Buddhists cut festival expense to help Rohingya

MNA Exclusive Desk: The Buddhists community in Bangladesh has declared that they will forgo parts of their festivities for Probarona Purnima, their second biggest religious festival, and donate the cost of a major event for the Rohingya refugees who have recently arrived in Bangladesh.

Community leaders announced this decision at a meeting with senior Awami League leaders at the party president’s Dhanmondi political office on Wednesday morning.

However, the festival is also known as Ashvini Purnima that marks conclusion of the three months long seclusion of the monks inside their monasteries for self-edification and atonement of their defilement.

The Purnima follows a month-long preaching of sermons by the Buddhist monks for the welfare of every beings and whole humankind through a month long yellow robes offering ceremony that begins the day after the Purnima.

According to the legend, Buddha once clipped some strands of hair from his head and said that if he were qualified to attain supreme wisdom and enlightenment, the hairs would not fall down but go up instead, in the long run which they did.

The Buddhists decided to cancel the festivity in protest against the grisly persecution by the Myanmar government of Rohingya Muslims and express solidarity with the present governments’ stance on the crisis.