May Festivals

Buddha Purnima

Buddha is considered to be the ninth incarnation of Vishnu. Buddha Purnima is the most important festival of the Buddhists. This full moon day of Vaisakh has special significance as it marks three major events in the life of Buddha – he was born, obtained enlightenment, and attained Nirvana. This strange, three - fold coincidence, gives Buddha Purnima its unique significance as these events are combined in one on the full moon day in Vaisakh.

On this day they bathe and wear only white clothes. They gather in viharas for worship and give alms to monks. Many spend their entire day at the vihara listening to discourses on the life and teaching of the Buddha or invite monks to their homes to speak to them. They reaffirm their faith in the five principles - not to kill, not to steal, not to die, not to imbibe liquor or other intoxicants and not to commit adultery.

On Buddha Purnima Buddhists refrain from eating meat and eat kheer. They set up stalls in public places which provide clean drinking water.

On this day Buddhists make Vaisakh Vakats out of bamboo, festoon them with starts and decorate their houses with them. Some people also drape the walls of their homes with paper or cloth depicting incidents from the Jataka tales which are based on incarnations of the Buddha prior to his birth as Prince Gautama.

Buddha was born to a royal family in 544 BC in Lumbini.He was surrounded by wealth and material ease. According to Buddhist lore, Mahamaya his mother, often dreamt of white elephants at the time of her pregnancy and thus knew that a divine child of miraculous charisma and destiny would be born to her.

Then as a young adult, Siddharth, the prince born to King Suddhadhana and Queen Mahamaya, undertook a short journey in the course of which he observed the futility of human life. He saw the way a man grew into adulthood, passed into old age and then became helpless, sick and feeble before death.

Saddened by the realization that life was a meaningless and hollow passage from one state of being to the next, the prince went into deep meditation under a Bodhi tree near Gaya, until he finally attained enlightenment, once again on the full moon day of Vaishakh. He was then 35 years of age and thereafter became known as Gautama, the Buddha. He gave his first sermon in Sarnath, near the holy city of Varanasi, to his followers who formed a Sangha, also on the Vaishakh Purnima.