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Bodhi Day: Anniversary of Buddha's Enlightenment - Page 2

© Yeshe Chodon

Here are some references. Please jump into the discussion if you have anything to add!

Shasta Abbey, a Soto Zen Buddhist monastery in the Serene Reflection Meditation tradition, provides a yearly calendar of retreats, teachings, and festival ceremonies. There are at least four, sometimes five, events in any given month which makes the list too long to copy here. Contact them at http://www.obcon.org/. They observe Buddha's Enlightenment Day on December 8, but the Festival of the Enlightenment on the 25th.

Our local Buddhist Church has events monthly, and so Bodhi Day is observed each December, but not necessarily on the 8th.

My friend Anne Macquarie emails to tell me the multicultural Girl Scout 1999 Calendar places Bodhi Day on Dec. 8 as well.

Our local Dharma Zephyr Sangha observes the anniversary of Buddha's enlightenment sometime in December with tea, cake, meditation and readings. Readings can be written by anyone in the sangha or from published material. Old Path White Clouds by Thich Nhat Hanh is a most lyrical, moving narrative of the life of Siddhartha.

I had a blissful introduction to the two chapters about Buddha's enlightenment: "Pippala Leaf" and "The Morning Star Has Risen". Imagine zoning off into deep meditation in a beautiful sunlit room in the Sierra mountains. Thoughts flutter by like butterflies. Occasionally one "awakes" as the wind picks up through the pines, only to drift away again. Slowly a voice, reading, enters your consciousness. It is the story of the night and morning of Siddhartha's achievement of freedom, the goal he had so arduously sought for so long.

Looking up, Siddhartha saw the morning star appear on the horizon, twinkling like a huge diamond. He had seen this star so many times before while sitting beneath the pippala tree, but this morning it was like seeing it for the first time. It was as dazzling as the jubilant smile of Enlightenment. Siddhartha gazed at the star and exclaimed out of deep compassion,"All beings contain within themselves the seeds of Enlightenment, and yet we drown in the ocean of birth and death for so many thousands of lifetimes!"

. . . He promised to find a way to share his discovery to help all others liberate themselves from suffering. Out of his deep insight emerged a profound love for all beings.

The aim in observing this occasion and recounting this story can be, as Goldstein and Kornfield state in Seeking the Heart of Wisdom:

Recollection of the Buddha can be an effective way of arousing and strengthening the spiritual faculties of faith and concentration . . .. Perhaps [in us] there may also arise a deep feeling of love and devotion, which softens our mind and inspires our heart.

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