Lantern Festival: Fill our hearts with Buddha’s blessings and wisdom
The Lantern Festival (元宵节) is a Chinese traditional festival celebrated on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, it also means the first full moon night of the lunar year. This day marks the final day of the Chinese New Year celebrations and is also widely known as Chinese Valentine’s Day in some Asian countries namely China and Taiwan.
To celebrate the first full moon of the year, one of the most important customs for the Chinese is to have glutinous (sweet) rice balls (tang yuan) filled with red beans, sesame or peanut. They symbolise family reunion, happiness, harmony and good fortune in the new year, and they are usually eaten with the family. Households would also hang red-coloured lanterns to invoke good fortune.
There are a few legends about how the Lantern Festival came about. One of the most widely accepted versions traces back to Emperor Ming (58 – 75 AD), of the Eastern Han Dynasty. Noticing that it is customary for Buddhist monks to light lanterns in their temples on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month to honour the Buddha, Emperor Ming, who was a strong advocate of Buddhism set a decree that the palace, towns, streets, and all households should also light lanterns on this day every year. This practice lives on as today’s Lantern Festival.
The significance of lighting lanterns during the Lantern Festival is to pray for blessings and avoid disasters with the main intention of transmitting Buddhism to the world. In Buddhism, the lighting of a lantern symbolises wisdom, hope, and joy. Lighting lamps for the Buddha remind us to pursue wisdom and to remove greed, hatred, and delusion.
In the “Tune of Brahma” Sutra Clarifying Karma, there are ten benefits of making light offerings:
1. One becomes like the light in the world.
2. One achieves the clairvoyance of the pure flesh eye (as a human).
3. One achieves the devas’ eye.
4. One receives the wisdom of knowing what is a virtue and what is a non-virtue.
5. One is able to eliminate the darkness of ignorance, the concept of inherent existence.
6. One receives the illumination of wisdom, even in samsara one never experiences darkness.
7. One receives great enjoyment and wealth.
8. One is reborn in the deva or human realms.
9. One quickly becomes liberated.
10. One quickly attains enlightenment.
This Lantern Festival, let us light the lamp before the Buddha. May the lamp of wisdom continue to burn brightly in our hearts and may the light eliminate darkness and ignorance for all sentient beings.
元宵节：燃灯供佛前，福慧满人间
元宵佳节，明月如霜。
农历正月十五，新年后的首轮月圆高挂万里夜空。当月光洒落大地之时象征着一元复始，大地回春之寓意。古人称此夜为“宵”，故正月十五被称之为元宵节、元夕或东方情人节，是春节之后第一个重要的民间节日，也是人们庆祝新春延续的喜庆佳节。
皓月悬天之日，万家灯火通明，处处张灯结彩，合家团聚共吃汤圆以庆佳节。丰富多彩的元宵点灯习俗，其实与佛教有着千丝万缕的关系。相传东汉时期，明帝推崇佛教，听闻佛教僧人在正月十五会观佛舍利、点灯敬佛，便命令皇宫上下燃灯祈福，庶民也在大街上挂灯庆贺，进而形成了元宵节赏灯的佳节习俗。
而后，僧人燃灯表佛的举动相沿成俗，逐渐形成了民间盛大的元宵节日。元宵节燃灯的举动对世人而言有着祈福避祸之意，出世则为相传佛法的本心。事实上，灯明在佛法中象征着智慧、希望与美好。燃灯供佛实则提醒着我们追求智慧，以智慧之光除去贪、嗔、痴，以智慧之明除去人生百惑。
《佛为首迦长者说业报差别经》也道出了奉施灯明所获的十种功德：
一、照世如灯。
二、肉眼不坏。
三、得于天眼。
四、善恶智能。
五、灭除大暗。
六、得智能明。
七、不在暗处。
八、具大福报。
九、命终生天。
十、速证涅盘。
常燃如是真正觉灯，照破一切无明痴暗。在来临的元宵节，让我们一起燃起佛前灯，灭除心头嗔痴火，愿以心中大智慧，增长众生福与慧。
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2023农历新年祈福活动
这个新春佳节，诚邀您与家人前来本寺参与农历新年祈福活动。让我们以吉祥钟声祈安康、以梵音呗唱除烦恼、以如意心灯照大千！
| 农历新年消灾祈福法会 (Chinese New Year Blessing Puja) |
| 供天：农历正月初九 | 2023年1月30日 (星期一) | 早上6时至8时 | 大悲殿 |
| 消灾：农历正月十四 | 2023年2月4日 (星期六) | 早上10时起 | 大悲殿 |
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Question: Doesn’t anger make us more powerful? Why isn’t anger beneficial?
Anger may give us a tremendous sense of power, but at the same time it undermines the happiness of ourselves and others. It has the power to burn down forests of positive potential. We generally consider something beneficial if it promotes happiness. But when we ask ourselves, “Am I happy when I’m angry?” the answer is undoubtedly no. We may feel a surge of physical energy due to physiological reasons, but emotionally, we feel miserable. Thus, from our own experience, we can see that anger does not promote happiness.
Also, under the influence of anger, we say and do things that we later regret. Years of trust built with great effort can be quickly damaged by a few moments of uncontrolled anger. In a bout of anger, we treat the people we love the most in a way that we would never treat a stranger. When we’re angry we say horribly cruel things and may even physically strike those dearest to us. This harms not only our loved ones, but also ourselves, as we sit aghast while the family we cherish disintegrates. This, in turn, breeds guilt and self-hatred, emotions that immobilise us and further harm our relationships and ourselves. If we could tame our anger, such painful consequences could be avoided.
— Excerpted from Awaken Issue 55
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In our physical existence of duality, there are always two sides to everything. Nothing is inherently good or bad. It all depends on how we handle our circumstances to transcend adversities with hope and courage in our hearts, to grow and evolve in our life journeys.
─ Venerable Sik Kwang Sheng
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