Festivals in Asia

An Uposatha (; ) day is a Buddhist day of observance, in existence since the Buddha's time (600 BCE), and still being kept today by Buddhist practitioners. The Buddha taught that the Uposatha day is for "the cleansing of the defiled mind," resulting in inner calm and joy. On this day, both lay and ordained members of the sangha intensify their practice, deepen their knowledge and express communal commitment through millennia-old acts of lay-monastic reciprocity. On these days, the lay followers make a conscious effort to keep the Five Precepts or (as the tradition suggests) the ten precepts. I

thumb|People celebrating Maahefun on a beach at Fuvahmulah, Maldives.|alt=A photo of dark-skinned boys and girls standing, sitting and lying in wet clothes on the surf of a beach. Some palm trees stand in the background. Some women in veils are among the kids. Maahefun is a celebration marking the beginning of Ramadan, where Muslims in the Maldives celebrate the taking of their last meal before beginning the month-long fasting.