Celebrating Vesakha

Today Vesakha is the most universally observed of all Buddhist celebrations or holidays. Traditionally it is believed that the Buddha was born, awakened and passed into final Nirvana on the same day, the full moon of the second month of the ancient Indian calendar  called Vesākha, which corresponds to the modern April-May. For at least the last 60 years Vesākha has been widely pronounced as Vesak, the Sinhalese way of saying it. Why not the Thai (Waistkha), the Tibetan (Sa Ga Dawa) or the Vietnamese (Phat Dan) forms? Because in 1950 at the inaugural  meeting  of the World Fellowship of Buddhists was held in, paid for and very much dominated by Sri Lanka, and their way of saying it became currant. It seems to me that as we call the founder of our faith by the Pali name Buddha not the Sinhalese Buddharajanwahanse, it only seems logical and right that we call the day that celebrates his advent and spiritual achievements by the Pali  Vesākha or at least the Sanskrit Vaiśākha.    

Vesākha has not always been a major celebration in all Buddhist countries. In Thailand it was only a low-key ecclesiastical holiday until 50 years ago, as was Magha Puja and Wan Asanha Bucha. The big holidays and celebrations were Brahminacal ones; Songkran, Loi Krathong, etc. and in the north of the country Inthakin and several others. Malaysian Buddhists hardly celebrated it at all until the dynamic American monk Sumangalo popularised it and began petitioning the government to make it a public holiday in the 1950.

Interestingly, there is very little information about how or exactly when Vesākha was celebrated in most Buddhist countries in ancient times. The records are blank except for India and Sri Lanka. The Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang wrote this concerning how Buddha’s when Buddhists celebrated the Buddha’s birth, awakening and passing.   

“The Bodhisattva was born on the 8^th day of the second half of the month of  Vesākha …But the Sthavira school hold that it was the 15^th day of the second half of Vesākha.”

“It is said in the ancient records that the Buddha entered Parinirvana…on the 15^th  day of the second half of the month of Vesākha …But according to the Sarvastivada school he entered Parinivana on the  8^th  day of the second half of the of the month of Karttika.” “The Tathagata attained full awakening on the 8^th  day of the second half of the month of Vesakha on the Indian calendar. But according to the Sthavira school the event occurred on the 15^th day of the second half of Vesākha.” 

 So it would seem that the Mahayanists and the Sthaviras (the Indian version of Theravada) disagreed on the days these events occurred, although not the month. Exactly how the celebrations were conducted  Xuanzang  says nothing.  However he did say something about  the Vesākha   celebrations at  Bodh Gaya. “Each year on that day the monarch of various countries and the monks and laymen of different places gather here in hundreds of thousands and bathe the Bodhi Tree with scented  water and milk to the accompaniment of music, flowers and lamps burning continually and vie with each other in making offerings to the Tree.”

At the beginning of the 5^th century an earlier Chinese pilgrim, Faxian witnessed how Vesākha was celebrated in Patna. “On the 8^th day of the second month (i.e. Vesākha) there is a procession of images. They construct a four-wheeled car and erect upon it a tower of five stages made of bamboo lashed together the whole being supported by a central post… so that it looks like a stupa.  Then they cover it with fine white linen which they later paint with bright colours. Having made figures of devas and decorated them with gold, silver they place them under canopies of embroidered silk. Then on each of the car’s four corners they make shrines in which they place images of the Buddha in the sitting posture flanked on each side by bodhisattvas. About twenty such cars are each somewhat differently decorated. During the day of the procession monks and lay people gather in great numbers with chanting, music and the offering of flowers. After being invited to do so by brahmacariyas (lay people keeping the ten Precepts for the day?) the cars enter the city and then stop. All night there is chanting and music by the people who have gathered from many different regions” This is most interesting because it is the earliest reference to the car festivals still done in Nepal and parts of India.

The earliest reference to Vesākha celebrations in Sri Lanka is from the 1^st century BCE. It must have been a major, probably the major, religious festival. In the Mahavamsa  the reign of some kings is measured by how many Vesākhas they celebrated. But exactly what form the celebrations took we have no information. 
The Chinese pilgrim Faxian spent two years in Sri Lanka at the beginning of the 5^th century. He   witnessed one festival  for  the Tooth Relic  during which large brightly coloured depictions of all the Jataka stories “looking completely life-like” were set up on each side of the roads in the capital. Again this is interesting because it could well be an account of how Vesākha is celebrated in Sri Lanka today. At main intersections in many cities and towns large plywood  boards with  illustrations of Jataka stories or events in the life of the Buddha painted on them are erected. Nowadays most of these pandols, as they are called, are illuminated with thousands of light bulbs, some of the figures move, and loudspeakers explain each story.

However or whenever you celebrate Vesākha I hope it is a joyous time for   you and your family.    

Judge Not And...?

To make a judgement (vinicchaya) is to draw a conclusion or make a decision about something. According to the Buddha’s people make judgements in one of four ways:  (1) according to outward appearance (rūpappamāṇa), (2) according to the opinion of others (ghosappamāṇa), (3) according to economic status (lūkhappamāṇa) or (4) according to reality (dhammappamāṇa, A.II,71). We usually make judgements within two contexts:  when called upon to arbitrate between two or more parties, or on first meeting a person or seeing them behave in a certain manner. In this first context, we will make our judgement known to the parties involved and hopeful it will soothe any disagreement between them.

Making judgements about the people we come into contact with is usually done within the privacy of our own minds. However, it will influence how we think about them:  whether with respect or contempt, trust  or suspicion, like, dislike or indifference. And, of course, the opinion we form about them from our judgements will in turn influence how we treat them. This being the case, we should be careful in making judgements about others, particularly critical ones.

Perhaps it would be appropriate to also mention a type of judging which mainly concerns Buddhists. There is a certain type of Buddhist who takes considerable interest in pontificating about what type of kamma a person must have done to be reborn in their present circumstances, or about where they will be reborn as a result of how they are acting now. Such speculating can only ever be at best a poor guess. The Buddha said that trying to work out the subtle and interconnected workings of kamma would be enough to drive an ordinary person mad (A.II,80). This is not because the functioning of kamma is ambiguous, but because we can never really know what is going on in other peoples’ minds, their motives or even the full range of their actions. When the Buddha heard that the lay disciple Migasāla was confidently claiming that several people who had recently died were reborn in certain circumstances, he said:  “Who is this Migasāla to know the complexity of the human character?”  Then he added:  “Do not be a judge of others, do not judge others. Those who judge others only harm themselves” (A.III,351).

Apart from the distinct possibility that the judgements we make about people may be wrong, judging others may also be a symptom of, or give rise to, smugness and self-righteousness. It may even be a way of deflecting attention from our own moral weaknesses and failings. Nonetheless, there are many situations in life where we are required to make judgments about people: whether a babysitter is competent to look after our child, whether the person who asks to borrow money  from us genuinely intends to return it, whether the mechanic who says he can repair our car really can. What can we do to ensure that our judgements reflect reality so that we can make more intelligent choices? The Buddha offered this sound and sensible advice:  “To make a quick judgement does not make one right. The wise person looks at both sides of the matter, with fairness, impartiality, watchful of the truth, wisely and without haste. Such a person is called righteous” (Dhp.256-7).

The first thing the Buddha recommended here is not to make judgements hastily or impulsively (asāhana). Most things, people included, are multifaceted and take time to reveal themselves to us fully. Likewise, knowledge about something usually comes at the end of a process of accumulating data. Consequently, it is safe to say that any judgement made in haste is likely to be wrong, or at least partial. If things are multifaceted it follows that they may well appear different according to the perspective they are observed from and thus the Buddha advised us to  “look at both sides of the matter”  (atthaṃ anatthañ  ca ubho niccheyya). Getting the opinion of the different parties in a dispute, taking into account a person's good points and not just their failings, considering that the person who was rude to us might have had a bad day and that he is not usually like that, would all be examples of this. The qualities of fairness (dhammena) and impartiality (sāma) are not always easy to define but an important element of both is equality of treatment. It is always prudent not to overemphasize some facts more than others, to take into account all the evidence, and to weigh it all up thoughtfully.

In the Buddha’s India as in many other cultures, a pair of scales (tulā) was used as a symbol   of fair and impartial deliberation (Dhp.268). When making judgements on any matter it is easy to be swayed one way or the other by our desires, by what we wished were true. Confidence tricksters are often able to cheat others because they stimulate their greed, knowing that greed clouds judgement. The wise person tries to keep personal feelings at bay when making judgements and remains  “watchful of the truth”  (dhammassa gutto) i.e. of the facts.

Perhaps we could add one last thing to the Buddha’s wise advice, a point highlighted in the Pāyāsi Sutta (D.II,347-8). Having made a judgement to the best of our ability, it is always good to continue to keep an open mind. This way, if later experience or additional facts show that our initial judgement was wrong, we will be able to adjust it. A prejudice is an opinion that is not amenable to change and prejudices are the cause of a great many interpersonal and social problems.