Hana Matsuri,or “flower festival,”is observed on April8by the Japanese to celebrate the Buddha' s birthday.“Flower festival” alludes2) to the season and to the garden in which Buddha was born.
Unlike other big spiritual honchos3),the Buddha was not a god.He was just a man,albeit4) a royal one,the princely son of an admittedly corrupt Brahman monarch5).Some 2,500years ago,in India,a white elephant intimated to the monarch's wife that she had conceived a child.She strode into the palace garden,where according to legend she painlessly birthed a son.As a young man,this Siddhartha Gautama bade farewell to all princely delights and sallied forth seeking --and eventually finding --enlightenment.