I came across a gathering (the Lotus Lantern Parade) in celebration of the Buddha’s birthday yesterday in New York’s Union Square (quite the Buddhist hotspot lately) and it made me think how scattered holidays are in western Buddhism. Maybe westerners don’t want them, having secularized the holidays of their cradle religions. But it seems to play into the worries Clark Strand expressed over the future of the dharma in America. Pardon the crummy cellphone picture.

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