The Lantern Festival
Lighting lamps is a cross-cultural ritual in many religious traditions all over the world, either as a calendrical festival celebration or as a daily ritual performance. Hindus have lamp rituals for their Diwali (or Dipavali) celebration. Jews celebrate Hanukkah (or Chanukah) by lighting a lamp. In the Buddhist tradition, offering lanterns to the Buddha has a long history, yet the ritual of offering lanterns later developed into a festival, bringing the entire Buddhist community together for celebrating the victory of Buddhist wisdom in dispersing darkness, fear, and suffering. Some Buddhist sources indicate that Buddhists offer constantly-lit lanterns, which are called the "everlasting" bright lantern (Nanda-dipa). The legend of Nanda-dipa is associated with a devoted Buddhist woman called Nanda, who achieved enlightenment by offering a lamp to the Buddha, as it was illustrated in early Mahāyāna Buddhist literature.
The Chinese celebration of lighting lamps for Shangyuan jie (Upper Prime Festival) is held on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month. Nowadays, Shangyuan jie has been incorporated into the famous Yuanxiao jie (Lantern Festival), and few people would realize its religious origins. In traditional China, both Buddhist and Daoist sources frequently described the celebrations of the two lantern festivals, respectively, illustrating multiple facets of the lantern ritual in these two major religious traditions and reflecting the hybrid nature of religious festivals in some ways. In contemporary Korea, the lantern festival is also celebrated together with the Buddha’s birthday.
Offering Lanterns to the Buddha in Thailand
Readings:
Sean Anderson, Flames of Devotion: Oil Lamps from South and Southeast Asia and Himalayas. Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 2006.
Huaiyu Chen, “Multiple Traditions in One Ritual: A Reading of the Buddhist Liturgical Texts for Lantern Ritual in Dunhuang Manuscripts.” In Tansen Sen ed., Buddhism across Asia: Networks of Material, Intellectual and Cultural Exchange. Singapore: Institute for South East Asian Studies and New Delhi: Manohar Publishers, 2009, pp. 233-257.
