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 ofVassa, 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.
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.
(Ajahn Brahm, Western Australia) One Minute Newsreel: Katina on a beautiful spring day. Lovely to see so many people welcoming the monks at the end of their annual retreat in 2015.
(Bodhinyanarama Monastery, New Zealand/Philip Maskell) Kathina Robe Offering) Ceremony 2016. This annual
festival arrives at the end of Vassa (Rains Retreat) as celebrated at the monastic complex in Wellington, New Zealand in the presence of the Ambassador of the Kingdom of Thailand.
This time of year, as Buddhist "Lent" (Vas) comes to a close, is marked with a very special ceremony: Katina.
The Buddha proclaimed it the most meritorious ceremony to participate in for lay followers.
It is the ceremonial offering of an extra durable robe to the entire monastic community that has been engaging in intensive practice for the preceding three months of the Rains Retreat, roughly corresponding to our hemispheric summer.
The Buddhist Temple of America (Wat Bhuridattavanaram) -- a large Thudong (Dhutanga) or Thai Forest Meditation tradition temple in Ontario, Riverside County, California -- celebrated writ large.
We traveled to the hinterlands of Los Angeles by the great mountain. The desert before us, the foothills to the north. A thousand gathered to mourn the recently deceased Thai King Bhumipol, all in black, and support the monastic community. On the same day in Pasadena, the Los Angeles Buddhist Vihara, celebrated Sri Lankan style with all night pirith (paritta) chanting, dressed all in white, and constructed the special hardy robe on site before offering it to the monks to select someone among their ranks for the honor of receiving it this year. Burmese temple on the eastern edge of L.A. County kept the tradition.
There are more celebrations to follow as every temple in the Theravada lineage holds events. This weekend in North Hollywood, the Sarathchandra Buddhist Meditation Center will mark the annual event with Sinhalese vegetarian island cuisine, clad in white taking the Eight Precepts, and seeing to it the monastic community maintains this unbroken custom.
It began at the time of the Buddha when two monks ventured to see him but got caught in the downpours of the rainy season in Ancient India. They carried on with thin robes and no heavy outer cloak to protect them. The Buddha advised them that it would have been a more appropriate course of action to remain in one abode to practice intensely and realize the goal, sparing many small creatures that flourish in the rain along the way. The Buddha called for the offering of a durable robe, and much has been made of it ever since. The question is, Why would this offering be any better than any other offering at any time of year?
The answer has something to do with the likelihood that monastics engaged in meditation have attained the supramundane paths-and-fruits (magga-phala). There is special significance to two offering, a meal give before attainment that enables that attainment and a meal right after attainment because it is now given not to an ordinary good person but to an extraordinary enlightened person who has changed lineage (gotrabhu). That is the way karma is whether we understand it or have yet to understand it.
The kathina is a special robe offered to a monastic, a nun or monk who has faultlessly maintained the Rains Retreat, when Buddhist monastics are enjoined to remain in one location in observance of vassa or the rainy season that annually drenches Asia, or in any case used to prior to the climate chaos we have created by our pollution and karma.
The extraordinary aspect of this celebration -- since every Theravada temple celebrates this offering as the culmination of the Buddhist "Lent" period for monastics -- is that the Thai Dhammakaya temples invites monastics from EVERY Buddhist country.
Hundreds of ordained bhikkhus (Buddhist ascetics) and bhikkhunis(nuns) from the
have been invited to attend. They will chant to white-clad lay Buddhists holding candles symbolic of world peace, who then circumambulate and participate in the most meritorious act of giving for lay devotees, the offering of the sturdy kathina robe.
Los Angeles, particularly the foothill area of the San Gabriel Valley near the watershed San Gabriel River next to the Dhammakaya Temple complex, is windy today with cool temperatures and a tiny chance of rain, reminding us of the original need of a sturdy and durable outer robe the Buddha called for.
The Buddha wrapped in golden robe, Chiang Mai, Thailand (WeGoTwo/flickr.com)
Why would there be more merit?
Burmese monk, Saffron Revolution (WQ)
The reason this is the most meritorious offering is because conscientious monastics have been practicing meditation and teaching Dharma for three straight months in a kind of cloistered retreat, and the intensive practice is likely to have resulted in the attainment of jhana and/or the first, second, third, or fourth stage of enlightenment for those who practice in accordance with the Dharma!
Gifts (dana) to these extraordinary persons, given their "change of lineage" (gotrabhu) becomes much more meritorious by a special impersonal law of karma and the universe.
The Dhammmakaya International Meditation Center (D.I.M.C.) is a non-profit organization that has as its primary purpose teaching meditation.
DIMC's conviction is that individual peace of mind underlies our collective potential for harmony and peace in the world.
DIMC operates under the Dhammakaya Foundation, a non-governmental organization of the United Nations headquartered in Thailand.
It was founded in California in 1992 by a group of Theravada lay Buddhists interested in the practice of meditation without becoming monastics or retiring from the world. A Los Angeles meditation center is located in the beautiful city of Azusa, California (San Gabriel Valley) at the foothills of the Angeles National Forest, in northeastern L.A. County. The center is surrounded by nature, a settled atmosphere that creates a tranquil environment perfectly suited for meditation, serenity, and concentration so rare in our busy lives.
The special Dhammakaya Meditation technique (derived from a revival of the ancient Thai Forest Tradition) is effective and easy to learn. Everyone can benefit from it regardless of age, gender, race, or religion. More
The "Rains Retreat" period (Vas or "Buddhist Lent") comes to an end with the Kathina Robe Offering Ceremony, Los Angeles Buddhist Vihara, Pasadena, California
The Katina Festival is celebrated in Theravada countries around the world. It marks the end of the three-month Rains Retreat (Vas) period when monastics retire to monasteries for intensive meditation, study, and/or teaching.
Lay Buddhists gather weekly on lunar observance days (uposatha), which falls on new-, half-, and full-moon days, to hear the Dharma and cultivate learning (suta), virtuous behavior (sila), and meditative techniques (bhavana).
Monastic study during Vas (theworld.org)
At the time of the Buddha a special durable-robe, the katina robe, ceremony was designated. The Buddha called this the highest offering of laypeople to the Sangha since it is given to the entire monastic community, which after intensive practice likely contains more enlightened individuals than before the Rains Retreat. Therefore, the karma one generates in giving to them collectively is more "durable" like the sturdy robe constructed just for this occasion.
The three-month period corresponding to the ancient Indian calendar's monsoon season has come to be called "Buddhist Lent" just as Vesak is sometimes referred to as "Buddhist Christmas," marking the same full moon day of the month on which the Buddha was born, attained enlightenment, and passed into final nirvana. This shorthand may seem silly, but it is only meant to facilitate understanding of the significance of these events around the world. It may also point to a common Eastern origin in Buddhism, Hinduism, and/or Paganism for many festivals now unquestioningly considered "Christian" holidays.
Many beautiful Catholic, Orthodox, and Essene (early mystic Jewish and early Christian) monastic/contemplative practices have direct origins in the Buddhist monasticism they inherited as the wisdom of the East.
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Now that the traditional Indian rainy season, Vassa ("Rains Retreat") comes to an end, Buddhists that follow these oldest traditions celebrate Kathina.
