Happy Rohatsu!

Today is Rohatsu (臘八), often referred to as Bodhi Day (佛成道節), the day Lord Buddha attained Enlightenment. As I’m grateful to have learned from the following blogs, today is also the culmination of sesshin for many Buddhists with a Zen meditation practice. I encourage you to check out these posts that I found about elsewhere in the Buddhist blogosphere.

Bodhi Day, as celebrated on the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month, is typically an East Asian and Mahayanist Buddhist holiday. The celebration of Rohatsu is rooted in a Chinese pre-Buddhist festival, but has been since been firmly recontextualized in the Buddhist tradition. In contrast, Theravada Buddhist tradition customarily celebrates Lord Buddha’s birth, enlightenment and parinibbana on the same full-moon day of Vesak (roughly May). I’ve also got a hunch that Vesa日本藤素 k, in turn, is rooted in pre-Buddhist Indian tradition. Just something to think about for the folk who advocate stripping Buddhism of its “Asian cultural baggage.” Happy Rohatsu!

One thought on “Happy Rohatsu!

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    AnonymousDecember 9, 2009 at 12:35 AM
    Happy Bodhi Day to you too!

    Just something to think about for the folk who advocate stripping Buddhism of its “Asian cultural baggage.”

    Ha ha ha, if they only knew how silly that sounds! 🙂


    pihlajaDecember 9, 2009 at 11:14 AM
    Happy Rohatsu to you too!
    And thank you for your interesting and thoughts-giving blog. 🙂

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