Douglas
MacGowan,
August 21, 2015, mnn.com
Most people are familiar with the major holidays of the Christian,
Jewish and Muslim faiths. Even non-followers have an idea what Christmas,
Passover and Ramadan entail and perhaps they even know the meaning
behind the celebration. But that's rarely true of the holidays of
Buddhism, the fifth largest religious denomination in the world.
(And based on those numbers, let's acknowledge but put aside the
ongoing debate about whether it's a religion or a philosophy or
both for a minute.)
Founded sometime
between the sixth and fourth centuries B.C.E., Buddhism has
multiple days that honor its teachings. The holidays are based on a
lunar month cycle so they switch dates from year
to year on a Western calendar. Here are a few of the most popular
with the dates noted for this calendar year.
1. Abhidhamma
Day (Sept. 12, 2015)
This is a
festival that celebrates the day when legend says the Buddha went
to heaven to teach his deceased mother an important collection of
Buddhism's main teachings. This holiday is principally celebrated
in Burma, where roughly 90 percent of the population is
Buddhist.
2. Asalha Puja
(July 2, 2015)
This Buddhist
holiday commemorates when the Buddha gave his first sermon to his
followers at the Deer Park in Varanasi, India. It also marks the
start of the spread of Buddhist primary teachings and the honoring of
what Buddhists call the Triple Gems: the Buddha himself, his
teachings and the body of his followers. It is celebrated on the
day of the full moon in the eighth lunar month. The holiday is
celebrated around the world by Buddhists of particular schools.
Typically, the day consists of sermons and donations of offerings
to temples and, in some places, processions around temples and
other holy places. In Indonesia, for example, the festival draws
large crowds to the famous Mendut Temple at Borobudur.
3. The Festival
of the Tooth (Aug. 20-30, 2015)
Relics are an
important feature of Buddhism in several countries. In Sri Lanka,
for example, there's a day that honors a single tooth from the
Buddha himself. As the tradition goes, after the Buddha's body was
burned, several teeth and bones were found in the ashes. One of the
teeth later wound up in Sri Lanka, which today is honored by a
10-day festival featuring a Mardi Gras-like celebration with street
musicians, decorated elephants and carnival
entertainers.
4. Vesak, also
known as Buddha Day (June 1, 2015)
Now officially
recognized by the United Nations, Vesak is arguably the most
important holiday in the Buddhist year. The day honors the three
main events in the Buddha’s life: his birth, his achieving enlightenment and his
death.
A worldwide
effort to establish this holiday was one of the main goals of the
1950 World Fellowship of Buddhists conference that met in Sri Lanka
(then Ceylon).
Massive Vesak
celebrations are now featured around the world, and the festivals
may include flying the traditional Buddhist flag, the singing of
hymns, offerings of flowers and candles, cessation of any kind of
killing (animals, too!) and a vegetarian diet for the day.
Other Buddhist
holidays also include:
Songkran,
a Thai festival featuring boat races and the
cleaning of houses. Songkran fell on April 13 this year.
The Kathina
Ceremony, the
distribution of new robes to monks on Oct. 27, 2015.
Loy
Krathong, the spiritual
removal of bad luck by floating sacred bowls on nearby bodies of
water (pictured above), which falls on Nov. 8, 2015.
The number of
Buddhists in the West is rising in part because of immigration and
the need for Tibetan Buddhists to seek refuge. The
Clear Vision Trust also attributes the spread of Buddhism in
the Western world to the surge in Oriental studies in colleges and
translations of Buddhist texts into English and other
languages.
As Buddhism
continues to grow around the world, so will a greater understanding
of the holidays inherent to that religion.