What Is a Mouja — One Who Lingers in Delusion Even After Death

"Mouja" survives in phrases like "a mouja for money." This word was originally a Buddhist term concerning the dead. This article traces what a mouja is, from how it differs from "the dead" to its tie with Buddhahood, in a Buddhist and folkloric view.

What is a mouja

A mouja is originally a word for one who has died. Above all, it has been used for one who cannot leave delusion behind and is said to wander the space between this world and the next.

By extension, a person possessed by money or desire is also called "a mouja for money" or "a mouja for greed." At first glance this seems unrelated to the dead, but at its root runs a shared image: "a figure unable to escape attachment." Even a living person, when possessed by something, comes to look somehow mouja-like — old turns of phrase hold that keen observation.

How "the dead" and "a mouja" differ

Mouja and "the dead" are often used interchangeably, but their overtones differ a little. Where "the dead" names, plainly and broadly, a person who has died, "mouja" is tinged deeply with the sense of "a dead person still lost in delusion."

Put another way, mouja is a word that asks after the manner of a death. One who ends life at peace, with nothing left undone, is hard to call a mouja. Conversely, to one who passed still holding an unresolved feeling, the word mouja quietly draws near. Know this difference, and talk of memorial rites and Buddhahood comes into far sharper relief.

To linger in delusion — attachment and regret

Why was a person thought to become a mouja? One who dies still holding strong attachment, an unresolved feeling, or deep regret was thought apt to linger in delusion — so it has long been told.

The delusion meant here points less to "not knowing where to go" than to the state of mind of "being unable to let go." Resentment, lingering regret, desire that cannot be cut off. These tether the heart like an anchor and keep it from moving forward. A mouja can be seen as the visible form of a state not yet at peace, a heart still bound to the past — less a monster like a zombie than the very shape of "a feeling that cannot leave."

The mouja and the hungry ghost — hunger within the six realms

The figure of one who lingers in delusion overlaps, too, with the hungry ghost (gaki) fallen into one of the six realms, the realm of hungry ghosts. The hungry ghost is said to suffer endless hunger and thirst as the recompense of greed, stinginess, and envy in life. Its throat is thin as a needle, so that neither water nor food passes through — the very shape of desire that is never satisfied.

Mouja and hungry ghost are not the same, but they run deeply together in this: "unsatisfied by reason of attachment, they wander." On the wheel of the six realms, see What Is the Wheel of the Six Realms; on the world of hungry ghosts, What Is the Realm of Hungry Ghosts.

The mouja, Buddhahood, and memorial rites

To leave delusion and reach a state of peace is called attaining Buddhahood. A mouja is told of as one who has not yet attained it; after death, passing through the judgment of the ten kings, one's destination is set. On how that judgment works, see also Who Are the Ten Kings.

The rites in which the living join their hands are held to loosen that delusion and calm those feelings. What matters here is that memorial rites are not an act "for the mouja alone." Those who join their hands are themselves within a delusion — how to receive that death. A rite may be the work of unbinding, little by little, the delusion of both: the one who has gone, and the ones left behind.

Yurusen's world and the mouja

Yurusen is a private app for filing "the people you cannot forgive" into a ledger of judgment and passing verdicts. To stand still, holding a feeling that cannot be resolved — that figure resembles the mouja, if only a little. Left as they are, resentment and lingering regret quietly tether your feet to the past.

Even so, you need not force yourself to forget or to forgive. To put into words the event that binds your heart, file it away, and let it go for now — think of it not as sending the other to their rest, but as a quiet memorial rite so that you yourself do not linger in delusion.

The forms of those living the worlds of hell and the six realms are gathered on the Wraith Codex page. Go and find, there, the "type" that lingers in your heart.