The Kwan-Yin Festival Celebration will occur every year at the end of March; however, each Celebration will be organized differently to present different aspects of the Vietnamese culture to non-Vietnamese people throughout the United States.
The pictures shown above were only a small part of the Celebration because unfortunately it is not possible for us to upload all the pictures we took during the Festival.
The program of the Kwan-Yin Festival Celebration in 2002 is the following: On March 29, there was a ceremony called One Prostration At Every Three Steps Pilgrimage. This is one of the beauties of the Vietnamese Buddhism as well as of the International Buddhism. As participants in this ceremony, we saw many monks and Buddhists from Houston, from other states and from other countries like Canada etc. The number of participants was quite high.
The One Prostration At Every Three Steps Pilgrimage involves walking and chanting the name of the Kwan-Yin Boddhisattva with the participants stopping at every three steps to prostrate. The goal of the pilgrimage was to help us return our own self, not caring about the environment or any action inside that environment. Therefore people can prostrate to Buddha anywhere as long as their mind is with Buddha.
On June 20, 2002, a Precept Ceremony is organized for the Buddhist novices who have lived in the temple for a while, who have practiced a detached from family life and who got the permission of their Master to receive the Sa-Di (Monk) Precept. This ceremony is also for Buddhists at home who already observed the 5 Buddhist Precepts to upgrade to the 10 Precepts and the Boddhisattva Precepts.
In the evening of June 20, the Official Ceremony began with simple religious rituals at the base of the Loving Mother Kwan-Yin statue. After the ceremony, a traditional cultural show was performed with the theme “The Call Amidst The Large Ocean”.
There were also other activities like art exhibitions etc. that we can not publish all here because the program was so long. We heartily hope you will have a chance to participate in one of the Kwan-Yin Festival Ceremonies in the forthcoming years.
Here are some pictures of the Kwan-Yin Festival Celebration in 2002.