Talk:Buddha's Birthday

Celebrations in Taiwan
I'm in Taiwan, and here the birthday is celebrated today, April 8, like in Japan. It is not a holiday. (this comment was added in 2007: 2007-04-08T07:03:09 by 218.211.34.34 - --NealMcB (talk) 17:33, 21 May 2009 (UTC))

Merge? and pronunciation
Should this page maybe be merged with Vesak? And, if so, what should the location of the merged page be? - Nat Krause 28 June 2005 09:02 (UTC)
 * I would tend to say 'no'. The Buddha's Birthday holiday is typically observed in East Asian countries, which observe the birth, enlightenment, and Nirvanva of the Buddha on three different days, and which tend to fix those days at particular dates on the Gregorian calendar.  Vesak, on the other hand, is almost exclusively Theravada and combines the observance of the birth, enlightenment, and Nirvana into a single day.  It tends to focus slightly more on the birth in practical observance, but the date is always determined by the old Indian lunar calendar- Vesak is the full-moon uposatha day in the 5th month of the calendar (which is also called Vesak).  The two holidays overlap slightly, but there is enough of a difference between them- who observes them, when and how they are observed, what exactly is being celebrated or recalled- that I think that they are probably better served by being two articles, rather than one article that has to be split into two giant sections.  I think that the issue over what to call the merged article is a pretty good indicator of the problem; the only solution I could see would be to make a 'Holidays Observing Events in the Life of the Buddha' article that included all the major Buddhist holidays in a single place (Vesak, Magha Puja, Nihon-e, Bodhi Day, Buddha Day, Anapanasati Puja, etc.), but that would probably need to link out to individual articles anyway to keep from becoming unwieldy.  Is there a general 'Buddhist Holidays' or 'Buddhist Festivals' article anywhere?  --Clay Collier 22:38, 7 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Hmmm ... I suppose you're right that they should stay as separate articles. The naming of this article remains an issue, though, since "Buddha's birthday" is certainly part of the celebration for Vesak. I wonder what the most common non-English name for "Buddha's Birthday" is.


 * As far as I know, there is currently no article about Buddhist holidays or festivals. - Nat Krause 08:05, 6 October 2005 (UTC)


 * When I started this page, I chose "Buddha's Birthday" as the name of the article because this is apparently the official English name for this holiday in Hong Kong. Please see "http://www.info.gov.hk/info/ph2005.htm". The rest of Vesak is not commonly celebrated in Hong Kong. -- PFHLai 09:33, 6 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Interesting. Well, thanks for your work on the subject. Can you add some Chinese, just for reference? - Nat Krause 10:04, 6 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I can read and write but not type in Chinese. However, I copied-&-pasted 2 Chinese characters from "http://www.info.gov.hk/info/holiday_c.htm". Hope this helps. -- PFHLai 17:49, 6 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Cool, thanks! Can you add a roman-letters approximation of how this is pronounced in Cantonese, if you get a chance? - Nat Krause 09:20, 7 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Well, 佛誕 is something like "Fud" with the "d" silent (not Foo, similar "u" in Mug or Mud) and "Darn". I ain't a linguist. I'll let someone who actually knows the proper pronounciation codes put this into the article. In case you are interested, 誕 = birth, and Christmas is 聖誕 or "SingDarn". Hope this helps. :-) -- PFHLai 15:15, 7 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Well, I added some Yale-Romanisation that I got from www.ChinaLanguage.com. Let me know if you think it looks wrong. - Nat Krause 16:20, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Looks fine to me. :-) -- PFHLai 18:45, 8 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I have added the Mandarin pinyin now, as well. &mdash;Lowellian (reply) 02:46, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
 * but, both these pages give almost the same information. Lightbluerain (talk) 10:05, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

May 5 or 12?
I don't get why anon's edit on May 5 was reverted. The edit summary for the revert was "This is the date of the PUBLIC HOLIDAY. Not the date when Buddhists celebrate." However, there's no indication in the article that that's what's being addressed, and I don't see why there would be. It's originally a Buddhist holiday. - Nat Krause(Talk!) 02:36, 8 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Which date is the eighth day of the fourth month in the Chinese calendar ? May 5, not May 12. For the actual Buddhist celebration, please see Vesak. That's a month long, with the climax/highlight on the day of the full moon, which is on May 12 this year. -- PFHLai 17:26, 8 May 2006 (UTC) [Crossed out possible misunderstanding/error on my part. 18:40, 8 May 2006 (UTC)]
 * Actually, some places have this holiday on the 15th, rather than the 8th, day of the 4th month in the lunar calendar. Buddha's Birthday as a public holiday in Vietnam & Thailand is on May 12 this year. This has been added to the article. Is it better now ? -- PFHLai 18:40, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Perhaps I should clarify that the word 'some' should be in that bad edit summary of mine on May 5th but was somehow missing (I'm a lousy typist). Sorry. The line should read: ... Not the date when some Buddhists celebrate.. -- PFHLai 05:34, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Possible hoax
This edit: was made by an editor know for hoaxes. However, I have no way of verifying the information. Good luck! --Kevin Murray 14:38, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Grammatical/style issue
Wikipedia and most other English sources tend to prefer "the Buddha" to simply "Buddha". However, this article seems to prefer "Buddha", perhaps because it is implied by the article's title. If we change instances of "Buddha" to "the Buddha", should we also moved the article to the Buddha's Birthday?&mdash;Nat Krause(Talk!·What have I done?) 18:28, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

OTD
Per the rules at WP:OTD, this article is going to be omitted from Selected anniversaries/May 10 if the maintenance tags are still up at that time. There are five days to go, so please add more references posthaste. Thanks.  howcheng  {chat} 16:44, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

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The holiday's day in Vietnam
While I understand that the day for the celebration is 04-08 lunar in much of the East Asia, it seems like the day for the celebration is 04-15 in Vietnam according to Vietnamese Wikipedia's holiday article? Is there any source for this?C933103 (talk) 18:01, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

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Date in Taiwan
In Taiwan,it's on 8th day of 4th lunar month,not mother's day,also see Public_holidays_in_Taiwan --Alane (talk) 08:57, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

Merge Proposal (May 2020)
[This paragraph copied from Talk:Vesak] There is a lot of information in this article about East Asian celebrations of Buddha's Birthday. One gets the impression that the latter and Vesak are more or less identical. This article should make it more obvious that there is another article about Buddha's Birthday. Also, Tibetan Wesak seems to celebrate the Buddha's enlightenment. 81.109.205.167 (talk) 17:26, 17 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I too think that this page should be merged with Buddha's Birthday. Lightbluerain (talk) 09:55, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
 * , I agree that a merge is warranted. Unlike South and Southeast Asia, in East Asia the celebration of the Buddha's birthday in May is separated from the celebration of the Buddha's enlightenment (Bodhi Day), but there appears not be sufficient unique content to separate Vesak and Buddha's Birthday right now.
 * I am willing to help work on the merge, provided there is consensus, and it's teamwork.-- Farang Rak Tham   (Talk) 11:24, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

has opened the issue of merging Buddha's Birthday with Vesak- I think it makes it easier to follow if we create a new section rather than re-opening a discussion from 10+ years ago. My own view is that they should remain distinct rather than be merged because Vesak celebrates the birth, death, and awakening of the Buddha on a single day and is primarily observed in South/Southeast Asia and Tibet, while the Buddha's birthday is a separate holiday, primarily observed in East Asia, that only covers his birth with two other holidays for the other two events. There is some redundancy between the two articles at present, but I think it could be minimized by judiciously summarizing and liking to the other article. In other words, the Vesak article should mention that the three biographical events are celebrated as three distinct festivals in some countries, and the birthday article should say that many countries combine the Buddha's birth with two other events from his life in a single festival called Vesak. --Spasemunki (talk) 11:22, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree with your point. That should be done. Because currently both these articles have almost the same content so I thought it's better if we merge them. Lightbluerain (talk) 17:00, 5 May 2020 (UTC)


 * The problem is that this article is a jumbled mess that fails to distinguish between the concept of "Buddha's Birthday" as an exclusively East Asian holiday, and the wider concept of holidays observing the birth of the Buddha, which include both the East Asian holiday and Vesak. Lightbluerain, you were mistaken when you removed the earlier issue tag that said, "Article should be split into an overview article (mentioning both Vesak and the East Asian holiday) and a separate article concerning the East Asian holiday," saying that a split was done, but should now be merged. To the contrary, a split was never done, and the issue still stands now as it did five years ago. I still say the coverage currently in this article needs splitting, so that we have (a) an article about the East Asian holiday, (b) an article about Vesak, and (c) an overview article about the concept, including short explanations on which countries celebrate which. The (c) isn't essential in and of itself, but should help to prevent irrelevant information from creeping in to the articles on the individual observances. The problem is not that the articles are redundant. It's that editors who aren't aware of how the observances differ keep duplicating information that belongs in article one into the other. --Paul_012 (talk) 02:25, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

I've taken a cut at the intros for Vesak and Buddha's Birthday that I think reflects the distinction we're trying to clarify and the relationship with other holidays. If most of the information about Vesak is moved out of the Buddha's Birthday article and the material on Hanamatsuri/Buddha Day is moved out of the Vesak article I think that clarifies things a bit. --Spasemunki (talk) 03:12, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
 * can you help with this then? Lightbluerain (talk) 18:10, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
 * We'll need to agree on the direction to take first. What do others think? --Paul_012 (talk) 08:49, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I know this is a super late response, but I still support the merger. I would even go far to say that Buddha's Birthday should be merged with Vesak, considering that it is the proper name and is the one used by the UN. JungleEntity (talk) 19:17, 2 September 2022 (UTC)