terrible, but feel very lovely.

China's ghost culture is perfected and enriched thanks to Buddhism and Taoism. Taoism is our real estate, Buddhism is Han Wei from the Western lands, into the Confucian culture and secular culture, people after death in the nether world (also known as the underworld in Buddhism), that is, the ghosts live in the world gradually built up. The main building of Taoism is Fengdu City and is demonstrated concretely on Pingdu Mountain, on the banks of the Yangtze River in eastern Sichuan. The scenic Pingdu Mountain was originally one of the Taoist's seventy-two blessed places, where Wang Fangping of the Western Han Dynasty and Yin Changsheng of the Eastern Han Dynasty practiced and later attained immortality. Fengdu from the immortal and ghost, and the two immortal's family name, Wang, Yin read backwards is the King of Yin, then became the "King of the underworld", after generations of interpretation, coupled with the "Journey to the West", "Zhong Kui biography" and other magical novels rendering, Fengdu has been built into an eerie ghost city, and so there are the bridge of the Heihe Bridge, Ghost Gate, the world of the nether world, the Hall of Heavenly Sons, The Temple of the Uncanny, the Temple of the City God, and other netherworld grounds and government offices at all levels. Compared to the Taoist netherworld, the Buddhist underworld is much more complete and systematic. Buddhism has the so-called "ten realms", that is, there are ten realms in the world, which are Buddha, Bodhisattva, Karmic consciousness, sound hearing, heaven, human, asura, animal, evil spirits, hell. The first four are called the "Four Saints," meaning that they have transcended the mortal world and become saints, free from the suffering of birth and death, the last six are called the "Six Mortals," and are subject to endless reincarnation in the Land of Filth, and the last three are called the "Three Evil Paths." The last three are called the "three evil paths," which are more unfortunate realms, and hell is the most unfortunate of all. Speaking of hell, people shudder, and there are eighteen layers, the lower the layer, the deeper the suffering. In hell, there are not only Yama, judges, ghosts and other evil spirits, but also the knife mountain, oil pots, grinders, sawing, stone grinding all kinds of torture, so people are most afraid of death is to enter the eighteen layers of hell.

History of Ghost Festival

Ching Ming Festival and funeral rituals related to sweeping graves. It is reported that in ancient times, China's "tomb but not grave", that is to say, only hit the grave pit, not to build a mound, so there is no way to clean up. Later, the tomb and the grave, the custom of cleaning will have a basis. During the Qin and Han Dynasties, grave-sacrifice had become an indispensable ritual. The Book of the Later Han Dynasty (后汉书? Ming Di Ji" cited the "Han official rituals" cloud: "Ancient not tomb sacrifice, the first emperor of Qin Shi Huang began to sleep in the side of the tomb, and Han therefore did not change. The mausoleums are all to obscure, hope, twenty-four gas, three volts, social, wax and four times on the meal." The emperor sacrificed almost every festival, and the general officials and ordinary people, who did not have so much time and money, gradually settled on Qingming, one of the twenty-four solar terms. At that time, the government allowed officials to take time off to clean up, and the people also "fields and roads, ladies and gentlemen all over, humble servants and beggars, are allowed to go to their parents' graves." To the Tang Dynasty, the cleaning has been the cold food, Qingming combined two and one, when the spring flowers, can pick a load of wine, lively to go to the grave, Qingming is not only a festival of ghosts, but also became the day of the green fun.

From a secular point of view, these two ghost festivals are set at the right time. Qingming in the north when the snow and ice, after an autumn and summer of rain and a winter of snow and ice cover, the graves on the yellow earth some of them were washed down, become shorter and smaller, borrowing the Qingming sweep, add some soil, so that the ancestors of the house is not leaking rain; and the 15th of July, autumn has passed, the weather is getting cooler and cooler, to the time to add clothes, but also to the ancestors underground to send some money to do a little bit of clothing, so as not to arrive at the winter! The first thing you need to do is to get the best out of your life and get the most out of your life.

The Chinese people are a bunch of etiquette, and never pay attention to the ancestors of the memorial service. I remember that in the past, my family's Spring Festival ancestor worship above the banner is "woody water source" "prudent Zongchuyuan", that is, do not forget the meaning of ancestors. During the Cultural Revolution, the Four Olds were broken and anti-superstition, so who dared to burn paper on the graves? There is no burning paper on the market to buy, but there are still many people who buy the white paper used by elementary school students to order books to secretly burn on the grave to their relatives. In recent years, with the development of the economy, sacrificial offerings have become a major category of business to make money, every Ching Ming and July 15, the street full of burnt paper, in front of the store, pushed into a small mountain, the types of complex, the number of, no less than the Dragon Boat Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival into stacks of fruit boxes. And very some of the meaning of modern commodities, burned paper are into piles and bundles, neat and beautiful, evenly printed with the seal of the ancient coins, as well as flowers and green dollars, Hong Kong dollars, large denomination, a sheet is hundreds of millions of dollars, together with different sizes of the yellow golden treasure, if there is a bank of the Underworld, but also have to feel ashamed of the lack of financial resources, willing to close down. Burned so much "money" can really make the departed loved ones in the netherworld over the rich days? There is no way to know. There is a saying that "sincerity is the key to success". I remember when I was a child, the old man said, print the ready-made burning paper is not good, the face value of the big and useless, the best is to take a wooden chisel carved into a coin-like, with a small hammer one by one in the paper. Hit the paper with a lot of care, preferably the descendants of the ancestors, must be boys, the hammer must be wooden, hit the marks can not be stacked together. When I was a child, I used to do this on New Year's Day or the two ghost festivals. The old man told me, hit on a mark on it, but he was afraid of not clear, to the netherworld is not good to use, always hit hard, but also afraid of less money, the ancestors are not enough, always hit densely packed. Although now more paper, look beautiful, I think that when I was a child by the descendants of a chisel a chisel to play the paper money is more reflective of the true feelings of the ancestors. Of course, on the Ghost Festival, from the mountains to the streets, fires flicker everywhere, smoke lingers, paper ash flies, causing environmental pollution, and sometimes fires, resulting in unnecessary losses. What can be done? Customs passed down from their ancestors, the Chinese have not yet learned the habit of using flowers to express their grief and remembrance of their departed loved ones as Westerners do. Ghost festival rituals, can not simply be regarded as superstition, Western Christian countries, modern science has sent people to the moon, launched rockets to Mars, but still have faith in God, in fact, is a kind of spiritual support. We burned a few pieces of paper to our deceased relatives seems to be vulgar, but in fact it contains rich moral and ethical connotations. This is a kind of gratitude and remembrance for our departed relatives, a conversation with people in another world, a communication with our ancestors, and a continuation of the human race and spirit. Even if a loved one was ungrateful or poorly taken care of when he or she was alive, a few words of remembrance at the time of burning paper on the grave can seek a psychological balance. Perhaps with the development of the times, people's cultural level of improvement, our nation will find a better way to commemorate the ancestors, but the ancestors of the discipline and memorialization is what era is indispensable.

Legend has it that July 15 of the lunar calendar is the day when the gates of the ghosts open wide and they can stay in the world for a day. Including some of the lonely ghosts in the day can accept the offerings of the people in the sun, so that day is also called the ghost festival.