Hatyai Vegetarian Festival : 08 - 16 October 2010

The Hatyai Vegetarian Festival is an annual event held at Mahapanya Vidayalai during the ninth lunar month of the Chinese calendar. It is believed that the vegetarian festival and its accompanying sacred rituals bestow good fortune upon those who religiously observe this rite. During this time, local residents of Chinese ancestry strictly observe a 10-day vegetarian or vegan diet for the purposes of spiritual cleansing and merit-making.

Vegetarian festival is one of the popular festivals in south Thailand. Yearly, Mahapanya Vidayalai together with Wat Thaworn, organizes the Vegetarian Festival for ten days. This year too, Mahapanya accompanying her 35 students organized this festival as usual.

Every day, over 500 people joined this festival to practice the vegetarian. Three free meals, breakfast, lunch and dinner were provided for people. 40 volunteers from Tak province were appointed to look after the people and 20 lay women were appointed for cooking foods.

As schedule was fixed, Mahapanya students routinely followed the chanting schedule for evening session (chanting schedule attached). Cambodian, Myanmar, Bangladeshi, Bhutanese, Indian and Nepali chanting were demonstrated. Each day, after evening chanting ‘short dhamma talk’ was organized. Not much people participated on dhamma talk. Common topics such as ‘how vegetarian can help to protect environment’, Buddhist notion on vegetarian, kamma, and related topics according to Buddhism was delivered by lecturers, staffs and selected students.