Rohatsu, the Japanese term, or Bodhi Day, is a high holy day for Buddhists, celebrated on December 8th according to the Gregorian calendar used in the Western Hemisphere. The name in Sanskrit means “awakened” and in Japanese, “the 8th day of the 12th month.” If you follow the Japanese lunar calendar, it may be celebrated in January.
Rohatsu is a celebration of the day Siddhartha Gautama became enlightened and became the spiritual figure known as the Buddha. Bodhi Day, “bodhi” meaning enlightenment, may be celebrated at other times of the year depending upon cultural traditions.
Rohatsu celebrations begin on December 1st and last for a week. In monasteries the most rigorous sesshin of the year is held as monks attempt to replicate Siddhartha’s experience underneath the peepal tree. The zendo may not be heated, meditation may go on for 24 hours with little sleep, rice and milk the only food available.
Lay Buddhists may celebrate Rohatsu by decorating ficus trees with colored lights, beads, and reflective ornaments (sound familiar?) and their homes with colored candles. The different colors symbolize the different paths to enlightenment. The trees are not the variety we are accustomed to seeing as house plants, but are a variety of fig known as peepal, ficus religiousa, or sacred fig. Its fruit is not edible and differs from the fig trees we grow in gardens in the West. Rohatsu celebrations also include sitting longer in meditation, performing acts of kindness, and chanting sutras.
Who would be stubborn and driven enough to sit down in a public place and refuse to move until they found answers to their questions? It had to be an act of desperation after years of trying more conventional methods. He wandered and starved and pestered wise men, wore shrouds as clothing, and begged for his food after living 3 decades in ultimate luxury. He was at the end of his resources and had no other options, perhaps pitching his version of a refined tantrum. Once he found his answers, he was stable enough to understand the need to come down from the height of joy that comes with enlightenment and translate his insight into practical terms.
No one can be sure whether Siddhartha was an actual person. There is no historical evidence and his words were not recorded until almost 200 years after he was thought to have died. Stories about him and his teachings abound and have crossed cultural boundaries for almost 2500 years. There are almost as many versions of his life and teachings as there are practitioners, although some tales have gained wider popularity than others. There is always a kernel of truth in mythology and it is human nature to deify our teachers and those who inspire us, who represent the highest ideals we aspire to. I wonder what he would have been like as a simple human, a real person.
Some say that Siddhartha left home at age 29 and wandered as an ascetic for 6 years until he sat down underneath the tree. Despite the prophecies surrounding his birth, he wasn’t born holy. He started out as a pampered and protected rich kid who was sheltered from the hardships of the world until he was almost 30. There was a prophecy before his birth that he would be either a great king or a great spiritual teacher. His father isolated him from the world and kept him surrounded by luxury to keep him safe from harm and to ensure he would be a great king.
He slipped away from his protected environment and came face to face with old age, illness, death, and a wandering ascetic. Afterward he left home and spent 6 years as a wandering mendicant, always asking, “Why do people suffer?” Until he became so frustrated that he sat down under a tree and refused to move until he had an answer.
What was Siddhartha’s experience as he sat under the peepal tree? Tradition says it was for 49 days, which is the time spent in each bardo after death, according to the Tibetans. Bardos are the different levels of existence that Tibetan Buddhists believe a soul has to progress through after death. What died? Or who died? Did Siddhartha finally give up his expectations and attachments? He would have had to in order to understand the human condition and formulate the Four Noble Truths.
The Four noble Truths are the basis for all versions of Buddhist psychology.
1: Suffering exists.
2: Attachment is the cause of suffering.
3: There is a way to relieve suffering.
4: The Eightfold Path is the end of suffering.
Millions of words and opinions have been written about the Four Noble Truths. They are more than I can go into here. They are the core of what the Buddha realized and of what he offered. He did not claim divinity or privilege. Stories about him present an intelligent person who was straightforward, practical, and honest with a sense of humor.
Some stories about him describe encounters with various demons. They are more likely to have been his regrets, memories, and fantasies projected outward. He would have had enough years of life to have accumulated some “baggage”. It is human nature to avoid “owning” the aspects of our ourselves we consider unpleasant. We project them onto other people, circumstances, or objects. Anyone who has practiced serious meditation is familiar with this mental habit. Hallucinations are another phenomenon that may have occurred because of sensory deprivation, inactivity, and starvation.
Experienced meditators may develop control over their autonomic nervous systems. There are recent studies and stories of people who have learned to do so and have been mistaken for dead. I imagine after 6 years of asceticism that Siddhartha picked up a trick or two and learned to subsist on minimal nutrition and an extremely suppressed metabolism, similar to a hibernating bear. Long-term meditation also creates neurobiological changes that could have contributed to his stamina.
It has been claimed that he ate nothing but a single meal of rice and milk immediately after his enlightenment experience. Others imply that is all he consumed during the time he sat under the tree. I wonder at the quality of the food he ate. Perhaps it was so unrefined and natural that the nutrition was more complete than what we eat now.
A demon, Mara, challenged his right to attain enlightenment. They had tried every kind of temptation, fear, and attachment in their demonic arsenal and Siddhartha did not waver. I imagine a frustrated creature standing in front of him, hands on hips, perhaps stomping a foot, and asking him just who did he think he was and why did he think he deserved to be enlightened, anyway? Just who was he to seek answers to the cause of suffering? After all, suffering is the lifeblood of demons. What would they have to do if they couldn’t create suffering? They would starve to death! Was this an actual entity outside of himself or a projection of his own insecurities? I suspect that the demon may have been created by his starving, exhausted, bored brain and body, yet there are legends about that particular entity in other places. Mara may be a mythopeotic concept found in Hindu cosmology. Siddhartha was Hindu and was probably familiar with the character before his time under the tree.
Stories have it that during his confrontation with Mara, he placed his right hand on the ground beside where he sat and replied, “The Earth is my witness.” As he touched the Earth, he opened his eyes and saw the planet Venus rising in the East just before dawn. He looked at the Morningstar and “got it”. Intuition kicked in and insight into the nature of suffering crystalized.
Meditation practice has the same goal. We seek to emulate his experience, although not in such a drastic manner. We understand we don’t have the same character and circumstances as him but we sit down as often as we can (and then some!) until we understand the way he did and hope that the understanding sticks. We seek to carry our insight forward into our lives and manifest the compassion he demonstrated.
Once he understood the answer, he had to think about what to do with his new knowledge. He didn’t just jump up, grab the nearest pulpit, and start preaching. He needed time to recover from his ordeal and regain strength so he hung around for a while, examining his insight and determining how best to present it. Perhaps he understood that the average person cannot give up their life and go wandering or sit under a tree without sleep or food for an extended time. He left a wife and a newborn son behind when he began his quest, knowing that they would be cared for whether or not he was present. Few people have that luxury.
The event that precipitated his journey, the chariot ride that brought him face to face with human suffering, opened a wellspring of compassion in his psyche. He was educated enough to understand that he had to shape his experiences into an understandable form. As a member of the Brahmin caste, the son of a raja, his father must have wanted him to succeed him and taught him the principles of statesmanship and government.
As an amateur astrologer for many years, the first thing that came to mind for me was someone with a Taurus Sun. Taurus is fixed Earth ruled by the planet Venus. What better star to inspire enlightenment in someone whose early life was one of the comfort and luxury Venus represents?
Earth signs are connected to the physical world, are very practical, and understand material pleasures and comfort. Fixed signs are the most determined, loyal, and self-disciplined. They are reliable and stubborn. Nothing will deviate them from a goal, especially when connected to the Earth element. Venus, ruler of Taurus, is associated with pleasure, interconnectedness, charm, and grace. Compassion is a characteristic of Venus, as well as gentleness, intuition, nurturing, and comfort.
Many astrologers have speculated about when Siddhartha was born and there are various ideas about his birthday. Confirmation bias may play a large part in our interpretations of a character who may or may not have been real. My vision of a Taurus Buddha may differ from someone else’s version of an Aries Buddha. There are opinions and cases made for either, yet no one knows for sure. Folk tales and mythology are comforting tools in our attempts to make sense of a chaotic world.
If you look at the stories surrounding those who are wise and world-wide saviors, you may see common themes. The message is the same: “Be kind to each other.” How you get there is a product of your temperament and upbringing. Humans project their “stuff” outside themselves and exaggerate stories about teachers until the people behind them are unrecognizable and supernatural. According to the Pali Cannon and other sources, the Buddha told his followers not to do that.
Wisdom is a personal thing, born of introspection and examination. The guy who sat down under a tree realized he did not have all the answers to the questions he asked. Why do people suffer and how can it be stopped? Once he reached the “mountaintop” of insight by constantly asking “why?” he traveled back down into the valley of everyday life to discover how to put it into practice. He told his followers to figure it out for themselves and to be accountable for their actions. They could follow his advice and experience, but everyone’s path to enlightenment is unique to their lives and circumstances. It is a fleeting, fickle thing that requires a degree of self-discipline to keep it at the forefront of our consciousness.
Thich Nhat Hanh told a story of Mara visiting the Buddha again after their encounter under the tree. They had tea together and reconciled. Mid winter is the traditional time for us to hunker down, have tea with our demons, and understand that without them there would be no enlightenment. Buddha said we are all connected, that there is no good and evil apart from each other, that picking and choosing, grasping and clinging, having preferences isolates us more than unites us.
My hope for you this holiday season, no matter what tree you sit under, is that you will gain your own measure of enlightenment and carry it forward into all you encounter.
Bowing
Having grown up on superhero comics, I've always liked the thought of Mara as frenemy (like Magneto or Megatron, but funnier). I've named him in one story and used him in others as yet unpublished.
"The southeast corner was the domain of Mara, the black-haired, blue-skinned, red-lipped demon king of delusion. He had no statue, but was drawn, painted, and carved in his many aspects on every inch of available space. He peeped out from the eaves of roofs, from behind gutters and rain barrels, from between vines. His leering face was sculpted in chewing gum and stuck under benches. He sat on the edge of trash cans, encouraging people to believe that their individual actions made a difference."
https://randallhayes.substack.com/p/the-lizard-thing-part-5
This writing has me in awe of the teacher that you are. I bow in gratitude 🙏