A Buddhist Festival of Spiritual Realisation and Enlightenment
– An Account on the 2563rd Bathing Buddha Holy Ceremony of Tasmanian Chinese Buddhist Academy of Australia
The 2563rd Bathing Buddha Holy Ceremony was perfectly convened on the morning of 26 May 2019 at the Lecture Building of Tasmanian Chinese Buddhist Academy of Australia.
Today, the Primordial Dharma Nature Asraya Palace was filled with friends, local politicians, community leaders, religious representatives, leaders of the Chinese community, and good friends from all walks of life. Attendees also included Holy Tantra Devotees, Holy Tantra Practitioners, Holy Tantra Gurus and Holy Tantra Elder Gurus whom have come especially from around the world such as China, U.S.A., Canada, England, New Zealand, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Korea, and Thailand for pilgrimage and attend this meeting. Three hundred new and old friends together in the same venue, together celebrating the 2563rd Holy Birthday of the Great Holy Sakyamuni Buddha.
Precisely as praised in the speech of the Attorney General the Honourable Elise Archer MP, representing the Honourable Will Hodgman MP, Premier of Tasmania, the Academy’s Buddha Bathing Ceremony celebrating the Holy Birthday of the Buddha have become widely accepted as an annual community event that the citizens of Hobart, Tasmania welcome and look forward to. This celebratory festival combines both Chinese and Western cultures, spreading the messages of compassion, wisdom, peace, harmony, universal great love, universal spirituality, and universal Dharma bliss of Buddhism; symbolising a progression from darkness into the light.
On this day, during the grand and solemn ritual of celebrating the birth of the Great Holy Sakyamuni Buddha, female guests take on the role of the Buddha’s mother – Buddha Mother Madame Maya’s personification, reenacting the holy scene of the birth of crown prince Siddhartha Gautama. Male guests represent Buddhas of multiple heavens decanting holy water, bathing the holy body of the crown prince. Thus, all present were able to cleanse the afflictions of body and mind, realise and experience spiritual pure enlightenment, and as a unity together tread the ‘three karma transforming into the three tantra’ path of attaining Buddhahood in the current lifetime.