Of Ancestors and Ghosts

Abstract

Abstract Pretas are best known as “hungry ghosts,” pitiful beings endowed with a miniscule mouth and bloated stomach who reap the fruits of stinginess from a former life. But they were not always portrayed this way. Of Ancestors and Ghosts traces the construction of the Buddhist realm of the pretas through narrative literature. It argues that preta stories, by working out where the departed go after they die, how best to assist them, and how they fit into a karmic cosmology, were a vital component to the construction of Buddhist cosmology as it is known today. These stories illustrate the importance of narrative for the construction of religious cosmologies. Far from simple morality tales, preta literature helped develop and argue for Buddhist understandings of actions and their fruits. These stories portray ethical cultivation as inherently embodied. These stories are not mere scare tactics to promote Buddhist ethics. They help model and elicit aesthetically informed embodied experiences that are themselves educational and ethically formative.

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