Wesak Day in Kajang

Wesak day, or Buddha Day is the most important religious event for the Buddhist. Wesak Day commemorates the birth, enlightenment and passing of the Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism.

Once a year I and my family visit the local temple to pay homage to the Dhamma, Sangha and the Buddha. This morning, the three of us, dear wife, daughter and I visited the local BMS premises in Kajang to pay homage and make offerings.

We arrived at the temple at 10.30am. Unlike last year the temple was rather quiet, with not much devotees visiting the place. Surprisingly, there is a complete absence of smoke and incense burning. A notice placed on a table tells devotees to preserve a clean environment by not lighting incense sticks, as is the customary practice in the past. Thus the sale of candles and incense sticks are noticeably absent this time round. I am all for a smoke free environment though traditionalists may not agree with me.

I saw three donation boxes placed side by side on the table. The boxes are for donations to the temple fund and to assist the victims of the cyclone in Myanmar and the earthquake in Sichuan province, China. I made token donations to all the three causes.

At about 11am, 6 Sinhalese monks arrived at the centre for the offering of food rite. Devotees began to gather around the seated monks who were offered various types of vegetarian food. After that the devotees gathered around the monks to observe the transfer of merits rites. By 12.30pm. all the 6 monks had departed from the temple. Maybe they were making their rounds at other buddhist centres.

The vegetarian lunch prepared by the volunteers were quite sumptuous and filling. Again I noticed that the crowd of people eating there was quite subdued compared to last Wesak.

"Uncle please do not give me so much much rice." I overheard dear daughter speaking while the volunteer was loading heaps of rice on her plate. "Why? You are not hungry?", curious Uncle asked. "I don't want to eat more than I need. There are many hungry people out there who don't have any rice to eat!" dear daughter replied spontaneously in a soft voice. On hearing her reply Uncle was momentarily stunned, and so was I. I never knew that dear daughter is capable of expressing compassion for other less fortunately souls.

After lunch the family left the premises for the weekend grocery shopping at Putrajaya Carrefour hypermarket.

In the past I and my family would regularly visit the BMS HQ in Brickfields, KL for the annual Wesak day celebrations. However in recent time, the celebrations at the Brickfields centre have turned into more of a carnival and commercial activity than a religious commemoration of the Buddhist teachings. Gone are the spiritual significance and dimension of Wesak to be replaced by some sort of crass commercialism.

Thus, one year I decided to stop the annual visit to the KL centre and decided to come to the BMS branch in Kajang. Compared to the HQ branch in KL, the Kajang branch does offer a more spiritual feel and dimension that is completely missing in the former.