G4-比賽用the Views of Ghost Festivals from East To

類別:英文寫作類篇名：東西方對鬼節觀點之差異比較 The Views of Ghost Festivals from East to West─ Take Chinese Ghost Festival and Halloween for Example 作者：曾聖博。台北市立士林高級商業職業學校。二年十一班郭典珊。台北市立士林高級商業職業學校。二年十一班陳亦蟬。台北市立士林高級商業職業學校。二年十一班指導老師：惠風 PDF created with pdfFactory trial version www.pdffactory.com Contents I. Introduction..............................................................................................................1 II. Thesis......................................................................................................................2 A. The Cultural Background.....................................................................................2 1. The definition of Ghosts...............................................................................2 2. The perspectives of Ghosts from different religions......................................2 a. Chinese folk belief................................................................................2 b. Buddhism.............................................................................................3 c. Islamism...............................................................................................3 d. Christianity...........................................................................................3 B. The introductions of the Ghost festival and Halloween.........................................3 1. The Ghost Festival........................................................................................3 a. The origin of Ghost Festival..................................................................3 b. The celebration activities of the Ghost Festival.....................................4 c. The related legends...............................................................................4 2. Halloween....................................................................................................5 a. The origin of Halloween........................................................................5 b. The celebration activities of Halloween.................................................5 c. Other related events...............................................................................6 C. The comparisons of Ghost Festivals and religions from Western to Eastern..........6 Table 1. The comparisons between the Ghost Festival and Halloween..............6 Table 2. The superstitions between the Ghost Festival and Halloween..............7 Table 3. The comparisons between Buddhism and Christianity.........................7 III. Conclusion.......................................................................................................8 IV. References........................................................................................................9 PDF created with pdfFactory trial version www.pdffactory.com The Views of Ghost Festivals from East to West I. Introduction Generally speaking, ghost is a mystery, unknown object to people. Now, some people are curious and interested in studying about it, but others are afraid to talk about it. Why do people always think ghost is dirty and horrible? Why do people have different views for these mazes? Probably they are influenced by the movies or stories so that they have various impressions on ghosts. But ghosts are always regarded as a superstition and paranormal situation by the main stream scientists, and the antitheists consider that the existence of ghosts has never found any evidence to prove. In contrast, the theists and most of religions believe the existence of ghosts. Consequently, it is disputative for all circles to view the ghost festivals. We introduce simply about two representative ghost festivals from Eastern to Western. Halloween is an annual holiday celebrated on October 31. It has rooted in the Celtic festival of Samhain and the Christian holy day of All Saints. The word Halloween is first attested in the 16th century and represents a Scottish variant of the fuller All-Hallows-Even, that is, the night before All Hallows Day. However, the Ghost Month is a traditional Chinese festival, which is celebrated by Chinese in many countries. In Chinese tradition, the fifteenth day of the seventh month in the lunar calendar is called Ghost Day and its origin is from the buddhistic legend “Mu-lien.”. Nowadays, there are many popular and exciting movies about ghosts such as The Twilight Sage, Ghost, Ring, and so on. Produced by different countries, the kinds and backgrounds of the ghosts are also different. For instance, the leading role in American movie The Twilight Sage is a vampire. And in the Japanese movie Ring, the main ghost is the spirits of women. Therefore, we can find the variety of ghosts and its traits from the movies. There are some interesting questions about this subject waiting for us to solve. First, we will take the examples of the ghost festivals between Eastern and Western─The Ghost Month and Halloween. In these traditional festivals, many customs, taboos, activities, and histories are so interesting, historic that we want to research deeply. We will provide the cultural background of Chinese and America, comparing the differences of the traditional culture on the ghost festivals. The objective of this study is to increase our knowledge of the ghosts. Because the world of spirits is very mysterious and wild, we want to understand to the fullest. After 1 PDF created with pdfFactory trial version www.pdffactory.com The Views of Ghost Festivals from East to West all, we only have heard about this, we still haven’t ever seen the ghost. We wondered whether the ghosts have existed in the world. With this project, we can understand this curious world more. II. Thesis A. The Cultural Background 1. The definition of Ghosts The English word ghost continues old English gást. It is common to West Germanic, but lacking in North and East Germanic. The pre-Germanic form would have been ghoizdo-z, apparently from a root denoting “fruy, anger”, cognate with Sanskrit hedas “anger”, and reflected in Old Norse geisa “to rage.” Besides denoting the human spirit or soul, both of the living and the deceased, the Old English word is used as a synonym of Latin spiritus also in the meaning of “breath, blast”. It could also denote any good or evil spirit. During the Old English period, the word could denote the spirit of God as the “Holy Ghost”. The now prevailing sense of “the soul of a deceased person, spoken as if it appears in a visible form” only emerges in Middle English. Nowadays, the word ghost may also refer to any spirit or demon. However, the ghosts have been defined as the disembodied spirit or soul of a deceased person, and have been separated the souls of ancestors or relatives from the souls of demons to date. The souls of ancestors or relatives are regarded as offering the benefits or the positive effects for people and then those words returned for a specific or simple purpose. Yet, the demonic ghosts such as the revenants or the disembodied ghosts, deceased people return from the dead to haunt the living. Besides, most ghosts were souls assigned to Purgatory, condemned for a specific period to atone for their transgressions in life. Their penance was generally related to their sin. 2. The perspectives of Ghosts from different religions a. Chinese folk belief The spirits separated the gentle ghosts from the evil ghosts in Chinese those who are benevolent and just during their lifetime will become the gentle ghosts. The small ones could protect their later generations from the disaster, the great others such as Lord Guan, Kong Ming could become the deities. However, the evil people have to be punished in the Underworld, and they could not stay and do some evils in the world. Therefore, most evil ghosts are not those who are the evil people, but those who were tragically killed or coerced to commit suicide. Since, they couldn’t seek justice and take revenge 2 PDF created with pdfFactory trial version www.pdffactory.com The Views of Ghost Festivals from East to West during lifetime, they became the ghosts of wrongly accused. So they have played tricks on people since they died. b. Buddhism The main Buddhistic doctrine The six realms of rebirths involves: rebirth as a deva, an asura, a human being, an animal, a hungry ghost, or a being in Naraka (hell). With a concept of krama, the entire cycle of cause and effect originating in ancient India has transmigrated endlessly in the six realms. In other words, according to Buddhism, ghosts are really not transformed from people upon their death. If the Buddhistic monks and nuns could release souls from purgatory and offer sacrifices to them, it will be the good way for spirits to get into the cycle of reincarnation in early time. That leads to hold the ceremonies of doing dharma events, charities and the Seven Days in Coffin. After forty-nine days, spirits could enter the realm of ghost and become the ghost formally. c. Islamism Before Islamism was founded, Arabian have known the concept of various gods and ghosts. However, the Islam world also have existed the sense of devils, so Islam imbibed the early Arab World of ghost tales, local Islamic legends and Jewish, Christain scriptures afterward, and transform them into the blurred ghost world of Islam. But Muslim think genies, the Islamic representative ghost, carry the bad luck to people or make people encounter many disaters. The most massive damages is Satan left. d. Christianity According to the fourth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew says that Satan was a seraph initially, which is

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