Dear Gunnar,

you are quite right. ;-) I'm just not sure about Vedic astrology during Buddha's time. However, as I mentioned earlier, communities around the world celebrate Vesak in May, but probably on different days throughout the month.

Adding on Nina's comments, the significance of Vesak is not the superficial ceremonial appearance, but the realisation of the highest potential within the reach of each and every person - the ultimate compassion and wisdom. For this alone, everyday can be Vesak.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Pali/message/13644

I can see that your emails always break away from the original posts. You could be using an email/web client incompatible with Yahoo!'s.


metta,
Yong Peng.

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, gunnargallmo@... wrote:

> I do not mind about the absolute time, celebration with Dhamma discussions can be all day!

Funny to see how things sometimes run full circle.

I think it was first decided to fix the Uposatha days to the moon phases for purely practical reasons. The moon is not especially sacred in Buddhism, but it was easy to see, at least when the sky is clear, and there were no printed calendars at the Buddha's time. (There wasn't any smog either to hide the moon, and not much light pollution.)

And now we look at printed or on-line calendars to see when the full moon is...