Bodhi Day

Bodhi Day is a Mahayana Buddhist observance that remembers the Buddha's awakening, or bodhi. In Theravada countries the awakening is remembered together with the birth and passing away at Vesak. In much of East Asia it is marked on its own day in December.

What it remembers

According to tradition, after six years of searching and severe ascetic practice, Siddhartha Gautama gave up extreme fasting and took food. He sat beneath a pipal tree at Bodh Gaya in northern India, resolving not to rise until he had understood the end of suffering.

The early texts describe how, through the watches of the night, he recalled his past lives, saw how beings are reborn according to their actions, and realised the ending of the mental taints. By dawn he had become the Buddha, “the awakened one”. The tree became known as the Bodhi tree, the tree of awakening.

When it is held

In Japan, especially in Zen communities, the day is called Rōhatsu, meaning the eighth day of the twelfth month, and is now held on 8 December. Many Zen monasteries hold an intensive period of meditation in the days leading up to it, in remembrance of the Buddha's own sitting.

Chinese communities traditionally mark the awakening on the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month, which usually falls in January. It is associated with the Laba festival, when a sweet porridge made of grains, beans and dried fruit is cooked and shared. The custom is often linked to the story of a young woman, Sujātā, offering the Buddha-to-be a bowl of milk rice before his awakening.

How it is observed

Customs vary. People may meditate, chant, read accounts of the awakening and offer flowers or food at a shrine. Some families decorate a small fig tree or hang lights, recalling the Bodhi tree. Others simply spend a quiet day reflecting on the Four Noble Truths, which the Buddha later taught as the content of his awakening.

A day to reflect

The heart of Bodhi Day is the idea that awakening is a human possibility. You might mark it by sitting a little longer than usual, by reading a short account of the night of the awakening, or by recalling a moment of insight or kindness in your own life.