Bodhi Day

After six years of study and harsh austerities, Siddhartha Gautama took the middle way between indulgence and self-denial. He accepted a bowl of milk-rice from a young woman, Sujata, regained his strength and sat beneath a fig tree at Bodh Gaya, resolved not to rise until he had found the end of suffering. Through the night, Buddhist texts say, he faced the temptations of Mara, recalled his former lives and saw how beings are reborn according to their deeds. At dawn he awoke.

East Asian tradition adds that his awakening came as he saw the morning star. The tree became the bodhi tree, the “tree of awakening”, and a descendant of it still grows at Bodh Gaya.

In Japanese Zen monasteries the week before Rōhatsu is the most demanding retreat of the year, the Rōhatsu sesshin, with meditation through much of the day and night; it ends on the morning of 8 December. Temples hold services and offerings, and lay people may chant sutras, meditate or recite the Buddha’s teachings.

In Chinese communities, Laba is marked by cooking laba zhou, a porridge of rice, beans, nuts and dried fruit, recalling Sujata’s milk-rice; temples share it with visitors. Some Buddhists in the West decorate a ficus tree with lights or beads.

Temples across Japan hold Rōhatsu services, and Zen centres from Kyoto to California end their winter retreats. On Laba, Chinese temples such as the Lama Temple in Beijing hand out porridge to long queues of visitors.