Myanmar Light Festival (Tha Din Gyut)

Thadingyut' (October) is the end of the Buddhist Lent or the rains retreat. It is the festival of lights on the full-moon day, one day before and one day after. For Buddhists, the festival marks the day Buddha returned to earth after teaching the celestials in heaven. To welcome him, devotees lit up the streets and their homes. Thadingyut also marks the end of the monsoon season.  

 Houses and streets in cities and towns are brilliantly illuminated. Pagodas are also crowded with people doing meritorious deeds. It is not only a time of joy but also of thanksgiving and playing homage to teachers, parents and elders, and asking pardon for whatever misdeeds in speech or thought they might have committed during the year, and elders also readily forgive if these is anything to forgive. This beautiful custom of Myanmar people serves as a bridge across the generation gap which often is the cause of trouble in many other countries.

It is also a time for great rejoicing as couples rush to marry after the three-month period of Buddhist Lent.

During the three-day festival, oil lamps, lanterns and twinkle lights set Myanmar aglow. We believe that The light means for all to be enlightened - from worse to good and for all things - for our family, for our life also. At that time we pray for our business and for good health and good luck for our family. Pagodas are also crowded with people doing meritorious deeds.

During this festival all myanmar people are very happy to celebrate this festival. When I was a child I was very extited this time, we can enjoy a very happy holiday for school-aged children as the schools are closing for 10 days for Thadingyut Festival. We always go around the town in order to see the lights, as there are variety of different decorations in each every street. We was sending the hot air balloons up to the sky. When we went and respect to the elders at their home, they always give us back some pocket money. We bought some candles, hot air balloons and snacks. Although some traditions are getting extinct as the eras passed by, it is lucky that we still have Thadingyut as a beautiful heart warming event of the year.

Novitiation Ceremony in Myanmar (Shin Byu)

           

The Shinbyu or novitiation ceremony is one of the most important events in a Buddhist's life in Myanmar. Novitiation means allowing boys to enter the Buddha's Order of Sangha (or monks) as a novice after shaving their heads, donning robes, and asking permission in Pali to become a novice.

Myanmar people regard their lives to be incomplete if they themselves, or their sons, have not been novices. Parents normally sponsor a novitiation as an obligation, but certain well-wishers can also contribute if the boy's own parents cannot afford the expense or if he is an orphan. The tradition dates back to the time of the Buddha some 2,500 years ago when the Buddha granted His son the heritage of becoming a novice.

Now the occasion is usually associated with much fanfare, and charity feasts are held for invited guests and relatives of the sponsors. There are now also grand ceremonies of mass novitiation, in which sometimes up to a thousand affluent well-wishers sponsor a number of boys who have been unable to become novices.

Novitiation ceremonies are usually held during the summer around the time of the water festival when schools are closed for the year-end vacation. Boys aged between 9 and 12 are beautifully dressed in princely attire that can be attributed to the fact that the Buddha's son had been a prince himself.

When the procession begins, the boys ride the caparisoned horses, shaded with gilded umbrellas, accompanied by parents, family members and local women girls carrying sets of yellow robes, offerings and an ornate betel box. A band of music troupe and dancers accompanies the procession which leads to a suburban nat or spirit home where prayers and devotions are held.

Then the procession visits a pagoda to pay homage to the Buddha and do meritorious deeds. If the ceremony occurs in big cities like Yangon, the procession is a convoy of cars rather than horses, and the Shwedagon Pagoda is visited.

  

Finally, the novitiates return home, change clothes and rest until they visit a monastery late in the afternoon. There, the monks shave the boys' heads and the hair is caught in a white cloth by the closest of kin. Then the boys have to beg permission in Pali to the head monk to be novitiated, and the ceremony is then conducted. After prayers, the boys don robes and the transformation occurs. The fresh novices have to stay in the monastery for a retreat of at least seven days under the care of the residing monks, following every set of rules, studying Buddhist scriptures and making the most of their stay there.