hungry ghosts
Never-satisfied spectral beings
Hungry ghosts are spirits in Buddhist and Chinese folk tradition depicted with enormous bellies and tiny mouths or throats—eternally craving what they cannot consume.
They represent insatiable desire and the suffering it causes.
The term extends to describe people driven by addictions or compulsions that can never be satisfied: Consumerism turns us all into hungry ghosts.
- insatiableImpossible to satisfy
- apparitionVisible supernatural manifestation
- afterlifeExistence beyond mortality
- burning mouthPainful oral heat sensation
- cravingPowerful urge to have
appetites · bardo · specter · folklore · greed · spirit world · wandering spirits · restless dead · mythology · phantom · ancestor worship · ancestral rites · ritual offerings · paper offerings · supernatural entities · Daoism · rebirth · spirit money
- BuddhismBuddha, dharma wheel, Four Noble Truths, nirvana, dharma
- Chinese Religionancestor veneration, Confucianism, Daoism, Taoism, Buddhism
- Chinese Afterlifenetherworld, hell realm, Horse-Face, spirit world, souls
- Ghost Festivalwandering spirits, ancestral spirits, joss paper, hell money, spirit money
- Buddhist DeitiesBuddha, Buddhas, Tara, bodhisattva
- karmacomeuppance, good deeds, poetic justice, karmic debt, what goes around comes around
hungry ghostsenlightened beings
Those achieving spiritual awakening
devas · bodhisattvas · celestial beings · nirvana · gods
hungry ghostscontentment
Peaceful satisfaction with circumstances
satisfaction · fulfillment · equanimity · satiation · inner peace
hungry, ghost, hunger, hungrily, ghosts, ghostly, ghosted, ghosting