Hungry Ghost Festival Essay

I have participated in the latest Hungry Ghost Festival, which was dated on 26th of September. Therefore, the experiences I have gained from the festival enable me to relate with this assignment’s requirements. According to Taoism, Buddhism and some traditional Chinese belief, the Hungry Ghost Festival will be celebrated on the 14th or 15th of every seventh lunar month, which falls on late September of the western calendar. There are a lot of different sayings about this festival; however, in Malaysia, most of the believers hold and practice similar beliefs. They called the whole month as Ghost month, where the gate of lower realm will be opened and the restless spirits will be released and roam in the human world. The sign of

For example, the practice such as burning joss stick and leaving food on the roadside is considered as strange and abnormal for the non-believer. It is common for people to label others as abnormal when they are doing something different from the normal people. However, this religious activity does not lie at the extreme side of the abnormality continuum, where it does not cause anyone to lost functioning in live, or cause danger to the participant; therefore, it could not be defined as abnormal. Even if it brings impacts as mentioned, we have to bear in mind that everything that relate to cultural principles are not related to abnormality. The context and surrounding of that particular behavior has to be concerned as it may be considered as necessary and acceptable for the culture norm. In my opinion, this is the reason we have to complete a cultural activity in this course. Cultural awareness plays an important role Abnormal Psychology, since there is no universal definition to term “abnormality”. As far as we concerned, we as the students might be learning knowledge from the textbook, but all just theoretically, not practically. With the experience we gained from such activity, we will be more open-minded and really learn something from the real world