The enormous statue of Maitreya Buddha stood in the Mahavira Hall.
Here, everyone believed in the coming of Maitreya, and that when He descended, they would achieve enlightenment and liberation.
Under the sunlight, the emaciated hungry ghosts faced piles of gold scattered across the ground without a shred of greed, for gold could not become food.
It wasn't that no one tried stripping bark or eating grass roots; it was just that those things, in this Hungry Ghost Realm, turned into nothingness the moment they entered the stomach.
Not only that, but consuming them seemed to fuel insatiable greed, adding karma needlessly.
The people were so thin that they looked like skin wrapped around bones, their stomachs rumbling like drums. So they recited the Buddha's name and chanted Buddhist scriptures, awaiting the day their death might grant them liberation. But was that true liberation? In this Hungry Ghost Realm, nobody knew. They just believed it to be so, as did the elderly abbot.
