Vesak

Vesak, also known as Buddha's Birthday, is one the most important holiday in the Buddhist traditions. It commemorates three pivotal events in the life of Gautama Buddha: his birth, his enlightenment, and his passing into parinirvana. According to tradition, all three events are said to have occurred on the full moon of the lunar month of Vesakha, which typically falls in April or May. Many people visit temples to make offerings of flowers, candles, and incense. Rituals such as bathing Buddha statues are performed, representing the purification of one’s own mind and heart. Meditation and listening to teachings are central practices, as practitioners use the day to reconnect with the Buddha’s path. Acts of generosity are also emphasized, such as offering food, giving to those in need, and engaging in compassionate service.

The Birth of a Buddha

The Buddha was born into a noble family. Oftentimes we hear that his father, King Suddhodana, and Queen Maya were royalty, and we think like the king of England or France. It wasn’t like that. These were small principalities. There were larger kingdoms, but the Shakya clan was not one of those. His father, King Suddhodana, was more like the headman of his clan, the Shakyas, and therefore he had authority within that community. Like many kings, he wanted an heir. In those days, your daughter could not be your heir—things have changed since then—so he wanted a son, and his wife had not given him a son.

So they prayed and prayed, and eventually Queen Maya became pregnant. It is said to have happened when Queen Maya first had a dream. She dreamed that a white elephant entered her, and that was interpreted as the miraculous conception. Some say it happened afterward. But we know that it was very common for a soothsayer, someone who read charts, to be brought in either before or after the birth. They were told, “Your son is going to be great. If he goes the worldly way, he will be a great empire builder, a great king. But he may go another way. He may renounce the world, renounce all the accomplishments, fame, and glory the world will offer him, and become a renunciate, a great spiritual light in this world.”

This is very interesting. Even though it’s extreme—you’re either going to be a master of the world or a master of spirituality—it shows choice. It shows that all of us, and all children, are born pure, undefiled, unconditioned. It is the world that conditions them, and how they respond to that conditioning is how human beings go this way or that way in their lives.

It was traditional in those days for a woman to return to her parents’ home to give birth. So she was on her way to her parents’ home when she came near the Lumbini Gardens, where she stopped and gave birth.

Now, according to the legend, when the Buddha appeared, he was fully formed. He was able to walk, and he was able to speak. When he walked, he took seven steps in each direction, and with each step a lotus bloomed. A special being, you might say. Then he pointed up and he pointed down and said, “Above the heavens and below the earth, I am the only one.”

Now that could be mistaken as the most arrogant statement anyone has ever heard. But his "I" was not the "I" of self, not the "I" of ego. This was pointing to our true nature, our Buddha nature. It is higher than the heavens, deeper than the earth, it is everywhere. He clearly came from that unconditional, absolute place of realization. In that moment, he also supposedly said, “This is going to be my last birth. I am not going to take rebirth.”

The Wisdom of the Baby Buddha

We were all babies at one time. Even if we cannot remember being babies, perhaps we’ve been around them. What do we know about babies and their minds? Uncontaminated. No thought, no language.

And yet, if you’ve been in the presence of a baby, you know they are aware, present. They look at you—a newborn baby or a young baby—and there’s some powerful knowing there. But it’s uncontaminated, pure. It has not been contaminated by culture, by learning, by education, by anything.

It is said that when the Buddha appeared, he was fully formed. When you think about it, he comes out fully formed, speaking profound truths about absolute nature, and then he becomes a boy. You might wonder, why didn’t he just continue on like that? He could have been a kind of god-king. There are young figures in different cultures who declare themselves divine or enlightened—why didn’t he do that? 

After this miraculous birth, he then became a normal boy again. We don’t know quite what happened. They don’t talk about what happened. It’s like he’s a fully formed, awakened newborn, and then suddenly he’s just a boy in the palace, growing up, doing ordinary things—playing, learning archery, living that life. What is that about?

When we reflect on it in light of the teachings, it may begin to make sense. In the Buddhist tradition, this is the path that enlightened beings take. They enter the world; they don’t remove themselves from it. So even though we say the Buddha came into this world already fully enlightened, even though we say he came with all this spiritual development from past lives—this deep cultivation of sacrifice and altruism—still, in this lifetime, he had to go through the journey of being a human being.

He had to go through that so he could understand us. There are many great spiritual figures in the world, and maybe you’ve read about them or even encountered them, but often their teachings come from a place that can feel somewhat removed. Some of them don’t fully share the experience of being an ordinary human being. But the Buddha needed that experience because his journey was to teach in a way that was skillful and appropriate for where people actually are.

And how do you know where people are? You have to know them. You have to understand their lives, what they’re dealing with, what they struggle with. Only then can you really help them. Many people write books or give teachings or offer advice, and it can be very good, very profound. But knowing how to apply that teaching to a specific person, in their specific situation—that requires another kind of intelligence, another kind of wisdom. In Buddhism, that’s often called discernment or discriminating wisdom. It’s different from absolute wisdom. It’s the kind of intelligence that understands people as they are.

So the Buddha had to go through this journey. Even if he came into this life fully awakened, even if he carried the momentum of countless lifetimes of cultivating compassion and altruism, still he had to live it out again. He had to pass through the worldly phase of having pleasure, having activities, having friends, doing what he wanted, getting married, having a child, being prepared by his father to become king. He had to go through all of that.

The Buddha's Journey

King Suddhodana, when he heard the prophecy for his son, was not happy because he wanted his son to follow him. He wanted an heir. So he very deliberately undertook to create a kind of bubble around him. His name was Siddhartha, and he wanted to shape his life so that he would only become a king.

He gave him a life of pleasure—a life of education, enjoyment, and all the activities that were meant to train someone for kingship. If there was one thing he tried to do, it was to keep him away from the reality of the world. Because in the reality of the world, his son would have seen that it’s not all fun and games. It’s not one success after another. He didn’t want him to see that there was sickness, that there was aging, that there was death, that there were all these other aspects of life. He didn’t want anything to disturb his son’s training for a worldly life.

But then one day Siddhartha slipped out of the palace. If he hadn’t slipped out, he probably wouldn’t have fulfilled the possibility he had to become a great spiritual light. If he had stayed in the palace, living that life, that possibility may never have unfolded. So we know he slipped out. He disobeyed his father, who had forbidden him—and those around him—to let him go out into the town. But he slipped out, and suddenly he began to see things he had never seen before.

What did he see? Pain and suffering. He saw a sick person, and he was dumbfounded. What is that? Anyone who has ever been sick knows what that looks like—weak, unwell, not at all like the polished, beautiful world he had grown up in. Everything in the palace had been perfect, and suddenly he was confronted with illness. He asked his charioteer, “What is that? Who are those people?” And the charioteer said, “Those are sick people.” He asked, “Who are they?” and the answer came, “Everyone gets sick. It’s normal.”

He was shocked. He had always been healthy, always surrounded by vitality. The idea that he himself could become like that, and that there were so many forms of illness, disturbed him deeply. It was like the first crack in the world he had known. Then, on another outing, he saw old people—bent over, walking slowly, wrinkled. Again, he was stunned. What is that? He had never seen it. And when it was explained to him that this was old age, that it happens to everyone, he could hardly believe it. “You mean it will happen to me?” Yes, it will happen to you. It happens to everyone—the wealthy and the poor, the powerful and the humble. Everyone ages.

Then, on another outing, he encountered death. In those times, bodies were carried publicly through the streets to the cremation grounds. It wasn’t hidden away. He saw the body, still and lifeless, sometimes with the face visible, surrounded by flowers but unmistakably gone. He followed and saw the body taken to the cremation ground and burned. This disturbed him deeply. What is that? That is death. That is the end of life.

Until then, he had been centered in his body—young, healthy, strong, beautiful. He identified with it, took pride in it. And now he saw that not only would it become sick, not only would it age, but one day it would die and be gone. Everything he had based his sense of meaning on—his body, his identity, his pleasures, his relationships—was unstable. And it wasn’t just him. He was told this would happen to everyone—his family, his wife, his child, the people around him. All of it would pass.

It’s easy to imagine that he went into something like an existential crisis. Everything he had been living for, everything he believed in, suddenly lost its foundation. It was all impermanent. Nothing would last—not his possessions, not his relationships, not even his own life. And it wasn’t just something that happened in old age. Death could come at any time. Children die. Adults die. People get sick at any stage. This is simply the human condition.

Because he had been so invested in his worldly life, it’s almost like he had forgotten something deeper within himself. And I think many people can relate to that—we ignore that part of ourselves that moves to a different rhythm, that senses something beyond the surface. He had been ignoring it, and suddenly, through these raw encounters, it all came back.

He seemed to fall into a state that we might call, in modern terms, a profound depression. Nothing brought him joy anymore. The music, the dancing, the celebrations—it all felt flat. There was no meaning in it. Then, on another outing, he saw a mendicant—a renunciate, someone who had given up worldly life. This person had very little, wandered from place to place, begged for food, and lived simply. And yet, there was a deep serenity in him—a calm dignity.

He asked, “Who is that?” And was told, “That is someone who has renounced the world.” This struck him deeply, because here was someone who had none of the things he believed brought happiness—no wealth, no power, no luxury—and yet he seemed peaceful and content. This awakened something in him, something that had been forgotten.

At that point, it became clear to him that he could not remain at home. To stay would mean becoming the heir, continuing the life he had now seen through. What he wanted was what that renunciate had. He had believed that happiness came from wealth, success, and pleasure, but now he saw someone who was happy without any of that. And that drew him powerfully.

So he left. It could not have been easy. He loved his family—his father, his mother, his wife, his child. But something deeper had awakened in him, something that compelled him to seek understanding. He wanted to know the nature of suffering, and also what transcends it. What allows someone to live in this world, among all its realities, and yet remain calm, peaceful, and at ease?

This was his journey. And even though it can sound like a legendary story, it speaks to something very human. All of us, in our own lives, are surrounded by sickness, aging, and death. It’s happening all the time. We see it in ourselves, in our families, in our communities. But often, we don’t really take in the implications. We see it, but we don’t fully let it transform how we understand our lives.

The Teachings of the Buddha

The Buddha taught differently for different people. He taught monastics, monks and nuns, those who left the world. But he also taught many lay people. For nearly 50 years he wandered through villages, teaching in different ways depending on who he was speaking to. People like us, lay people, sometimes get confused because we read teachings that were given to monks and nuns, and we think, “That’s too much for me.” But if you read the teachings he gave to lay people, they are very different. They speak directly to our lives.

The path of the renunciate—the monk or nun—is the path of detachment. That means leaving the world behind. Cutting the hair, wearing simple robes, giving up home, family, and relationships, living communally. Their way is renunciation. But for lay people, the teaching is non-attachment. Because we live in the world of things. We live in relationships. We can’t just walk around naked or give everything up and expect to function in society. We have responsibilities. We have jobs, families, homes, daily tasks.

So the question for lay people is how to live in the world without being attached. Not detached—we still have to do the dishes, drive our kids to school, take care of our families—but to hold things lightly. A kind of gentle, soft relationship to things, not a tight grasping. And that’s not easy. In a certain way, detachment can seem easier—you just give everything up. But for us, the challenge is ongoing. We live right in the middle of it.

So the phrase is: to be in the world, but not of the world. We are in the world—relationships, work, responsibilities—but we’re not of it, because we understand there is a deeper way to live. That’s what spirituality offers. That’s what meditation gives us. It gives us another way of being, so that we can live in a world where there is sickness, aging, and death, and still be okay.

We are here because of Siddhartha’s decision 2,600 years ago to leave his palace and begin that journey. He spent years searching, studying with the great teachers of his time, not finding what fully satisfied his spiritual longing. Eventually, he came to awakening and then spent around 50 years teaching. He didn’t stay in one place. He wandered constantly, meeting people where they were, responding to their questions. Monks, nuns, laypeople—everyone came to him, and he taught according to their needs.

Because he had a large community of intelligent and dedicated followers, his teachings were remembered. After his passing, councils were formed to gather and organize what he had taught. So we are very fortunate to have a substantial record of his teachings from so long ago. And not only that—over the past 2,600 years, many sincere practitioners have followed this path, come to their own realizations, and kept the teachings alive. The stream continues.

We are also fortunate in our own time to have great teachers who present these teachings in ways we can understand in modern life. So on Vesak, we honor the Buddha’s birth. We bring out the image of the baby Buddha, pointing above and below the heavens. Traditionally, we pour scented tea over the image—gently bathing the baby Buddha.

Bathing the Baby Buddha

Why do we bathe? To get clean. But the baby Buddha doesn’t need cleaning. What we are really doing is making an aspiration—to cleanse our own minds of impurities. The baby Buddha represents something within us. We all have that same pure nature within us. It’s still there, as pure as ever, but it has become covered over by confusion, habits, and afflictive states.

So as we perform this ritual, we imagine washing away those layers, returning to our natural state—openness, ease, goodness, love, compassion, understanding. And in moments like this, we recommit ourselves. Whether or not someone identifies as Buddhist doesn’t matter. Whatever your path is, it’s a chance to reconnect with your deeper intention, your own spiritual direction.

We often forget that we were once babies. Every one of us began that way—without language, without concepts, with a simple, clear mind. Over time, we’ve become conditioned, shaped, and a bit clouded. So today, we take the opportunity to clean that, to return, even a little, to that original clarity.

What we we do is bathe the baby Buddha. Traditionally, you pour the water over the baby Buddha’s shoulder. That’s what you’re doing with your body. But what you’re doing with your mind is the most important part. You’re saying to yourself, “I am cleaning my mind so my own baby Buddha can come out.”

Everybody has a baby Buddha. So as you do this, you’re cleaning your mind of all the things that get in the way of being a kind, caring person in this world.