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But if we can’t take refuge in historicism, and all we are left with are legends, how do we understand them? What recourse do we have when dealing with extraordinary and miraculous events of the Buddha’s life portrayed in the sutras? As Bernard Faure observes in The Thousand One Lives of the Buddha, the more we attempt to look “behind” the legends, the picture of the Buddha becomes so nondescript as to be meaningless. The events of the Buddha’s life celebrated on Vesak come to us in the form of legend they portray extraordinary events, such as when the newborn Buddha took seven steps and pronounced, “Between heaven and earth, I alone am the World-honored one.” My one-year-old nephew, though remarkable in his own way, has yet to make any such proclamations of his peerless status! These legends of the Buddha, of course, are not accounts of historical events. Ministers, monks, and priests offered dharma messages that spoke to the meaning of the Buddha’s birth, realization, and final nirvana. There were Boy Scout troops and choirs of all ages singing, with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Chanting and incense filled the hondo while attendees took turns bathing the baby Buddha in sweet tea, as is the Japanese custom on hanamatsuri. The dharma will be our teacher now what will it teach you?Īt the center of the festivities was an image of the Buddha as a newborn baby, with one hand pointing to the heavens and the other to the earth, as the legends portray him doing. Attending the event alongside my friends, which included BCA minsters-in-training, Zen chaplains, and Christian theologians, I was struck by the diversity of traditions present: BCA ministers, Zen priests from San Francisco Zen Center, Sri Lankan monks from Sacramento, as well as Chinese Chan and Vietnamese Thien monks.

I got to experience hanamatsuri (“flower festival”), which is typically celebrated by Japanese American Buddhists to commemorate the Buddha’s birth, at the Buddhist Churches of America’s (BCA) inter-sectarian Vesak ceremony in early April. I celebrated Vesak for the first time in 2019, while a doctoral student in religious studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. While East Asian Buddhist traditions only recognize the Buddha’s birth on this day, it is an important day of celebration for Buddhists around the world.

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According to legend, the Buddha was born, achieved enlightenment, and passed into nirvana on the full moon day of Vesakha. The term Vesak comes from the Pali term Vesakha it refers to the fourth month of the Indian lunar calendar, which corresponds roughly to the month of May on the Western solar calendar. Vesak: Understanding the Lessons Behind the Legends Thomas Calobrisi explains the extraordinary events of the Buddha’s life that are celebrated on Vesak - his birth, enlightenment, and final nirvana - and how we can look to these legends not for historical information, but as opportunities to form our own understandings of Buddhism.

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