For 2019, Bodhi Day, December 8, falls on a Sunday. That’s good because I really don’t need to take vacation days off.
As for watching Venus rise in the morning sky, not this year. Venus will rise on Bodhi Day at about 9am. That’s too late to be visible, and it seems to be about that time anywhere in the world on December 8, 2019. Instead, it looks like Mercury and Mars will be visible in the pre-dawn hours of meditation.
The Bodhi Season begins on December 1, 2019. Siddhartha Guatama meditated for seven days under the Bodhi Tree, before his full awakening on the morning of the eight day.
As I’ve done for the past two Bodhi Seasons, I will post a daily message from December 1 through December 8 to guide you along the Bodhi Season. These links point to those past series of messages, which should give you a good idea of what Bodhi Day is about and how to celebrate it:
Be sure to check out the links at the bottom of those two pages. That leads to the eight daily messages.
We still haven’t made our Bodhi Day arrangements yet. I happen to be very short of vacation days due to our visit with my step father and the 40th Anniversary of my first programming job.
We’ll probably just do a weekend getaway around the Minidoka area – such as Sun Valley. Last Bodhi Day, the Eternal Fishnu, Rubber Ducky Buddha of Joliet, and I performed a Buddhist service at Minidoka on our way to City of Rocks. We thought it would be nice to do that every year.
Sun Valley is also close to Craters of the Moon. We probably can’t get into the park during those hours, but there are many places near the park that would provide a great view of the early morning sky, solitude, no ranchers angry about hippy trespassers.
I apologize for this clip show blog. It’s a good way to fill in the simple reminder of Bodhi Day 2019 with lots of information from one place.
Please keep in mind that this post is based on the standardized Bodhi Day date of December 8. There is the lunar Bodhi Day, which is a bit of an it depends answer. So that you don’t need to read the post on the lunar Bodhi Day, I’ll say that for 2019, it is on January 2, 2020.
