3b) The suffering of the hungry ghosts

There are three sections.

1) The way they live:

Now the sufferings of the hungry ghosts are taught:

Since hungry ghosts stay and abide in space, they live in space.
Their bodies are large with great paunches. Their hands and feet are small.
Their necks are slim, with mouths no bigger than a needle.
Finding no food or drink, they are racked by hunger and thirst.

Trees and flowers and so forth, as well as medicinal herbs,
Wither away as soon as these beings look at them.
Externally they eat vomit, or things that are foul and vile.
If they do see food and drink, they seem to be kept away.

Because of inner defilement, their bellies blaze with fire.
Smoky tongues of flame spew from within their mouths.
They are all obscured by torments of poverty and fear.
In terrifying places, they suffer helplessly.

As they live in space, external objects are defiled for them. Since externals are not pleasing, they do not get what they want. Their inferior bodies have to eat repulsive vomit, and even if they see food and drink, it seems to be guarded, or as soon as they get to it, it dries up. They have such sufferings as those.

In addition to that they have inner defilements. Flames blaze from their bellies, emitting smoke. As for the defilements they all have, on top of that they always suffer poverty, deprivation, hunger, thirst, ugly forms, and sensory distortion. Since they are always being harmed by others, they are fearful, without refuge and protector. The Letter to a Student says:

Unbearably tortured by thirst, far off they see spotless streams.
They would like to drink, but as soon as they go, the water
Is full of hairs, and mixed with rotting pus and fish dung,
Becoming a mire that is filled with blood and excrement.

In time winds disperse the water. When they go up to cool mountains,
There they see green growing groves of sandalwood,
But, for them, the forest flames, with sharp thick tongues of fire,
Many blazing embers fall and are piled up.

When they go to places with abundant bubbles of foam
That arise from the breaking of high and fearful ocean waves,
For them it is harsh clouds of hot red burning sand,
A desert that is blasted by storms of hot red wind.

If the rain-clouds come that they are longing for,
From the clouds falls a rain of iron arrows with smoke and embers.
Sparks and vajra boulders fall on their bodies like rain
With a color like gold, they are wreathed in orange by flashes of lightning.
A rain of these falls everywhere upon their bodies.

2) Those who wander in space:

As for this subtle assembly:

The hungry ghosts that wander in the air are demons,
Harmful spirits, blood drinkers, tsen and gyalpo.*
With miraculous bodies they go unhindered anywhere,
Accomplishing their various manifestations of harm.
Bringing sickness, they ravish health and cut off life
A month for human beings is just a day for them.
Five hundred years of theirs are fifty thousand of ours.
They suffer thus within the realms of the Lord of Death.

*= These are different classes of demonic spirits subsumed under the hungry ghosts. There are no direct equivalents in western demonology. More specifically a’dre, malicious demons, gnod sbyin, literally “doers of harm.” Some are mountain spirits, and some are among the gods, such as wealth gods. The rakshasas are typically eaters of flesh and drinkers of blood. Some are samaya bound guardians. btsan means “powerful. These are powerful spirits who travel in the air and cause disease etc. Rgyal po spirits are also air-travelling spirits that manifest through anger and vengeance.

These too are among the hungry ghosts, and their suffering is immeasurable.

Their realm is unpleasant, dangerous, fearful, hungry and thirsty. Whoever is close to their hearts is infected with fatal diseases. They themselves are always tormented by these as well, and spread these diseases. Life and health are ravished away, and only harm to others is accomplished. They are beings unhappy to meet. Going about by miraculous power, they appear as guardians of narrow paths. Their individual bodies are like gates, bubbles, half burned or split pieces of wood, and various dogs and birds. Some, by former slight merit, have enjoyments, but also suffer many sufferings. Mostly events occur at the wrong season, and moreover even in their enjoyments there are limitless sufferings and so forth. The same text says:

For those afflicted by heat, even a snow storm is hot
For those tormented by wind even a fire is cold.
They are stupefied by the ripening of unbearable karma,
All these various kinds of things wrongly appear to them.
With mouths no bigger than a needle and their great bellies
Even if they drink all the water of the great ocean,
It will not reach so far as even the end of their throats.
By the heat of their mouths all the drops of water will be dried up.

The Friendly Letter says:

Hungry ghosts are impoverished by never-ending desire.
The suffering so produced is unbearable and constant.
Hunger, thirst and cold; heat, fatigue, and fear,
Produce unbearable sufferings that always attend on them.

Some with tiny mouths as small the eye of a needle
And bellies as big as mountains are tormented by hunger.
They cannot get rid of the false perspective of their eyes.
They do not have the power to seek out anything.

Some have bodies of skin and bones like a naked tree, 
Like palm trees where the tops are dry and withered away.
Some are ablaze with fire from mouths and genitals,
As food of burning sand falls into their gullets.

Some of the lower ones do not even get so much
As pus and excrement, or blood and other filth.
They drink the decaying pus that comes from striking each other
And oozes from the goiters that grow upon their necks.

For these hungry ghosts, in springtime^[1] the moon itself is hot.
Likewise, in the winter even the sun is cold.
Trees for them become fruitless and completely barren.
As soon as they are looked at, rivers and springs go dry.

Sufferings attend them constant and unhindered.
As for the karmic noose of their evil activity,
The bodies of some of them are quite tenaciously held.
They will not die in five or even ten thousand years.

One human month is counted as a day of the hungry ghosts. Five hundred of their years is taught to be 50,000 human years.

3) Encouragement to practice Dharma, not desiring samsara.

As for the endless ways of suffering:

Having seen this saddening nature of how things are,
Consistent persons, in order to gain their liberation,
Should distance themselves from samsara's hedonic calculus.
Then certainly peace and the holy Dharma, will be established.

That is the good instruction.