The Buddhist Lunar Observance Day

Uposatha (suttacentral.net) edited by Wisdom Quarterly

We wear all white, go to the temple, monastery, or center and observe the Eight Precepts.

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(For non-Buddhists) the "fasting day" [no eating after noon], is a day of purification -- brought about [for modern Buddhists] by adopting the Eight Precepts to develop one's virtue and merit based on practicing skillful karma (deeds) once a week.

This day, called the uposatha, is a kind of Sabbath day based on the phases of the Sky Timekeeper, our moon, Luna (known as Soma and Chandra in ancient India).

This observance has existed since time immemorial, long before the advent of the current Buddha.

(For Buddhists) it is a day on which lay-Buddhists undertake to observe eight abstinences and on which they listen to the historical Buddha's Teaching on Dhamma (usually the day preceding the nights of the new moon and the full moon, and the night midway between the two, i.e. the eighth, fourteenth, and/or fifteenth days of the lunar fortnight; sometimes also the fifth day).

The observance of this day; the abstinence undertaken on this day, which is the day on which the monastic community (saṅgha) assembles to confess any faults and to recite the shortest "Path to Liberation" or pātimokkha (the list of 227 monastic rules for recluses), usually the fourteenth or fifteenth day of the lunar fortnight).

Uposatha is the ceremony or (formal) act held on this day. More