Mooncake festival

Ven Silar Doungboutdy (B.A 1)

Date 28 /10/2017

Moon cake festival was held holed at IBC. There are many activities that make me interested such as a history, playing candle lamp, taking photos with friends, and eating snack.

According to Chinese tradition, mooncake festival is celebrated on Lunar Year of August 15th every year. In this year, I had an opportunity to attend the festival with all of IBC’s teachers and students. Especially, this year’s ceremony was led by Venerable master Wei Wu, the founder of IBC, and he told us about the importance of this festival. He said that in the past, ten suns existed and the extreme heat made people's lives very difficult. It was the hero Hou Yi, who had great strength, shot down nine of the ten suns. since people can live in the world comfortably and happily.

Secondly, before playing candle lamp, we chanted sutta together. After that all of us started to kindle our lantern and walked to together in front of the offices. At that time, I felt very happy because I had never joined this festival before, that was the first time in my life with many Dhamma friends from many countries of the world. We were as a brothers and sister in the same home, however, we are people from different cultures, countries. everybody enjoyed in playing lantern such as moving around body, walking around yard with holding candle, especially, taking group pictures. Although it was a short time, but I was really excited.

Finally, after taking pictures with friends, teacher and playing lantern. Everyone came back inside and had a small party with snacks, Orange juice, ice cream, and so forth. Then I came back to my room.

The celebration ended with joy and good memories, however, this festival is only celebrated once a year, I hope that next year, IBC will celebrate this ceremony again.