IB World Religions 2.2.3. Festivals: Wesak, Asala, Kathina, Vassa and Obon Matsuri Notes

2.2.3. Festivals: Wesak, Asala, Kathina, Vassa and Obon Matsuri

The Buddhist festival calendar

1. Buddhist festivals run on lunar calendars, so their dates move against the Western solar year. Most of the major Theravada observances fall on a full moon.
2. The base unit is the uposatha, the observance day kept four times a lunar month. Lay Buddhists go to the temple on these days, take extra precepts and hear a sermon, and the great festivals are simply full moon uposathas with more attached to them.
3. There is no single Buddhist calendar. The Theravada countries of Sri Lanka, Thailand, Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia share a core cycle, while East Asian Mahayana and Tibetan Vajrayana communities keep their own dates and their own feasts.
4. Most festivals commemorate an event in the life of the Buddha or in the life of the Sangha. Local agricultural and seasonal customs have attached themselves to these over time, particularly in Southeast Asia.
5. The same event can therefore be marked on different days in different countries. Japanese Buddhists mark the Buddha's birth at Hana Matsuri on 8 April by the solar calendar, while Sri Lankans mark it on the May full moon.
6. What holds across the branches is giving. Every major festival involves dana (generosity) directed towards the monastic community, the poor, or both.

Wesak and its observance

1. Wesak (also Vesak or Vesakha Puja) falls on the full moon of the lunar month Vesakha, usually in May. It is the principal festival of the Theravada year.
2. Theravada Buddhists hold that three events fell on this one full moon: the Buddha's birth, his enlightenment and his parinibbana (final passing). The day therefore carries his whole life at once.
3. Temples and homes are decorated with lamps and lanterns, and in Sri Lanka the paper vesak kudu lanterns are hung in the streets. Many lay Buddhists wear white and take the eight precepts for the day.
4. Giving is organised publicly. Sri Lankan communities set up dansal, roadside stalls handing out free food and drink to anyone passing, funded by neighbourhoods rather than temples.
5. Some communities release caged birds or fish as an expression of the first precept. Other Buddhists object that the practice sustains a trade in trapping animals in order to sell them for release.
6. East Asian schools generally split the three events apart. Japanese Buddhists mark the birth at Hana Matsuri, the enlightenment at Bodhi Day in December, and the death at Nehan-e in February.

Asala and the first sermon

1. Asala (also Asalha Puja or Dhamma Day) falls on the full moon of Asalha, usually in July. Theravada Buddhists mark the Buddha's first sermon on it.
2. That sermon is the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, the setting in motion of the wheel of the Dhamma, delivered in the deer park at Isipatana near Sarnath to the five ascetics who had once practised alongside him.
3. The day commemorates the founding of the community as much as the teaching. One of the five, Kondanna, understood and was ordained, so Buddhists date the existence of the Sangha and therefore of the complete Three Jewels from this moment.
4. Many Theravada communities gather two further events into the same festival. The Buddha's conception and his renunciation of palace life are recalled alongside the sermon, so Asala covers the decisions that made the teaching possible.
5. Observance is oriented to hearing rather than display. Monks chant the first sermon in Pali, sermons are preached through the night in some temples, and lay Buddhists bring offerings of candles and cloth.
6. Processions can be elaborate. The Esala Perahera in Kandy carries the relic of the Buddha's tooth through the city across ten nights with elephants, drummers and dancers, and it is the most spectacular festival in the Theravada world.

Vassa and Kathina

1. Vassa (Sanskrit Varsa) is the rains retreat, roughly three months long, beginning the day after the Asala full moon and running through the South Asian monsoon.
2. Its origin in the Vinaya is practical and ethical at once. Wandering monks were trampling flooded rice fields and killing the small creatures that appear in the wet season, so the rule required them to settle in one place.
3. During Vassa monks stay at a single monastery and step up study and meditation. Lay support increases in step, and many lay Buddhists take on their own disciplines for the period, giving up alcohol, meat or tobacco.
4. The retreat closes with Pavarana, at which each monk formally invites the others to point out any fault they have seen in his conduct. The ceremony treats correction as something requested rather than imposed.
5. Within the month after Pavarana comes Kathina, the robe offering. Lay Buddhists present cloth to the monastic community, and in the older form the cloth had to be cut, sewn and dyed into a robe within a single day.
6. The rule governing Kathina is precise: the gift goes to the Sangha as a body and no individual monk may be named as its recipient. Theravada Buddhists treat it as the largest merit making occasion of the year.

New Year and Obon Matsuri

1. Mahayana communities add a spring New Year that the Theravada calendar does not have. Its date is set locally, so Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and Tibetan Buddhists keep it at different times.
2. Tibetan Losar runs for several days in February or March. Monasteries perform cham, masked dances in which costumed monks enact the defeat of harmful forces, while households clean thoroughly and settle debts before the year turns.
3. Chinese Buddhist New Year centres on the temple. Families compete to offer the first incense of the year, eat vegetarian meals for the opening days, and commission chanting for the months ahead.
4. Obon Matsuri is the Japanese festival of the returning dead, kept over three days in August, or in July in parts of eastern Japan. Families hold that the spirits of their ancestors come home for its duration.
5. The practices follow from that belief. Graves are cleaned beforehand, lanterns are lit at the house to guide the spirits in, Bon Odori dances are held in the streets each evening, and floating lanterns are set on rivers at the close to see the dead away.
6. Its basis is the Ullambana Sutra, in which the monk Maudgalyayana, known in Japan as Mokuren, sees his dead mother suffering and is told to make offerings to the monastic community for her sake. Obon is built on that transfer of benefit to the dead.

Merit and teaching at festivals

1. Giving runs through every festival, and Buddhists hold that dana generates punna (Sanskrit punya: merit) which bears on a future rebirth. This is why the calendar's high points are also its largest acts of charity.
2. Festivals are teaching occasions in their own right. The chanted sermon at Asala restates the Four Noble Truths, and the Wesak lamps restate the image of the Dhamma as light in darkness.
3. The structure of the calendar carries doctrine as well. Putting the Buddha's birth, enlightenment and death on a single day states anicca (impermanence) plainly, since even his body ended.
4. Festivals also do organisational work. Kathina ties a lay community to the particular monastery it supports, and the annual obligation keeps that relationship in repair.
5. Buddhist communities outside Asia adapt the calendar. Temples in Britain, the United States and Australia commonly move festivals to the nearest weekend, and shared Wesak events there bring Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana groups together in ways that would be unusual in Asia.
6. Recognition has widened beyond Buddhist communities. The United Nations General Assembly acknowledged Vesak in 1999 as a day of international observance, held at UN offices each year since.