Makha Bucha Festival

Date: March 07, 2012

Location: nationwide

Activities: Candlelight procession, Making merit, Keeping the Five Precepts.

Makha Bucha is an important Buddhist festival celebrated in Thailand on the full moon day of the third lunar month (this usually falls in February-March). The third lunar month is known in the Thai language as Makha (Pali: Māgha); Bucha is also a Thai word (Pali: Pūjā), meaning "to venerate" or "to honor". As such, Makha Bucha Day is for the veneration of Buddha and his teachings on the full moon day of the third lunar month.The spiritual aims of the day are: not to commit any kind of sins; do only good; purify one's mind.Māgha Pūjā is a public holiday in Thailand and is an occasion when Buddhists tend to go to the temple to perform merit-making activities.

Program:

During the day, buddhists are going to make merit by going to temples for special observances and join in the other Buddhist activities.

Keeping the Five Precepts. Practise of renunciation: Observe the Eight Precepts, practise of meditation and mental discipline, stay in the temple, wearing white robes, for a number of days.

In the evening of Makha full-moon day, each temple in Thailand holds a candlelight procession called a wian tian (wian meaning circle; tian meaning candle). Holding flowers, incense and a lighted candle, the monks and congregation members circumambulate clockwise three times around the Uposatha Hall - once for each of the Three Jewels – the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha.