Today on the 22nd day of the ninth month of the Lunar calendar is Lha-bab Duchen, one of the most important days in the Buddhist calendar, the grand celebration of Buddha’s Lha (divine) bab (descent), marking the descent of the Buddha from the Trāyastriṃśa Heaven (the Heaven belonging to the thirty-three deities).
According to sources on the Buddha’s life, his mother, Māyā, died shortly after the Gautama Buddha’s birth and was reborn in Tuṣita heaven. In his 41st year, the Buddha resolved to repay her kindness and to teach the Abhidharma to her and to the gods. From Tuṣita, Māyā traveled to Trāyastriṃśa Heaven and received these teachings—thereby becoming liberated from cyclic existence.
The Buddha taught the Abhidharma for a month and then indicated the time for his return to the earthly realm. Alerted by the Buddha’s descent, a huge assembly gathered including the kings and people of the eight great Indian kingdoms.
I have written before about this day from a less androcentric (male-centred) and female perspective and given a feminist analysis of it too (see sources below), emphasising the importance of the Buddha’s mother in this day, and the first woman/nun who greeted him when the Buddha descended the stairway from the divine realms.
In 2023, I also presented a speech at an international academic conference in New Delhi, for Abhidamma Day on the Buddha’s mother, Māya and her relative invisibility in terms of her life, Buddha’s birth and in terms of Buddha’s teaching her in the divine realms.
Today is thus also a reminder of the Buddha’s first and foremost female students, including but not exclusively his family members, and how he paid the kindness of his mother, who sacrificed her life, and body for his birth.
Music? Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin. May we all remember the kindness of all mother’s this Lha-bab Duchen Day.
Sources