Hi guys, hope you are doing well. Today I am going to take you to a Vesak Zone of Sri Lanka in the Vesak Festival 2018.
About an year ago in this article, I have explained what is Vesak Festival and how important it is for Buddhists around the world and how we Sri Lankans celebrate it. I invite you to read it before reading this article.
As some of you might know there is a little confusion about the Vesak Festival in this year. In normal scenario, full moon day (Poya day) of the month of ‘May’ is the Vesak Poya day. But, in this year, there were two full moon days in the month of ‘March’ (1st & 31st). This is where the confusion starts. And there are one full moon day in each April (29th) and May (29th) also.
Some countries consider the 31st March full moon as an extra full moon day will celebrate the Vesak Festival on 29th May. But some countries such as Sri Lanka, considered 31st March full moon days as April’s one April 29th full moon as May’s one (Vesak). That is why Sri Lanka and above mentioned countries celebrated Vesak Festival at 29th April while some other countries will celebrate it on 29th May.
Even though there were several Vesak Zone, I could only visit the ‘Gangarama Vesak Zone’. The decorations of it is almost same as the last year decorations. So there were nothing much new.
Just like last year, there was a competition for ‘Vesak lanterns’. There were some beautiful lanterns.
The Vesak zone was open for 4 days and there were lots of people, including foreigners.
I haven’t included all the images here since there are many. Make sure to visit the image gallery below to see the complete set of larger images.
So that is about Vesak Festival 2018 in Sri Lanka. If you have any doubts or if you have anything to get clarified, just leave a message below. See you soon with another article.
