One of the most significant ceremonies at the festival is bathing the Buddha. According to historians, the custom of bathing the Buddha in China dates back to the Three Kingdoms Period (220-280A.D.). To this day, Buddhists all over the world continue to celebrate Buddha’s birthday, and one of the most significant dates in the Buddhist tradition, by bathing the infant Buddha in fragrant water. The bathing ceremony takes place on an altar that is arranged as a flower garden, which represents the Garden of Lumbini (Buddha’s birth place). During the ceremony, Buddhist monks and nuns use a special ladle to pour fragrant water over the statue of the infant Buddha. At each pour a chant a different chant is said to purify the mind, improve harmony, and find inner balance. The universal message of the ceremony is “it is simple to wash away physical dirt but it is much more difficult to cleanse one’s inner dirt of greed, anger and ignorance.”
Other events at the festival include daily Dharma ceremonies, the Wishing Bell, traditional incense offerings, a vegetarian culinary tour of Asia, cultural demonstrations and insights, music, arts and crafts, and special activities and games for the younger of body and mind.
Buddha’s Day celebrates the birth of Prince Siddhartha Gautama, who became Sakyamuni Buddha, the founder of Buddhism. The Prince was born on the 8th day of the fourth lunar month in 623 B.C. in Lumbini, Rupandehi District, West Terai, Nepal. According to the legend of his birth, his mother Queen Maya, upon traveling home to see her parents, stopped to rest in the lush Gardens of Lumbini where she went into labour. Immediately following his birth, nine heavenly dragons appeared and emitted two steams from their mouths, one cool and one warm, of the purest fragrant rain that cascaded to bath the newly born Prince. The baby Prince immediately took seven steps and seven lotus flowers appeared. Purified in body and mind from the rain, he pointed one hand towards the heavens and one towards the earth and said, “Heaven above and earth beneath, I am the Honoured One, the One who liberates all who suffer in the Three Realms.” After his birth, the Prince was examined by holy men who announced that he would become wither a great political leader or a great religious leader. The king wanted his son to follow in his footsteps and thus provided a life of luxury for the Prince, sheltered from the world’s miseries. When the Prince was a young man, he was finally allowed to venture from the palace. In town he saw four sights: a frail old man, a person infected with disease, a corpse, and a monk. This experience exposed him for the first time to life’s inevitable sufferings (old age, sickness, and death). He also recognized that the monk had found peace in spite of all life’s ills. The Prince renounced his crown, left his young wife, and embarked on a journey to find freedom from earthly troubles and seek the truth. After years of cultivation, he attained supreme enlightenment and was renamed Sakyamuni (meaning sage of the Sakya clan) Buddha. Sakyamuni shared his teachings of endless compassion with so many so that they too could discover the Middle Path to end all suffering by becoming a Buddha and go beyond the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth.
Website: www.buddhaday.org.au
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