Talk:Bodhi Day

Date of observance
The article states that outside of Japan, Bodhi Day is celebrated on the 8th day of the 12th lunar month in the Chinese calendar, which would mean that it changes every Gregorian year. However, if you Google "Bodhi Day", you find that it's December 8 every year (such as on this BBC calendar). Has this been standardized across all sects?  howcheng  {chat} 17:56, 7 December 2011 (UTC)


 * The link to Vesākha gives some additional information on the lunar calendar & the day of this celebration. Joshua Jonathan (talk) 18:26, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * That's not exactly what I meant. Let's try it another way: If some countries celebrate it on the lunar calendar, then why do all the search results fix the day on December 8? According to http:// www.prokerala.com/general/calendar/chinese-year-converter.php (site is on the spam blacklist), the 8th day of the 12th lunar month will be January 1, 2012, but searching for "Bodhi Day January 2012" doesn't get you any result that shows Bodhi Day as being observed that day. So what gives?  howcheng  {chat} 21:48, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Honestly, I don't know. Sorry... Joshua Jonathan (talk) 16:59, 8 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Though, after some more searching: Wesak Day is akin to Bodhi Day, yet not exactly the same. I hope this explains part of the difference. Still, I don't know how this lunar calendar works. Joshua Jonathan (talk) 15:53, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

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Japan converted all (or almost all) of their holidays to the solar calendar in the late 19th century. Consequently, most (or almost all) Japanese Buddhist sects commemorate the Buddha's enlightenment on December 8 every year. Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese Buddhists (and maybe some Japanese Buddhists) continue to commemorate it on the eighth day of the 12th lunar month, which usually falls some time in January. I haven't been able to find much information on how this is traditionally or currently celebrated, so I'm not sure if it's given more attention in Japan than other East Asian countries. When I was in China, people knew Laba as a fairly obscure purely secular festival. I don't think anybody I mentioned it to knew that it was supposed to be a Buddhist holiday. However, the people I knew tended not to be very interested in Buddhism, so I wouldn't assume they are a representative sample of what Chinese people do or don't know about the holiday. In any event, Buddhists in the West are influenced by whatever specific Asian roots their group has, so, since Japanese Zen was very influential in the West early on, I'd imagine a lot of Western Buddhists think of Bodhi Day as happening on December 8. – Greg Pandatshang (talk) 20:33, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

Article title
I was hoping the article would give me some info about where the name "Bodhi Day" comes from. No luck. It does not seem to be translation of any name used in Asian countries. Sounds like a bit of an odd neologism to me. But, that said, I have no idea what we'd call this article if it weren't called "Bodhi Day", since it's called different things in different East Asian countries. Chinese people and Japanese Zen agree on 臘八, but they pronounce that quite differently.

I guess you could think of Bodhi Day as a very loose translation of 成道会, which is literally "Attain Path Gathering".– Greg Pandatshang (talk) 20:41, 26 December 2016 (UTC)