My first celebration went ahead with slight neglect and a bit of tumult. It was the first day back at work after the holiday and our son Nemo woke up with a belly bug. This meant I had no time to go and do the special shopping that I had planned. Nonetheless, I tried my best to get into the festive mode and decided to use whatever I had at home for the dinner. It was all a bit messy with Nemo being sick in the middle of preparations, which made me reflect about the communal aspect of religious traditions. If this had been my religion for real I would have had friends and family there to carry out the preparations regardless of me being unable to.

Mahayana means ‘great vehicle’. It is one of the two major Buddhist branches, the other one being Theravada. Mahayana countries, China; Korea; Vietnam; Tibet; Japan; Mongolia; Nepal; Indonesia, celebrate New Year on the first full moon day in January.

The result of my research in terms of specific practice on this day confirmed that the ways to practice were as many as countries in which Mahayana is practiced. There seemed to be a general trend towards water and the significance of water. Water purifies and cleans and therefore it is seen as a good start to the year to wash. In some countries this is done by squirting water on each other, which also adds a sense of play. People also bath their Buddha statues in water to honour him. This I thought was a bit odd because shouldn’t Buddha already be clean enough? I suppose the statue being only a representation of him means that the state in which the statue is in reflects the devotion of its owner.

Water was present in our own celebration in a little bowl. We squirted on each other as we ate a vegetarian dish of noodles. On Mahayana New Year it is of importance to eat vegetarian to honour the Buddhist value to not eat anything living on the first day of the year. Buckwheat noodles are eaten in Japan during this holiday but ours were of a different kind. We also read a Buddhist text. Here is a poem that was part of that text:

If we want to know what are the causes in our previous lives,
We are living the consequences of those causes.
If we want to know what our future lives will be like,
All we have to do is look at what we are doing today.