Why Buddha would have condemned the largest Buddhist festival in Cambodia

Three weeks ago, the Cambodian community in the Netherlands have celebrated the largest Buddhist festival – ‘Pchum Ben’. Pchum Ben means literally ‘Gathering Offering’, but can also be loosely translated as ‘Ancestor’s Day’. 

(Pchum Ben celebration in the Netherlands)

It is a 15-day festival to honor our ancestors. It is believed that restless and hungry spirits, ‘preta’, move up from the underworld to contact their relatives that are still alive. These spirits have had accumulated too much ‘karma’ (bad volitional energy) during their earthly lives and as punishment they have to roam the underworld hungrily. However, once a year the gates of the underworld open and they are allowed to receive food from their living relatives. During the festival, people can offer food to their ancestors by putting food on the ground or they can offer the food to Buddhist monks which will mystically benefit the preta. If the relatives don’t give food, these preta would curse their lives and give them bad luck.

I personally don’t believe in the above mentioned story. The merit of Pchum Ben has always been the opportunity to meet friends and family for me.

When I think of the festival from a philosophical perspective, I cannot help but ask myself the question what Gautama Buddha would think of it.

Why Gautama Buddha would have condemned the festival

One could argue that almost all Cambodian Buddhist monks participate in the Pchum Ben rituals, and that that in itself would be sufficient reason to believe that Buddha would have approved it. However, Buddha had always encouraged us to put every practice and ritual under severe scrutiny and warned us of following scripture and tradition blindly. Buddha asserted we could count on no one, not even the Buddhas or priests.

I believe that Buddha would have condemned the festival for the following three reasons.

1. There are no short-cuts to spiritual salvation

The only path to enlightenment is through intense self-effort. This would mean that spirits themselves cannot achieve enlightenment and purity through the efforts of the living relatives. By placing the responsibility of our own enlightenment into our hands, we ultimately become dependent on our own endeavors. Self-reliance is key.

2. Buddha revolted against people’s perverse irrational obsessions with mystification and miracles

Buddha heavily criticizes the Hindu culture for its obsession with mysticism, and has attempted to found a philosophy that is fundamentally rational. It is for this reason that original Buddhism doesn’t have deities.

Buddha has said about God,

If the creator of the world entire
They call God, of every being be the Lord
Why does he order such misfortune
And not create concord?
If the creator of the world entire
They call God, of every being be the Lord
Why prevail deceit, lies and ignorance
And he such inequity and injustice create?
If the creator of the world entire
They call God, of every being be the Lord
Then an evil master is he, (O Aritta)
Knowing what’s right did let wrong prevail!” (Bhuridatta Jakata)  

He believes that in order to achieve enlightenment, we should rationally inquire the nature of ‘dukkha’ (suffering) and not trust on mysticism. Pchum Ben, being a superstitious festival, would therefore most probably be condemned by Buddha.

3. Buddha encouraged us to avoid speculations on death and after-life as it would detach us from worldly experience

When the monk Malunkyaputta asked Buddha about the after-life and other speculative things, Buddha remained silent.  Disturbed by his silence, the monk said,

whether the world is eternal or not eternal, whether the world is finite or not, whether the soul is the same as the body, or whether the soul is one thing and the body another, whether a Buddha exists after death or does not exist after death, whether a Buddha both exists and does not exist after death, and whether a Buddha is non-existent and not non-existent after death, these things the Lord does not explain to me, and that he does not explain them to me does not please me, it does not suit me. (Kyimo, 2007, p.206)

Buddha would, I believe, most definitely disapprove the festival since it’s all about metaphysical speculations on what would happen to spirits after their lives on earth. Hells and heavens are also concepts we have no experience of.

I believe that these three reasons make an excellent case why Buddha would have condemned Pchum Ben. If you would like to read more about philosophy, please visit my blog.

References

Gunasekara, V.A. (1997). The Buddhist Attitude to God.

Kyimo. (2007). The Easy Buddha. London: Prospect House Publishing.

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