(Dear Master, after our relatives die, should we make food offerings? Can they still enjoy it?) No. How can they enjoy when they don’t have a physical body? Food is physical, and they already belong to the spiritual world. They can’t touch anything. Understand? Very difficult to enjoy. For example, even if they still hang around in your home, and you talked to them already, it is hard for them to enjoy the offering, much less that they have already gone to different places according to their karma.
The dead who has heavy sins will go to hell immediately. Those who have merit go to Heaven immediately. The ones in between become demons, hungry ghosts, they can’t eat the food that only normal people who have merit can eat.
Why can we eat these food? Because we are humans. These foods are only for humans to eat. Why do we have to eat these foods? Because our body are made of the four elements. Earth, water, wind and fire are the physical elements which combine to form a human body. So we have to use physical food which also has those four elements, earth-water-wind-fire, in order to nourish the body so that it won’t perish for a while. As for the dead, they don’t have the body of the four elements anymore, then what for do they need these foods? They don’t need them anymore. So God and Buddha don’t allow them to eat. They don’t need to. If they want to eat, it was just habit. They are used to eating up here. When they go down there, they thought they also need to eat.
In fact, they don’t have the body anymore, what for do they eat these things? Do you understand? For example, if a tree is still green, it needs water. The flower that still has leaves would need water. If it has withered and died already, what the use to water it? It doesn’t need water anymore. It’s illogical. So what for do we make offering to the dead to waste the food.
But that’s all right. If I say like that, you may be very angry. So if you want, then go ahead and offer food to the dead. After offering, you eat the food yourself. If you are truly filial and wish to offer food to your deceased parents, and if your parents jumped down from the altar to eat the food, you would faint immediately. Or next time, you would not dare to offer food anymore, and say, “Ghost, ghost,” right? At that time, even they were your parents, you would call them “ghosts.”
When you take refuge with a certain monk, or take refuge in the Triple Gems (Buddha, Dharma, Sangha), you would also take the vow. “From today on, I will only take refuge in the Buddha, in the Dharma, in the Sangha, and I will not take refuge in the angels, demons, animals.” See that? You won’t worship or make offering to the deities, demons, ghosts. See that? It’s not that I who said so. In the Buddhist sutra, it states clearly as such. The Bible also states clearly like that.
