Katina Festival – 2010

Katina festival was princely held in the Nevada Buddhist temple with participation of many monks from different areas in California. Ven. Alawala Subhuthi  cordially welcomed all the monks and devotees who participated in the festival. Ven. Sutadhara was briefly highlighted that Katina is a festival held each year after the rain’s retreat. Ven. Sutadhara also mentioned at the time of the Buddha, he ordered the monks to stay inside the temples for three months period until the rainy season was over.  At the end of three months period, laymans and monks together held this festival called Katina. He also underlined the inter dependency between the laymans and monks where such festival was impossible to held without the unity of each party. Also, he emphasized to understand the changing nature where in the morning that it was a piece of cloth, later it was sitched and offered as a robe to the community of monks which the end result was to attain merits by offering the robe to the monks. Monks then circled around and decided to offer the robe to the Ven. Subhuthi. Those merits attained by offering the robe, the positive energy he epxressed can be used to overcome the negative energy that we may have gathered performing small sins in daily life. Ven. Saranasiri also expressed some thoughts why Katina festival is significant to laymans and how fortunate the devotees who organized the festival that they can be happy remembering this event.