Bodhi Day

When it falls

8 December in Japan and in Western Buddhist centres, fixed since Japan adopted the Gregorian calendar. China, Korea and Vietnam keep the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month, in January.

The Phala almanac gives the exact day for your own city; the lunar and solar rules above are what it computes from.

The story

Siddhārtha Gautama sat under a pipal tree at Bodh Gayā and resolved not to rise until he understood suffering and its end. Through the night Māra sent temptation and fear against him; he touched the earth to witness his right to sit there; and at dawn, seeing the morning star, he awoke and became the Buddha. The tree is the Bodhi tree, and its descendants grow at Bodh Gayā and at Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka.

Theravāda Buddhists keep the awakening together with the birth and passing on Vesak in May. The Mahāyāna traditions of East Asia keep it on its own day in the twelfth month; in Japan it is Jōdō-e, in Zen monasteries the end of Rōhatsu, a week of sitting from before dawn to late night that ends on the morning of the eighth.

How the day is kept

• Meditation through the night before, in temples and at home, ending at dawn as the awakening did.
• A Bodhi tree or a ficus at home strung with lights for the thirty days of the season, and a lamp kept lit.
• In China the day is Lābā, and a porridge of rice, beans, nuts and dried fruit (lābā zhōu) is cooked and given away, recalling the milk-rice a village girl offered the starving ascetic before his awakening.
• Cookies and a meal of rice and milk in Western Buddhist homes; readings of the Buddha's first sermon.

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