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Buddha Birthday Festival

Celebrating the birthday of Buddha

The Buddha Birthday Festival celebrates the birthday of the spiritual figure, Buddha. This festival was developed in response to the organisers’ interest in promoting peace and harmony, and countering racism issues. It was also an opportunity to provide community access to Buddhist activities by “bringing the temple to the people”.

The festival mainly attracts parents or grandparents who bring their children. The festival promotes good family values and a healthy balance between body-mind-spirit. One of the main activities of the festival is the Bathing Buddha ritual. This ritual highlights a universal message that “It’s easy to wash away physical dirt but it’s much more difficult to cleanse one’s ‘inner dirt’ of greed, anger and ignorance”.

The Buddha Birthday Festival is a non-profit event to celebrate the teachings and the birth of Buddha as well as offering many activities including multicultural performances, exhibitions, displays and an opportunity to bathe the Buddha. The festival concludes with fireworks in South Bank Parklands.

The festival is organized by Chung Tian Temple and Buddha’s Light International Association Queensland (BLIAQ). It is run by volunteers and depends on donations.

The Buddha Birthday festival started in 1997 at Brisbane’s South Bank Parklands. Since then the festival has grown from an original audience of 5000 to almost 200,000.

Last updated by Nur Azerinna Zulkifli (2011-10-27)