On August 27, 2026 — the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month in the Bing-Wu year, and the Ullambana Festival (also known as the Yu Lan Festival or the Ghost Festival) — Lingyin Temple in Hangzhou solemnly conducted the Ullambana Offering Dharma Assembly in accordance with established Buddhist ritual, reciting The Buddha-Spoken Ullambana Sutra. Through the merits accrued from making offerings to the Buddha and giving alms-food to the monastic community, the assembly seeks to deliver departed ancestors, bestow blessings upon the living, repay in full the boundless grace of one's parents, and fulfil the filial aspirations of all descendants. May those still in this life enjoy ever-deepening well-being, and may the departed see their karmic afflictions swiftly dissolved. All merits are reverently dedicated to world peace and the happiness of all people throughout the world.
The Buddha Speaks the Ullambana Sutra states: “… If the tens of thousands of citizens wish to practice compassionate filial conduct, for the sake of the parents who bore them, as well as for the sake of fathers and mothers of seven lives past, on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, the day of the Buddhas’ delight, the day of the Sangha’s Pravarana, they all should place hundreds of flavors of foods in the Ullambana basins, and offer them to the Pravarana Sangha of the ten directions. They should vow to cause the length of life of the present father and mother to reach a hundred years without illness, without sufferings, afflictions, or worries, and also vow to cause seven generations of fathers and mothers to leave the sufferings of the hungry ghosts, to be born among men and gods, and to have blessings and bliss without limit.”
From August 25 to 27, the Ullambana Dharma Assembly was brought to a successful close. Upholding the gracious radiance of the Three Jewels and drawing upon the virtuous power of the bhikkhus:
By this wholesome root of the Ullambana offering,
We repay our parents for their toilsome grace.
The living shall gain blessings, joy, and endless years;
The departed escape suffering and rise to higher realms.
All sentient beings of the four modes of birth and nine realms of existence,
And beings trapped in the eight hardships and three woeful paths,
May each repent and wash away their faults,
And receive compassionate deliverance from the abyss of transmigration.
