[Buddha-l] Weeks and westerners

[Alex Wilding]

Tibet has a seven-day week whose names are clearly parallel to the western
week, but it had little importance beside the dominant lunar calendar. I
have been told, but could be wrong, that this week has existed for quite
long, and has not just been imported for the convenience of living in the
"modern world".
Several lunar days are important - full and new, of course, but also tenth
and twenty-fifth.
On ethnicity, is Australia part of the Western world? Are we talking
culturally western? (I hope so, otherwise most of Europe will be eastern,
which grates on my sensibilities.) If so, I'd guess the majority of
Buddhists there are yellowish.

AW
-----Original Message-----
From: buddha-l-bounces at mailman.swcp.com
[mailto:buddha-l-bounces at mailman.swcp.com] On Behalf Of Richard Hayes
Sent: Tuesday, 19 July 2011 1:36 AM
To: Buddhist discussion forum
Subject: Re: [Buddha-l] MARYSVILLE: American Buddhism facing generational
shift

On Jul 18, 2011, at 16:08 , <djessop at nas.net> <djessop at nas.net> wrote:

> Is any particular day of the week especially significant 
> to Buddhists?

It is mighty tempting to be a smart Aleck and say that the only significant
day of the week is today, but I'll withstand the hardships associated with
restraint. Now that you raise the question, Deborah, I realize I have no
idea how ancient Indians thought about days of the week or whether they even
named them. I'm not even sure there was such a concept as a week. There was
the concept of the fortnight, the period between the new moon and the full
moon, and in Indian Buddhism (as in Indian culture in general), the full
moon day and new moon day were days for doing something that passed as
sacred.