✦ zenith calendar · the mahayana (china) almanac
the chinese lunar year's buddhist days in one quiet layer of your sky, each one explained in its own tradition's words.
mahayana (china) is one of the holiday almanacs that come with zenith calendar. it holds the buddhist days of the chinese mahayana tradition by the chinese lunar calendar. korea, vietnam and japan keep their own reckonings, each its own almanac.
its dates come from published tables, not worked out on your phone. tap a day and read three short paragraphs: what it is, where it comes from, and how it is kept.
lunar · the chinese lunar months
laba · the day of the dharma treasure
the 8th day of the 12th lunar month
the day shakyamuni buddha attained the way: after a bowl of milk-rice restored his strength, he sat beneath the bodhi tree and awoke at dawn as the morning star rose.
temples cook laba porridge of many grains, beans and dried fruits, offer it first to the buddha with chanting, then give it to everyone who comes. families make it at home and share it with neighbours.
the 19th day of the 2nd lunar month
the first and most widely kept of guanyin's days. guanyin pusa (avalokiteśvara) is the bodhisattva of great compassion, who hears the cries of the world.
people go to the temple with flowers, fruit and incense, keep the day vegetarian, and recite her name or the great compassion mantra. many temples hold the great compassion repentance.
fodan · yufo jie, the festival of bathing the buddha
the 8th day of the 4th lunar month
the day chinese buddhists celebrate the birth of shakyamuni buddha.
people come one by one to pour fragrant water over a small image of the infant buddha, praying to wash their own body, speech and mind clean. there are offerings of flowers, incense and fruit, and many keep the day vegetarian.
yulanpen
the 15th day of the 7th lunar month
the buddhist day of offering for parents and ancestors, living and gone. it falls on the same day as the zhongyuan ghost festival.
temples hold ullambana services and chant the ullambana sutra, families write the names of their departed on memorial tablets, and people make offerings to the monks and nuns.
zenith calendar draws the year as an orbit round the sun. lit, mahayana (china) puts its days on their dates on that ring, in lilac, the colour every buddhist reckoning wears. its mark is 佛, "buddha".
each day carries three short paragraphs in its notes: what it is, where it comes from as its own tradition tells it, and how it is kept.
mahayana (china) arrives locked, so nothing in it changes by accident. the lock guards your hand, not your eye: you can still read it, shine it or eclipse it. one tap unlocks it, and then it is yours to rename, recolour or add to.
tap its chip in the legend to eclipse it (kept, but not drawn) and tap again to bring it back. nothing is deleted either way.
mahayana (china) shares one sky with your own commitments. like every almanac that comes with the app, it never counts toward the almanacs you can make for free, and it lives on your phone: zenith calendar has no server of its own.
✦ zenith calendar · the sky around it
mahayana (china) is a single layer. beneath it is a whole calendar drawn as the sky, your year an orbit round the sun, and every part of it answers your touch.
the sun stands at the centre and the year rings round it, with today's earth riding at today's place, its small moon beside it. tap the ring anywhere else and a faint ghost earth waits on that day.
drag along the ring and the days pass under your finger, the big date and the day's list following as you go. lift, and the day you stopped on stays picked.
tap the small moon beside today's earth and you dive into the week. the moon above shows its phase, named underneath; swipe the dates and each week brings its own.
tap the sun and the ring tips on its edge into a ladder of years. in the week, pull the moon firmly down and the month opens, the moon resting half off its foot.
zenith calendar has no server of its own. tap the gear and switch on "nothing comes in" or "nothing leaves this phone"; lift them, and every almanac is back exactly as it was.
mahayana (china) is waiting in the app, and the rest of the sky comes with it.
mahayana (china) · buddhist reckonings ·
Chinese Buddhists keep the Buddha's birthday, fodan, on 13 May 2027, the eighth day of the fourth lunar month. In 2026 it fell on 24 May.
Guanyin's birthday falls on 26 March 2027, the nineteenth day of the second lunar month. It is the first and most widely kept of Guanyin's days.
Laba, the day Chinese Buddhists keep the Buddha's enlightenment, falls on 15 January 2027, the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month. Temples give out laba porridge to everyone who comes.
Ullambana, yulanpen, falls on 16 August 2027, the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month, the same day as the zhongyuan ghost festival.
Zenith Calendar for Android comes with an almanac called mahayana (china): the days of Chinese Mahayana Buddhism by the Chinese lunar calendar, drawn on the ring of your year beside your own days. Turning it on costs nothing.
Korea keeps the same lunar day by its own calendar, Vietnam keeps it on the full moon of the fourth month, and Japanese temples keep the western date of 8 April. In Zenith Calendar each is its own almanac, so you light the one you keep.
Each day is the lunar month and day the Chinese Mahayana tradition fixes, with the western date copied from published tables. In a year with a leap month, a day keeps the ordinary month.