Wesakha day, everyday...

Wesak is coming next monday May 19th. Today is coincidently is the Mahayana celebration for our grand master, Sakyamuni Tathagata. These 2 days are special. What holds significant for these 2 days? For foremost reasons, it is the celebration to honor the Bhagavant, our great teacher Sakyamuni or Siddhartha Gautama Buddha. Wesakha celebrates the Birth, renunciation of lay life, enlightenment and the parinirvana of our great teacher. It is this day, in Malaysia and Singapore, a public holiday, where lay buddhist will make merit, do dana and be mindful of their precepts. This is solely done to honor and remember grand master. 

I remember Wesakha day as a day full of prayer, devotion and abstinence during my teenage years. The day would be spend going to the Maha Vihara in Brickfield for blessings and performing dana. Then later the day, I would be temple hopping with other fellow friends to all 3 traditions, Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhist way places. Now as I look back, I feel Wesakha is less remembered for its origins and celebrations. 

Traders blatantly putting up wares for display and sale, Offerings of light, food, incense, flowers, are being sold at a higher price for devotees so they could 'make' their offerings while at the main shrine. Some traders even went to the extent of putting birds on cage, with hope devotees would pay an exuberant price to 'release' them only to find that these birds will be caught again by the same people who sold them... If Grandmaster ever saw his this auspicious day, HIS day for the above reasons, He'd probably be in Fire samadhi and rolled his eyes... 

Why can't we put to practice and cultivate as if everyday is wesakha? Why do we need to allocate one day to perform all the above Why can't we do this everyday, in according to our schedule and fits the time and place? Now as with all other religious celebrations, We're seeing a commercialization of such auspicious event. These blessed days are slowly turning into capital playgrounds with pomp and pagentry befitting for an Emperor but not for a great Teacher of Gods and Men, The one who's well gone, the Lord, Arhat and perfect Buddha.....

Think about it? Why can't everyday be a wesakha day?