Kathina Ceremony in Pasadena, Oct. 14-15

Los Angeles Buddhist Vihara on Facebook; Bhante, editors, Wisdom Quarterly

Now that the traditional Indian rainy season, Vassa ("Rains Retreat") comes to an end, Buddhists that follow these oldest traditions celebrate Kathina.

• Kathina or Katina is a Buddhist festival that comes at the end of Vassa, the three-month rainy season retreat of intensive practice for Theravada Buddhists in Bangladesh (known as Kaṭhina Cībar Dān), Cambodia, Laos, Burma, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. The season during which a monastery may hold the Kathina ceremony is one month long, beginning after the full moon of the eleventh month in the Lunar calendar (usually October). This is a time of giving, for lay Buddhists to express gratitude to monastics (Buddhist nuns and  monks). Lay people bring donations to temples, like new saffron robes and other monastic requisites.

Tall statue in Sri Lanka

This is a very significant robe offering that may seem trivial to us. But the Buddha regarded it as the most meritorious act of giving lay persons could engage in.

It is the donation of a sturdy or durable robe to the Monastic Sangha, which presumably will always contain "noble ones," enlightened individuals along the various stages of awakening from stream-entry to arhatship, making this donation particularly meritorious.

All Theravada Buddhist temples from Thailand, Sri Lanka, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia will be celebrating this month.

The great Buddhaghosa in Sri Lanka

Pasadena's Los Angeles Buddhist Vihara (920 N. Summit Ave. 91103) -- whose abbot Ven. Dhammarama just celebrated his 92nd birthday this weekend, making him the most senior Theravada Buddhist monk in the western hemisphere with 78 "rains" as a monk under his belt -- will be celebrating from Oct. 14-15, 2017.

Happy birthday, Ven. Dhammarama!