I can’t remember the first time I heard about the Borobudur Lantern Festival. But this sacred ritual with a majestic view of the ninth-century Mahayana Buddhist temple has long fascinated me.
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A celebration of the birth, enlightenment and death of Siddhartha Gautama – the Buddha – it happens on the most important day for Buddhists: Vesak Day, during the full moon in May or June. And like its name suggests, it’s held at Borobudur, the world’s largest Buddhist temple and a Unesco World Heritage Site. The temple's structure is shaped like a mandala to symbolise the cosmos.
Getting to Borobudur
Borobudur is about an hour by road from Yogyakarta International Airport in southern central Java. The airport receives direct international flights from Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. (While you’re there, it’s worth exploring Yogyakarta, widely considered the cradle of Javanese civilisation thanks to its historical significance as the seat of Javanese power, and its rich cultural heritage.)
To watch the lantern ceremony and enter Borobudur Temple, you need a ticket. This can be quite challenging as the festival is increasingly attracting more visitors, so it's best to check the temple’s official website regularly to be notified of ticket release dates.
I took the 75-minute morning flight from Jakarta to Yogyakarta so I would be able to watch the procession preceding the lantern ceremony. The procession itself is a unique experience – a 3km parade starting from Mendut Temple to Borobudur Temple.
A series of beautifully decorated floats opened the event, each cocooning Buddhist monks clad in saffron robes and dignitaries, trailed by worshippers on foot.
Visitors followed along behind or chose a spot on the roadside to watch it. As the vehicles trundled along, the monks splashed bystanders with holy water and rose petals.
Hero photo: Steffen Bertram
Illuminating the sky
The lantern ceremonies are usually held at 6pm and 9pm. I chose to attend the first one so that I could see the magnificent temple and its towering stupas during the golden hour.
After the sun disappeared below a nearby hill, the full moon cast a glow on the structure, invoking a sense of spirituality.
A stage had been built in front of the temple, with a luminous statue of the Buddha sitting in meditation on a giant lotus at the centre, flanked by golden reclining Buddha statues. A group of monks who came from Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand sat in front of the statue to lead the ceremony.
As dusk fell, the event began, starting with an offering of holy water and the lighting of a torch with an eternal flame, symbolising purity and enlightenment. The monks chanted melodic Buddhist prayers that reverberated through the entire area. It felt like their calls were echoing through the cells of my body. This was followed by a guided meditation session, an important practice of Buddhism.
At the end of the meditation, the monks came down and splashed the participants with the holy water. (Be prepared to get wet again!)
Then it was time for the “enlightenment”, or the releasing of the lanterns. Volunteers handed out paper lanterns and showed the participants how to light them. Everyone had to release them simultaneously to create a visually stunning and symbolic experience – signifying unity, hope and a new beginning.
After a while, I looked up and saw a constellation of lanterns lighting up the night.
The beauty of the sight was something I wasn’t prepared for, no matter how many photos of the ceremony I’d seen: Thousands of lanterns, slowly floating into the sky, against the backdrop of the awe-inspiring temple.
For a moment, it felt like I was in a dream.
Participating in the Borobudur Lantern Festival had been just one of the things on my bucket list. But it turned out to be so much more than that – a moment of precious serenity and calmness that simply can’t be manufactured, in turn creating a memory that will stay with me forever.
