CMC Celebrates Buddha's Birthday with the Bathing-the-Buddha Ceremony

To commemorate the birthday of Sakyamuni Buddha, Dharma Drum Mountain's Chan Meditation Center (CMC) in New York City held a special event, "Bathing the Buddha with a Beginner's Mind" on May 12^th from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Nearly 140 Eastern and Western followers attended the ceremony. In the morning, after single-mindedly and reverently chanting "Namo Ben Shi Shi Jia Mo Ni Fo" (homage to our teacher, Sakyamuni Buddha), participants took turns to pay homage to the Buddha. They then poured pure water to bathe the statue of Prince Siddhartha, which symbolizes the cleansing of the defilement of vexation of our body and mind.

In a special English lecture for the Bathing-the-Buddha Festival, Venerable Chang Hwa (常華法師), Director of CMC, encouraged everyone to face our own mistakes and shortcomings with repentance, to uphold the Ten Precepts (daśa-kuśala-karmāni) diligently with compassion to benefit of all sentient beings, and then to eradicate the root cause of our vexation and upādāna (a combination of attachment, clinging and grasping) with the power of meditative concentration and wisdom.

The event coincided with Mother's Day in the U.S. The CMC Choir performed Buddhist songs at the event, including Ten Great Vows of Samantabhadra, Life-Extending Ten-Line Avalokitêśvara Sutra, and Pass it On. In addition, the children recited the Heart Sutra with their palms joined together. Amidst the singing of the Happy Birthday song specially adapted for Buddha's birthday, the Venerable invited the elders and the mothers to cut the eggless vegetarian cakes to celebrate the Buddha's birthday as well as send blessings to wish mothers peace and auspiciousness.

In the afternoon, 52 people participated in the event "Tea Offering with Filial Piety and Gratitude," which was assisted by volunteers of Dharma Drum for Young People (DDYP) in New York. The children sincerely offered tea to their mothers or family members of the older generation. Ms. Chen Chin-jen (陳琴珍), a senior volunteer at CMC, invited her children and grandchildren to join her in this event. She shared that she had searched the Internet for information in English to help her children and grandchildren growing up in the U. S. learn about the Bathing-the-Buddha Festival as well as the cultural connotations of serving tea to parents. 



Original Chinese text / Yang Heng (楊恆)
Photo / Yin Ting, Gao Ming-lu (高銘璐)
Translation / Li Siang-ling
Editing / Keith Brown, Christina