Let's write about the Buddhism tradition of Bodhi Day

 Found this essay in The Conversation, by Megan Bryson, an Associate Professor of Religious Studies, University of Tennessee. 

In the article's lead, the importance of lighting lamps🪔 to combat darkness reminds me about how creating light to conquer darkness is a common theme in Judaism, Christianity and Buddhism. A trifecta of enlightenment symbolized by candles and lamps.

(Just an FYI, in the Catholic church calendar, December 8 is a major Marian holy day. many celebrate as a Holy Day of Obligation.) My husband Dick and I visited the bronze Great Buddha of Kamakura, when we were in Japan.

We took the bullet train from Tokyo. The statue dates back to the 13th century; it is a huge iconic sight and a tourist attraction.

On Bodhi Day, Buddhists commemorate Siddhartha Gautama’s enlightenment by lighting lamps 🪔 to combat darkness. December 8, marks the celebration of Bodhi Day in Japanese Buddhism. Bodhi means enlightenment or awakening in Sanskrit. It commemorates the enlightenment of Siddhartha Gautama, who became the Buddha. Buddhists throughout the world celebrate Bodhi Day, but they do not all celebrate Siddhartha’s enlightenment on December 8.


In China, South Korea and Vietnam, his enlightenment is observed on the eighth day of the 12th lunar month. In 2025, but they do not all celebrate Siddhartha’s enlightenment on Dec. 8. In China, South Korea and Vietnam, his enlightenment is observed on, this falls on January 7.

In the Theravada form of Buddhism, followed in Southeast Asia, Gautama’s enlightenment, is commemorated along with his birth and death during the Vesak festival celebrated in April or May. This is similar to Tibetan Buddhism, which also combines the observation of the Buddha’s birth, enlightenment and death in the springtime Saka Dawa festival.

As a scholar of Buddhism in East Asia, I study how people adapt Buddhism to their own cultural contexts. Bodhi Day is a good example of how Buddhists in different parts of Asia developed their own versions of important Buddhist holidays.The story of Bodhi Day: No matter when Buddhists celebrate the Buddha’s enlightenment, the story behind the holiday is consistent.


Biographies of the Buddha describe how young Prince Siddhartha became disillusioned with the fleeting luxuries of palace life. He eventually left home to find a cure for the inevitable suffering caused by old age, sickness and death. Siddhartha sought guidance from various religious masters, including one who taught his students to practice extreme self-denial, such as eating only a spoonful of gruel per day. Following this method, Siddhartha wasted away until he was just skin and bones, but he got no closer to resolving the problem of suffering. It was at just this time that a young woman named Sujata* came by with milk porridge, which she offered to the skeletal Siddhartha.

This meal gave Siddhartha the energy he needed to resolve the problem of suffering once and for all. He realized that no external teacher could give him the answers he sought, and he would have to solve this problem on his own.

Siddhartha decided to meditate under a pipal tree, also known as a sacred fig tree, until he reached enlightenment.

Over the next seven days he meditated, deepening his insights into the true nature of existence. On the seventh day, Siddhartha attained complete awakening to become a buddha. Buddhas are people who reach full enlightenment on their own, like Siddhartha, without direct guidance from a teacher.

Monks and nuns in Japanese and Korean Zen Buddhism follow this model by meditating intensively for the seven days leading up to Bodhi Day.

As a buddha, Siddhartha began sharing his insights with other spiritual seekers, attracting a group of followers who were the first Buddhists. Buddhist monks and merchants spread the religion to the north, east and south, and by the fourth century C.E. it was well established in China.The Laba Festival and congee: China already had its own religious and philosophical systems, along with its own calendar of holidays, when Buddhism came onto the scene. Buddhists in China adapted their religion to Chinese language and culture, including some existing holidays.


The 12th and final month of the Chinese lunar calendar was already a time for making sacrifices for ancestors in advance of the new year. In fact, the 12th month is called La, which originally referred to the cured meat that people offered to their ancestors at this time of year. “Ba” means the number eight, so Laba translates to “the eighth day of the La month” or “eighth day of the 12th month.”
Buddhism entered China in the first century C.E. By the third century, Chinese Buddhists identified the eighth day of the 12th month as the date of the Buddha’s enlightenment. Celebrating the Buddha’s enlightenment – or Bodhi Day – at the same time as the Laba Festival required adaptation.

The Laba Festival involved meat offerings and hunting, both of which violate Buddhist rules against killing animals. Over time, a compromise emerged, and rice porridge, or congee, became this holiday’s signature food for Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike. Rice has been used in Chinese religious offerings since at least the eighth century B.C.E., and rice congee also recalls the offering of milk porridge that helped Siddhartha on his journey to Buddhahood.
Light in the darkness: Another aspect of the Laba Festival, or Bodhi Day, is that it falls around the winter solstice, the darkest part of the year. Like other holidays at this time of year, Bodhi Day involves lighting lamps to combat the darkness. 

For East Asian Buddhists, these lamps 🪔 symbolize the Buddha’s enlightenment, which lights the path for others to follow.
Bodhi Day is celebrated in Japan and throughout the Japanese diaspora on December 8, because Japan switched from the lunar to solar calendar in 1873. Buddhists in other East Asian countries, such as China, Vietnam and South Korea, will observe Bodhi Day on January 7, 2025.

East Asian Buddhists will celebrate the holiday in different ways – some by lighting lamps 🪔, some by eating congee, some others by meditating for a full week straight. But for all Buddhists, Bodhi Day represents hope and the potential to overcome suffering.

*Julie's personal editorial comment, stands to reason, a woman brought Siddhartha the nourishment he needed to achieve enlightenment, just my opinion.

Writing in the time of pandemic- a retrospective focus on today

Appreciated reading this opinion echo, an analysis with perspective, published in the Tennessee newspaper Knox County News

'A Journal of the Plague Year' relevant 300 years after publication | Opinion

By Misty G. Anderson 

"...a time in history when our ways of talking about the health of our nation have been narrowed down to talking about business profits", Misty Andereson

Daniel Defoe wrote the book everyone knows, whether they have read it or not: "Robinson Crusoe." It’s a story we tell again and again, whether as "Castaway," "Gilligan’s Island" or "Lost," about what you would do if you were shipwrecked on a desert island, which looks more appealing than ever these days. But Defoe’s less well-known 1722 book, "A Journal of the Plague Year," about the 1665 London outbreak of bubonic plague, might be the more useful read for this moment. 

The Black Death wasn’t just a 14th-century event, and yet another outbreak of it in Europe in the 1720s prompted Defoe, with the help of his uncle, to reflect on how England had behaved during the 1665 epidemic. Like modern reporters, Defoe tells the story of the epidemic through the death count by region. His descriptions of those who sickened and died are harrowing. The disease hit doctors and nurses hard (then as now), prompted hoarding and led to rumors about minority groups (in London, the Jesuits) who could be blamed for it. Astrologers, quacks with miracle cures and fortune tellers all sprang up to pick the pockets of frightened people desperate for a sense of control. They preyed on the most vulnerable, especially those who couldn’t afford not to go to work.

Health is about more than the economy

In fact, Defoe was a small businessman himself before he was a novelist. He wrote about the impact of interrupted trade on people’s livelihoods during and after the epidemic, and he worried about when the economy would pick up. But he was always clear, like Tennessee state Sen. Richard Briggs, that there isn’t much of a livelihood without life, nor an economy without people.
Our current crisis asks us the classic stick-up question: “Your money or your life?” Unfortunately, it comes at a time in history when our ways of talking about the health of our nation have been narrowed down to talking about business profits. Tennessee has been especially hard hit by this substitution of economic for actual health. Thirteen rural hospitals have closed since 2012 because they weren’t profitable (they make money on elective procedures), and that number could double by the end of this year. Those closures take thousands of rural jobs and strain the remaining hospitals.

The national shortage of personal protective equipment is also an effect of just-in-time supply chains that maximize profit for companies and shareholders, but that can be deadly for medical professionals and the patients they are trying to save.

Our most popular stories of self-reliance, as attractive as they are, don’t tell the whole story, because their heroes don’t really live alone. The fictional Robinson Crusoe had all the stuff from the ship, “his man” Friday, a lot of goats and, eventually, more castaways. He also shipwrecked while running an illegal slave trading venture. The real Henry David Thoreau, who went to the woods to “live deliberately” and wrote the American tribute to self-reliance, "On Walden Pond," had neighbors. He bought a shack from an Irish railroad worker’s family for $4.25 and stripped the wood to build his cabin. He went to dinner at Ralph Waldo Emerson’s house often, and his sister and mother brought him baked goods and doughnuts every weekend. Even Han Solo realized he needed his friends, that he loved them and that he wasn’t doing it just for the money. Veterans know this in their hearts and their bones.

We’re in a moment where we have to think about the relationship of the individual to the community flourishing in order to face this crisis. Our country will get through it, but no matter how much we socially isolate, we won’t be doing it alone. We’ve all seen and experienced anxiety and selfishness since the coronavirus pandemic hit, but also empathy, sharing, sacrifice and community-making.

Joy awaits us

Defoe saw that same range of responses 300 years ago, and he ends his book by commenting on the utter delight people experienced on seeing each other in the street after the plague had passed, with strangers sharing in the joy of being together. 

So, as you look forward to the joy of being with friends, loved ones and, yes, strangers at restaurants and concerts and ball games, take a moment to think about how our ability to flourish is tied up in the flourishing of others. What would we do differently as a society if we took that seriously? We’re all on this island planet together.

You can slow the spread of the new coronavirus, COVID-19, by staying home for all but essential trips, practicing social distancing and washing hands with soap and water frequently. If Americans can slow the pandemic’s spread, it will prevent deaths by reducing stress on medical professionals and the health care system. 

For more information about COVID-19, please visit cdc.gov/coronavirus.

Misty G. Anderson is a professor of English at the University of Tennessee.