Frost Moon

Due to it being a bitch to get these holidays off in America Loi Krathong has to be moved to the weekend all the time even if it was supposed to be today. And sadly I can't make it to wat this year because of Thanksgiving. On Saturday though I'll be taking the Eight Precepts. That and I'll try to do my best to make a krathong here and float it in the bathtub or something. Got to honor both the Shakyamuni and Phra Mae Khongka. The latter in particular given the whole California has been in a horrible drought for years thing.

It's just a Thai thing from what I know so that makes sense. Looking it up briefly apparently it also gets celebrated by Tai peoples in places like Laos.

Buddhist holidays tend to fall on lunar events. Especially full moons. In Thai Buddhism a holiday, Loi Krathong, tends to fall in the month of November though not always. The not always because the Thai Buddhist Calendar is a...different calendar based upon older Indian lunar calendars. This gets all the more confusing when you take into account that different countries use different Buddhist calendars. So Vesak for me and other Thai Buddhists was on June first this year but for Chinese Buddhists it was the twenty-fifth of May. Vesak, what I call Visakha Puja, being the day that we celebrate the birth, Enlightenment moment, and death of the Buddha. These events are all held to have happened on the same day in the month of Visakha on a full moon. It's one of the biggest if not the biggest Buddhist holiday. Homage to the Buddha is paid, there's chanting, people donate to the temple, you try to bring happiness to others, the Buddha is bathed, and people might take up the Eight Precepts.

Eight Precepts being a somewhat more difficult form of the Five Precepts, which are the guidelines we're held to. Abstaining from physically harming or killing other living beings of any sort, stealing, sexual misconduct (definition always includes rape and adultery), taking of intoxicating substances, and lying or abusive speech. The Eight turns abstaining from sexual misconduct to abstaining from sexual thoughts and activities entirely and adds on the abstaining from sleeping too much and in lofty beds, eating past noon, and from wearing jewelry and makeup and doing things like going to theatres or dancing.

Full moons in general though are good days to take the Eight Precepts on. Even if an uposatha day is somehow not falling on one. Uposatha days basically being Buddhist holidays where you go to the uposatha. Which is...part of the temple complex? It's a specific building. In Thai Buddhism in particular it's the hall where monks are ordained.

's ok. Sometimes I forget how much to swallow this stuff can be. If you have any other questions about holidays or just Buddhism in general I'd be up to try and answer them as best I can. So fire away if you want. Only thing is that I can't really comment much on East Asian Buddhism. I know very little about Zen, for example. Entirely different sort of thing from mine.