The annual calendar within Buddhist communities is populated with holidays and festivals for reflection and gathering together. From Bodhi Day, the day of Shakyamuni’s enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, to Obon, the annual Japanese festival honoring the ancestors, monastics, and laypeople alike mark many important days throughout the year with ritual and celebration. 

Learn about these holidays here.

Discover Level 3, Deck 2: 

Bodhi Day: The day of Shakyamuni’s enlightenment is celebrated by millions of Buddhists around the world. 

Dharma Day: The holiday of Asalha Puja celebrates the Buddha’s first teaching in Sarnath. 

Kathina: The festival of Kathina occurs at the end of the three-month-long rainy season retreat in Theravada countries.

Buddhist New Year celebrations: Celebrated differently in every culture, Buddhist communities generally see the New Year as a time for renewal and purification. 

Obon: The annual Obon festival in Japan is a time of remembering one’s ancestors. 

Ohigan: Celebrated in Japan at the spring and autumnal equinoxes, Ohigan is a time when the distance between the world of the living and the world of the dead is thought to be shortest. 

Sangha Day: Magha Puja marks the auspicious beginning of the Buddhist sangha. 

Uposatha days: These regular holidays are ritual cleansing days connected to the lunar calendar and observed by nuns, monks, and laypeople.

Vesak: Also known as Buddha Day, this important holiday in Theravada and Tibetan Buddhism honors the Buddha’s birth, death, and enlightenment. 

Recommended Reading: 

• O Bodhi Tree, O Bodhi Tree, by Reverend Earl Ikeda 
• A Losar Greeting from His Holiness the Dalai Lama, by Wendy Biddlecombe Agsar 
• The Origin of Obon, by Rev. Katsuya Kusunoki 
• On Memory, Rituals and the Spirit of Obon, by Rev. Blayne Higa

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The day of Shakyamuni’s enlightenment—and the promise of our own—is celebrated by millions of Buddhists every year on Bodhi Day, the eighth day of the twelfth month, which falls on December 8th in Japan’s Westernized calendar and in early January in China’s lunar calendar. (Bodhi is the Pali and Sanskrit word usually translated as “enlightened” or “awakened.” The pipel tree under which Siddhartha Gautama sat on the night of his great awakening is often referred to as the bodhi tree.)  

Known as Rohatsu or Jodo-e in Japan and elsewhere by other names, this holiday is widely observed in the Mahayana traditions of East Asia and across the globe. Theravada Buddhists celebrate the Buddha’s enlightenment on Vesak, which commemorates the Buddha’s birth and death as well as enlightenment and falls in April or May.

On Bodhi Day, Buddhists honor the tremendous achievement of enlightenment and recall the Buddha’s triumph over Mara, the personification of temptation and all the forces that conspire to prevent awakening. Celebrants traditionally light candles or string lights around altars and temples, signifying enlightenment, for 30 days following Bodhi Day. Many Buddhists also decorate a tree with colored lights—symbolizing the many paths to awakening—to commemorate the Buddha’s enlightenment experience sitting beneath a tree. Eating rice and milk is also traditional at this time, as this is said to be the sustenance the Buddha received that enabled him to make his final push to enlightenment.

In Zen Buddhism, Rohatsu is customarily preceded by a sesshin, a weeklong retreat involving intensive meditation. One the eve of Rohatsu, practitioners often meditate through the night in recognition of Shakyamuni’s all-night vigil culminating in his enlightenment. 

China’s Laba Festival is a form of Bodhi Day, though it is not always popularly recognized as such. The traditional food is Laba congee, a rice-based porridge with nuts and dried fruits and sometimes lamb. At Buddhist temples on Laba, monks hand out bowls of this steaming porridge to warm visitors.

Bodhi Day is a time to make sincere vows and reflect on the achievements of great Buddhist figures, recognizing that we too have the capacity for awakening to our true nature as a buddha.

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After hearing the teaching, one of the five monks, a seeker named Ven. Kondanna, vowed to follow the Buddha, becoming his first disciple. So this event also marks the birth of the Buddhist sangha and of Buddhism as a religion.

Asalha Puja is a special kind of day called uposatha in the lunar calendar when laypeople and monastics (primarily in Theravada traditions) take part in the performance of Buddhist rituals and renew their dedication to Buddhist practice. Other important uposatha days include Vesak (also known as Buddha Day) and Magha Puja (Sangha Day).

Asalha Puja falls on the full moon in the eighth month of the lunar calendar and typically takes place in July. On this day monks chant the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, which is said to be a record of the Buddha’s first teaching. Its name means “setting the wheel of dharma in motion” and many Buddhists also see it as a protective chant (paritta). Meanwhile, laypeople recommit to their faith, make offerings at monasteries, and listen to the recitation of the nuns or monks. There are candlelit processions and circumambulations of sermon halls and cetiyas, buildings containing reliquaries, and stupas.

More broadly, the holiday is a celebration of beginnings. This day is an auspicious one to begin a new venture or renew lapsed resolutions, and people are encouraged to follow the Middle Way.

Asalha Puja is followed by Vassa, the annual three-month rains retreat, historically a period of intense practice for monastics who had to take shelter from monsoons.

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In the Vinaya Pitaka, which describes the monastic code and relates narratives explaining how the rules came about, it is said that a group of monks was traveling to see the Buddha when the rains began. To avoid stepping on newly planted crops, the monks stopped traveling until the rainy season ended. While waiting, they had a particularly fruitful period of practice, but their robes were dirty, wet, and torn from sleeping outside in the rain. The Buddha was pleased with their dedication and patience when they finally arrived to see him and gave them new cloth that had been given to him by a pious lay woman. Therefore, nuns and monks traditionally are given new robes at this time of the year. 

The festival of Kathina is a time, as with all Theravada holidays, for laypeople to earn merit by visiting temples and monasteries and making offerings to the nuns and monks. The typical gift is three square meters of cloth, which is the amount needed to create a robe. But other gifts are given as well. They are not given to any particular monastic resident, but to the community (sangha) as a whole, to be divided accordingly. 

Kathina lasts for approximately one month and ends on a full moon. The conclusion of Kathina marks the time when the first monks departed the Buddha’s presence to spread his teachings, or dharma, to communities far and wide.

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Buddhist New Year celebrations that follow the lunar calendar take place in winter or spring. A few of the most widely known observances are described below, but you will find other customs across the Buddhist world.

The Tibetan New Year, known as Losar, is a multi-day event in late January, February, or early March, as determined by the Tibetan lunar calendar. An exuberant celebration of Tibetan culture, it includes not only traditional religious rituals such as hanging prayer flags and spinning prayer wheels but also singing, dancing, gift-giving, and cooking special meals. A favorite Losar treat is the khapse, a cookie made in many different shapes, including a lotus blossom. As with many New Year celebrations in Buddhist countries, Losar has pre-Buddhist origins. It is rooted in the Bon religion, which predates Buddhism and now coexists with it. 

The Japanese New Year, Shogatsu, is a three-day celebration that is unusual among Buddhist New Year observances in that it begins on January 1: the Japanese calendar was Westernized in the Meiji Restoration of 1868. The first visit of the new year to a Buddhist temple or Shinto shrine is considered particularly important in setting the tone for the year and has a special name, hatsumode. During the holiday, temples ring their bells 108 times—a sacred number in Buddhism, and in this case, it represents the number of afflictions to be removed. Houses are decorated with ornaments, especially around the entryway. The ornaments must be new, not reused from previous years, to symbolize a new beginning. Traditional food for New Year’s includes osechi ryori, a selection of dishes served in ornate bento box-like containers.

Songkran, the traditional Thai New Year, is celebrated in April. It is known as the “water-throwing festival” for the jubilant mass water “fights” in the streets that signify the cleansing of misdeeds and for rituals such as washing Buddha statues. Celebrants visit temples and make merit-earning donations to the monks. In northern Thailand, people carry sand to temples, symbolically releasing the “dirt” of the previous year. Sand stupas, or chedi, are built outside temples and decorated with sacred flags.

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Many people take vacation from work and travel to their hometown to celebrate Obon with family. Before the holiday it is traditional to clean one’s home and prepare food as if for special guests. On the first day of the festival, celebrants light small fires or lanterns in front of their houses and candles and lanterns inside to serve as guides for the spirits of the ancestors to find their way home. It is also customary for families to tend the graves of those they have lost and to make offerings at gravesites and temples.

The Bon Festival is related to the Ullambana, or Ghost Festival, celebrated across the Mahayana Buddhist world. (Obon is a Japanese transliteration of the Sanskrit word ullambana, meaning “to hang upside down,” as tormented spirits might. Another view is that Obon originally meant “rice bowl,” for making offerings.) It is said that the holiday began with the journey of the Buddha’s disciple Maudgalyayana (Sanskrit; Pali, Mogallana) to the underworld to free his mother from the realm of the hungry ghosts. When she was released from the torments of the underworld, he danced for joy. Today, celebrants dance in the streets on the second day of Obon, performing folk dances called bon odori. 

On the third day of the festival, paper lanterns—sometimes by the hundreds or thousands—are set afloat in lakes, rivers, and even the ocean to guide the spirits back to their resting places. On the fourth day, families return to the burial sites to tidy the graves and say goodbye to their ancestors until they meet again the next year.

The Obon festival has traveled the world with Japanese emigration and serves as an important marker of Japanese culture wherever it is performed. 

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The pleasant weather at Ohigan is said to evoke celestial life of the Pure Land and to be conducive to Buddhist practice. Chanting the Lotus Sutra or Odaimoku (“Nam-myoho-renge-kyo”) to confer merit on the ancestors (and accrue some for oneself) is a common practice during Ohigan. It is also considered particularly beneficial to practice the six perfections, or paramitas (Skt.). Generally translated as “supreme,” paramita is often understood as “gone beyond”—beyond the suffering of samsara—and the six paramitas are seen as the qualities of an enlightened being: generosity (dana), morality (sila), patience (ksanti), energy (virya), meditation (dhyana/samadhi), and wisdom (prajna).

Ohigan, like Obon, is a time to visit the resting places of ancestors to ensure that they are clean and well tended and to make offerings. Cremation predominates in Japan, and burial sites tend to be compact, especially in densely populated areas. Indoor niches for the ashes have become common in Tokyo, where open space for graves is scarce and prohibitively expensive. 

Decorating graves with flowers is a long-held tradition during Ohigan and may hark back to its agricultural roots, when cultivating ancestors’ favor was viewed as a way to assure a good harvest. The red spider lily, or higanbana (“flower of Ohigan”), is associated with Fall Ohigan. Higanbana are also known as ghost flowers or spirit flowers because they are commonly found near graveyards. 

It is also traditional to eat certain foods during Ohigan—ohagi in the fall and botamochi in the spring. Both are made of sticky rice wrapped in sweetened red bean paste.

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The teaching given by the Buddha that day is said to be the Ovada Patimokkha Gatha, a series of verses admonishing monks to follow a path of righteousness. The verses are recited in many ceremonies in Theravada Buddhism and include the following lines:

“Not doing anything evil,
Undertaking what is wholesome,
Purifying one’s mind,
This is the teaching of the buddhas.”

—Mahapadana Sutra, The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism

In the Theravada traditions of Southeast Asia, celebrants of Magha Puja gather at Buddhist monasteries and offer flowers, incense, and candles. At dusk they perform three circumambulations to honor the three jewels—once for the Buddha; once for the dharma, or teachings; and once for the sangha, the community.

Because Magha Puja marks the sangha’s auspicious beginning, it is known as Sangha Day. In centuries past, it was strictly a religious ceremony observed by monks, but in modern times it has developed into one of the most widely observed holidays across Southeast Asia. Laypeople are encouraged to meditate on the significance of the three jewels. As with every Buddhist holiday, Magha Puja is a time to earn merit, to clean one’s house (literally and figuratively), refrain from unprincipled behavior, and rededicate oneself to follow the precepts and practice earnestly. The festival is known for the lighting of lanterns, symbolizing hope and renewal, and is also known as the Lantern Festival.

Magha Puja is also known as the Fourfold Assembly because of the four wondrous things that it is remembered for: it took place on the full moon; the monks gathered without being summoned; all 1,250 monks were arhats, or fully enlightened beings; and each had been ordained by the Buddha.

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Uposatha days are ritual cleansing days observed by nuns, monks, and laypeople. Laypeople undertake additional precepts beyond the usual five, specifically celibacy, fasting, avoiding entertainments, and so on. These prohibitions are identical to those undertaken by initiates joining the sangha, except that monastics are not allowed to handle money.

Phases of the moon dictate uposatha. In Southeast Asian Theravada Buddhism, gatherings are held on the full moon, new moon, and quarter moons, while in Sri Lanka, only the full moon and new moon are observed. These days are particularly active at Theravada monasteries, with many lay people visiting, preparing food for nuns and monks in the morning, listening to chanting and sermons, and helping with the maintenance of the monastery grounds. Lay people often dress in white, make offerings, meditate, perform circumambulations, and often spend hours, if not all day, at the monastery.

For Theravada monastics, uposatha is a time of purification. On the new and full moon uposatha days, nuns and monks gather to recite the Patimokkha (Sanskrit, Pratimoksa), the monastic code of conduct, and confess misdeeds. The Buddha considered this ceremony to be one of the centerpieces of monastic life and one of the practices that defined the sangha. Not attending was excused only in cases of great illness.

While uposatha is commonly observed only in Theravada countries, the practice exists in modified form in some Mahayana traditions. For example, Japan’s roku sainichi, or six days of fasting (per month), follows the same principles, and laypeople temporarily observe monastic rules.

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The name Vesak is derived from the name of the fourth month in the Indian calendar, today called Vaisakha. The holiday falls on a full moon and can take place anytime from late April through early June on the Gregorian calendar, with Buddhist countries celebrating on different days.

While Vesak celebrations have ancient origins, the focus shifted in the late 19th century from celebrating regionally popular deities and bodhisattvas to celebrating Shakyamuni (“Sage of the Shakyas”), the historical Buddha. At the time, Buddhism was practiced in many disparate forms. A Nichiren practitioner in Japan, for instance, may not have considered herself to be part of the same religion as devotees in Sri Lanka or Tibet. Under European colonial rule in Asia, Vesak was an attempt to bring the traditions together under one holiday that could stand alongside Christian celebrations.

Vesak is a national holiday in India, where it is known as Buddha Purnima (“full moon celebration”) or Buddha Jayanti due to the advocacy of Buddhist reformer B.R. Ambedkar. The Buddha is recognized as a figure of national and historical importance in India, and many Hindus  commonly view the Buddha as an avatar of the god Vishnu. By the 1950s, many Asian countries celebrated International Vesak Day, and in 1999 the United Nations recognized it as an international holiday.

Vesak is particularly important in Southeast Asia. Thai teacher Ajaan Lee Dhammadharo said in 1956, “Every year when this important day comes around again, we Buddhists take the opportunity to pay homage to the Buddha as a way of expressing our gratitude for his goodness. We sacrifice our daily affairs to make merit in a skillful way by doing such things as practicing generosity, observing the precepts, and listening to the dhamma.”

During Vesak celebrations, devotees may abstain from eating meat or drinking alcohol, clean their homes, give alms to the poor and monastics, and pay extra care to committing good deeds and earning merit.

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