Buddha Day festivities today

By Mary Kaye Ritz
Advertiser Religion & Ethics Writer

Last year, Albert Lui marveled that the Chinese firecrackers used to celebrate Buddha's birthday were clean.

Abbess Yi Chao performs a water purification of baby Buddha at the Hawaii Buddhist Cultural Society in the Chinese Cultural Plaza. The society will celebrate Buddha's birthday with a parade, prayers and entertainment. Gregory Yamamoto • The Honolulu Advertiser

There's probably a new technology behind it, Lui said over a cup of jasmine tea at Harbor View Hong Kong restaurant. "I don't know how they did it. I mean, the whole thing is gunpowder and paste, but when it explodes, nothing is left!"

With firecrackers an important cultural element for Chinese Buddhists, who also celebrate the birth of Buddha with a parade and prayer rituals that day, the advent of "clean" firecrackers is a fairly important advance. Or at least it's one that left Lui, the head of the Hawaii Association of International Buddhists, wide-eyed and animated.

About a thousand Buddhists of Chinese, Vietnamese, Laotian, Samoan and Taiwanese ancestry are expected to turn out today to watch a parade from 'A'ala Park through Chinatown.

At the end of the parade, people come to a statue of the baby Buddha to pour water or tea over it. That, Lui explains, symbolizes the purification from sin.

Afterward, there will be chants and prayer from various temples, then entertainment.

Lui talked about how his sect of Chinese Buddhism, the Fo Kuang Shan, sometimes does things a little differently from the Japanese, such as using firecrackers and following the lunar calendar, which puts Buddha's birthday as the eighth day of the fourth moon. But some things don't change, especially the noncommercialization of Buddha Day.

They don't give gifts or throw wild parties.

"Why celebrate the Buddha's birthday (that way), if you don't follow his teachings?" Lui said.