The big idea: Buddhist festivals follow a lunar calendar, and the biggest of them mark events in the Buddha's life rather than seasons or harvests.
The guide lists them by branch, because the branches do not keep the same ones.
The festivals the guide names. Wesak and Asala mark the Buddha's life; Vassa and Kathina mark the monastic year.
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How Wesak is kept, and its rivals: In Sri Lanka homes and streets are hung with lanterns, roadside stalls (dansal) give free food, and many lay Buddhists spend the day at the temple keeping eight precepts.
Japan marks the Buddha's birth on its own, at Hanamatsuri on 8 April. In Sri Lanka every full-moon (poya) day is a public holiday.
Vassa and Kathina are the pair to use: They come as a set — three months of retreat, then the robe offering — and between them they show the monastic year, the lay-monastic exchange and merit-making all at once.
One named pair doing three jobs is exactly what the markbands mean by an example that supports the argument.
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The guide's treatment here is unusually direct, and it differs sharply by branch. Say which branch, every time.
Theravada
- Traditionally bhikkhus (monks) are ranked above bhikkhunis (nuns)
- The full ordination lineage for women lapsed in much of the Theravada world
- Restoring it is contested today, and some orders have done so
- The guide notes that change is occurring in contemporary society
Mahayana
- A lay community of both genders
- Female bodhisattvas — the Taras
- The guide says humans are seen as exemplifying both feminine and masculine principles, and are therefore given identical meditation exercises
- Female ordination lineages continued in parts of East Asia
The evidence on women, both ways
- The texts say Mahapajapati Gotami, the Buddha's aunt and foster mother, asked to be ordained; he at first refused, then agreed, and she became the first bhikkhuni
- Nuns accepted eight extra rules (garudhammas) that placed them under monks
- The Therigatha, poems of the early nuns, records women who reached enlightenment
- Some later texts held that a woman must be reborn male to become a Buddha
- Full ordination for women lapsed in Sri Lanka and was revived from 1996; Thailand's official sangha still does not recognise it
- In Tibetan tradition Tara is said to have vowed always to seek enlightenment in a woman's body
The tantric point, stated plainly: The guide notes that females have an essential role in Tibetan tantric rituals involving sex, understood as leading to liberation through the union of wisdom and compassion.
How to write about it: State it as the tradition states it — the symbolism is doctrinal, not incidental — and do not sensationalise it. A practice outsiders find strange is still a practice, described as practitioners describe it.
The guide also records something students should handle carefully: women are sometimes presented in scripture negatively, with reproduction linked to samsara and sexuality to desire and therefore to suffering.
Report, do not judge: Report that this is in the texts, say which branch and which texts, and say that Buddhists today read it in very different ways. That is description; asserting that Buddhism is misogynistic, or that it is not, would be a verdict the question did not ask for.
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Where ritual happens: The guide's answer is short and worth learning: individual meditation at home or collectively at a temple, and festivals involve puja at home and attendance at a temple.
Home and temple, both, every time.
At home
- A shrine with a rupa
- Daily offerings of flowers, light and incense
- Recitation of the Three Jewels and the Precepts
- Where most lay practice actually happens
At the temple
- Festival observance, with the community
- Giving to monastics — food, and robes at Kathina
- Hearing the dhamma taught
- Chanting at funerals and at pirit ceremonies
On pilgrimage
- Present in both Theravada and Mahayana, the guide says
- Sites associated with the Buddha's life
- A group experience, across national and branch lines
Culture is part of the answer: The guide says Buddhist ritual is influenced by cultural and geographic locations as much as by doctrine.
Obon in Japan, prayer flags in Tibet, the pirit ceremony in Sri Lanka — a named local practice is the fastest way to show you understand that.
How this is tested. Theme 1 asks to what extent ritual shapes communal identity, and what gender issues the way rituals are performed raises. Both have been set on Buddhism.
To what extent is Wesak the central festival of the Buddhist year?
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