Sunday — April 4th —10:00 am
******NOTE TIME CHANGE: 10 AM******
Joint Zoom service with the Yakima Buddhist Church
Hanamatsuri, literally flower festival, is celebrated in April, commemorating the birth of Siddhartha Gautama, who became enlightened and is known as Buddha.
According to our tradition, the historical Buddha, Shakyamuni, was born in Nepal on April 8, 566 B.C. He was born the son of King Suddohana and Queen Maya. There are many flowery descriptions of the scene at his birth, including celestial birds singing beautiful songs, beautiful flowers, and a sweet gentle rain bathing the baby Buddha. It is not necessarily the beauty of the flowers, the sounds of the celestial birds, nor the sweet gentle rain that fell, but the vibrant fact that on this day was born the greatest of sentient beings who became the Enlightened One, the Buddha.
A special altar—the Hanamido—is erected and decorated with flowers representing the garden in Lumbini, southern Nepal, where it is said that Queen Maya went into labor. A statue of the infant Buddha is placed in a pan and, in a ritual known as kanbutsu, water or sweet tea is poured over it in remembrance of the “sweet rain” that descended from heaven at the moment of the birth.
We will have a different Zoom link for this service. Email the Temple for that link at SpokaneBuddhistTemple@gmail.com.
