Cambodian Pchum Ben festival is a time to feed hungry ghosts
The Cambodian festival of Pchum Ben is a time to appease hungry ghosts with 'merit' - offerings of food and money. Words and pictures by Nathan Thompson.
The monk emerges. He has an ivy bush of scar tissue running along his neck. He looks at me, raises a fist to his lips and coughs a smoker's cough.
"The Buddha never said we couldn't smoke," he once said.
I kneel on the polished stone tile floor and he sits on a throne-like chair. Outside, a clergyman's incantation resounds from dusty, crackling speakers. The temple consists of two large halls - one housing an appropriately enormous Buddha statue - a dining hall and the head monk's gaudy mansion. It is surrounded by palm groves.
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After bowing three times I hand him a packet of Pepperidge Farm cookies. Granted, it's an unusual gift but I know he likes "foreign cakes" because, for most of 2013, I lived at his temple in Baray village, Takeo province, in southwest Cambodia. I came as a volunteer but when the NGO I was working for folded, I stayed on alone, teaching English to the monks.
These days I live in Phnom Penh but, like my Cambodian friends, I return to my "home village" on festival days, such as Pchum Ben. Every time I return, I pay my respects to the head monk with American baked goods.
Pchum Ben is also known as "Bhjum Pinda", which means "the gathering of the rice balls", according to Erik W. Davis, associate professor of religious studies at Macalester College, in St Paul, in the United States. Cambodians believe that, during the fortnight of the festival, ghosts are allowed to roam the lands of the living, so rice balls and cakes are made and offered to the dead relatives. The 15th and final day of the festival, Pchum Ben Day (it was October 13 this year), marks the start of a two-day public holiday in Cambodia.
Pchum Ben, the second most important festival on the Khmer calendar, bears some similarities to the Chinese Hungry Ghost Festival. Cambodians believe that hungry ghosts exist on a savage plane where the sun rises only to scorch the moaning souls as they rub their grossly distended bellies. Their mouths are pinholes so they can never satisfy their need. By feeding them during Pchum Ben, Cambodians hope to transform their hungry ancestors into benevolent spirits who will bless their rice fields.
