Hanamatsuri is Japanese for “Flower Festival”. It is a celebration of the birth (Bussho-e) of Siddhartha Gotma around 563 BC in Lumbini which is now in Nepal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddha%27s_Birthday
On April 23, 2024 we will celebrate the birth of Buddha in our unique way at the Falmouth Soto Zen Sangha, at the Congregational Church on the Green, in Falmouth Massachusetts, as well as on Zoom. This begins at 7:00 PM/EDT, and you may come early to sit as the Zendo is open at 6:30. Zoom is https://www.falmouthsotozensangha.net/blog-1/search/hanamatsuri
Password: FSZS
Please bring a flower for the service and if you wish your statue of the baby Buddha or icons of the World Honored One in his later years, as we will bathe them. Water being the elemental nourishment of life while representing flow and change and carrying away of the old while bringing forth the new. The flowers are budding Dharma -expressiveness of the unfolding moment.
We will talk of the legends surrounding his mother Maya and his aunt and stepmother Mahapajapati before and after the birth of Siddhartha Gautama. Maya and Maha were sisters and wives of Suddhodana, Siddhartha’s father and head of the Shayka clan.
I have come to welcome this birth-story as a conceptual microcosm of the teachings of Buddha, and further that the Maya and Mahapajapati’s relationship resounds with the later teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha. It speaks of the beginning of each of our paths…Horoniga:
Which may lead to the practice found and taught by Enlightened One some 35 years later and expounded by him until his death, said to be at the age of 80. The Dharma Talk for the service then is “prequel” to those teachings
Previous Dharma Talks on Hanamatsuri may be found on our website: https://www.falmouthsotozensangha.net/blog-1/search/hanamatsuri
Palms together,
Sangaku
Unshin Sangaku Dan Joslyn-sensei
Founder and Guiding Teacher
The Falmouth Soto Zen Sangha
sensei@falmouthsotozensangha,net
404-702-7646