Buddhist Festival

One of the world’s greatest spiritual leaders and the founder of Buddhism, Siddhartha was born in 563 b.c. as the son of King Shuddhodana and Queen Maya of Kapilavastu at Lumbini, which is now in Nepal. The Buddha or the Enlightened One was also known as Shakyamuni because he belonged to the Shakya clan, while his family name was Gautama. The world is acquainted with the story of the Buddha’s life prior to his departure from the luxurious palace.

¤ Buddha Left Worldly Pleasure and Meander For The Truth of Life

Fearing the prophecy that disillusioned with the material world, Siddhartha would venture out as a sage in search of wisdom to overcome suffering, Suddhodana brought up his son in the lap of luxury. But fate had ordained otherwise. The three sights depicting old age, pain due to disease, and death transformed the course of Prince Siddhartha’s life overnight. Gradual disenchantment with worldly pleasures compelled him to leave his beautiful wife Yashodhara and son in the middle of the night to lead the life of a mendicant. The Great Renunciation occurred on a full moon night in the month of Vaishakha (April-May).


¤ Buddha Enlighted

Siddhartha wandered throughout the country for six years in search of wisdom through asceticism and self-denial. But he understood the futility of self-imposed austerity because it did not get him anywhere near his goal. Thus he resolved to sit under the Bodhi Tree in Bodhgaya near Benaras and attained enlightenment after 49 days of intense meditation.
After he became the Enlightened One, he preached the sermon of the Middle Path, which shows the way to a balanced and harmonious life. The famous sermon was held at the Deer Park in Sarnath. According to the Buddha’s philosophy, sorrow was the cause of evil and suffering in the world which in turn arose from desire.
Thus the Buddha advocated the Eightfold Path consisting of precepts like right conduct, right motive, right speech, right effort, right resolve, right livelihood, right attention and right meditation to gain mastery over suffering. Only then can one reach the ultimate aim of Nirvana, the transcendental state of complete liberation.

¤ Buddhism in India

Princes and peasants alike were attracted by the simplicity of Buddha’s teaching and his emphasis on complete equality of all, a notion antithetical to the existing Hindu caste system. The Mauryan Emperor Ashoka espoused the Buddhist religion in the 3^rd century b.c. and helped in spreading it far and wide. Sarnath and Bodhgaya are two of the most important pilgrimage centres for the Buddhists. Hindus view Buddhism as an offshoot of Hinduism and hold the Buddha in very high esteem as he is seen as an incarnation of Vishnu (Preserver in the Hindu Holy Trinity of Creator-Preserver-Destroyer). Though Buddhism originated in India and the religion has gained tremendous popularity throughout the Far East in Asia, there are very few practising Buddhists in the country.

¤ Buddhist School of Thought

Buddhism was bifurcated into two schools of thought by the 1^st millennium b.c., when a new cult, known as Mahayana emerged as a reaction against the orthodoxy of the existing sect called the Theravadins or Hinayanas.

The older version of Buddhism (the Hinayanas) believed that the only way to attain nirvana was by leading a monastic life of austerity, abandoning all worldly pleasures. There was no scope for a lay person to attain liberation. Prince Siddhartha, who later became the Buddha, was accepted as the sole possessor of the Eternal Truth.

Cutting across China, Tibet, Japan and Korea, the Mahayana sect has a much larger following because of their more liberal interpretation of the teachings of the Buddha than the Hinayanas. The newer school allowed for the possibility of enlightenment to all those who followed the path of righteousness, irrespective of their status in society. Synonymous with the Mahayana sect are the values of love and compassion combined with that of knowledge. Equal importance is given to both these key concepts of Mahayana, and that might be one of the reasons this denomination attracts devotees in great numbers.

¤ Buddha Jayanti - The Birth Anniversary

Buddha Jayanti, the Buddha‘s birth anniversary that falls on the full moon of the fourth lunar month (May or June), is celebrated in many places.

¤ Buddhist Festivals

Buddhist festivals are a photographer’s delight as visually they are simply spectacular. The Lamaistic (lamas are Buddhist monks) festival is held at the Hemis Gompa in Ladakh and Towang in Arunachal Pradesh to honour the birth of Padmasambhava (the Buddha). People come from far and wide for this festival to add to the enthusiasm and joy with which it is celebrated. Ritual dances representing the triumph of Good over Evil are part of the festivities. These dances depict the victory of the powerful deities of Mahayana Buddhism over evil spirits. The dancers are a swirl of colours as they gracefully execute the movements, wearing multi-hued robes and grotesque masks symbolising both evil and good spirits. It is an amazing sight guaranteed to hold every spectator spellbound till the very end.

Though the Buddhists are mainly concentrated in the foothills of the Himalayas, their colourful festivals are objects of great fascination for globetrotters who cannot resist the siren song of their breath-taking backdrop and their fun-filled festivals.