On Yesterday's Buddha's Birthday, etc.

I was reading this article, and although I'm a Buddhist, in the tradition to which I belong, we observe this around April 8, perhaps for reasons due to the traditional significance of "4" and "8" in Chinese languages.

It was a good thing those ancestors went down this path.  It would be very difficult to invent Buddhism from scratch, and every time somebody tries to improve on it (either by religious or explicitly antireligious methods), in my view, these methods fall short.

Because of a confluence of the busy things that permeate this lay householder's life, I have to have much of my practice "just getting from Point A to Point B."

But I'm very grateful for the ancestors who didn't have the householder's life per se to do these things, as well as those more immediate ancestors who sought to combine the monastic and householders' lives.

It was a most excellent concept, and I am deeply grateful for that.