#Buddhist Days and Thai Buddhist Day Customs
What is a Buddhist holy day?
"Buddhist Days" is short for "Buddhist Festivals," also known as "Four Fasting Days" in Buddhist scriptures. Thailand has more frequent Buddhist Days, with four each month, totaling 48 Buddhist Days per year.
How is the Thai Buddhist calendar calculated?
As a Buddhist country, Thailand's Buddhist calendar is calculated using the same logic as that used in Hong Kong and other places, and the conversion formula is very simple: Gregorian year + 543 = Thai Buddhist calendar year. For example, the Thai Buddhist calendar year corresponding to 2023 AD is 2023 + 543 = 2566.
What do people do on Buddhist holidays in Thailand?
Thai people firmly believe that wishes made on Buddhist holy days are more effective, and the merits accumulated through good deeds are even more auspicious. Therefore, on these days, locals often visit temples to worship Buddha and pray for blessings, or offer flowers and fruits at their home shrines. Through a series of rituals such as praying, offering incense, lighting candles and lamps, offering flowers and fruits, and performing acts of charity, people accumulate good karma, purify past sins, and achieve spiritual and physical purification and elevation.
Offering incense and praying to Buddha is not only a way to communicate with Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, but also contains profound spiritual connotations. The sight of incense can awaken enlightenment, reminding us to constantly cultivate the "Fivefold Dharma Body": cultivating precepts, avoiding all transgressions of body, speech, and mind; cultivating concentration, cutting off all distracting thoughts and delusions; cultivating wisdom, understanding the essence and appearance of all phenomena; cultivating liberation, freeing ourselves from all afflictions and bondage; and cultivating the knowledge of liberation, attaining the perfect wisdom of self-realization and liberation.
• Offering candles symbolizes light and wisdom. The significance of offering candles is to constantly remind ourselves that we should not only diligently cultivate ourselves to increase our wisdom, but also use the wisdom and abilities we gain to practice selflessness, serve the public, and help all beings escape suffering.
Offering flowers and fruits: All things in this world are empty, except for cause and effect. The retribution for good and evil follows like a shadow; every word, deed, thought, and action has a corresponding consequence. Offering flowers and fruits before the altar of gods and Buddhas is precisely to constantly remind ourselves: only by planting good causes can we reap good results. This is the core meaning of offering flowers and fruits.
• There are many forms of giving, which are reflected in the little things in life: looking at others with compassionate eyes is "eye giving"; treating others with a kind and pleasant attitude is "kind and pleasant expression giving"; talking to others with gentle and kind words and not uttering harsh words is "speech giving"; treating others with a neat and tidy appearance and respectful and humble behavior is "body giving"; treating all beings around you with a sincere and kind heart is "heart giving"; giving others your seat, reputation, and other benefits is "bed and seat giving"; cleaning your dwelling and warmly receiving visitors is "house giving".