Supposedly, today is Buddha's Birthday. There is a "belief" that when he was born dragons flew down from heaven and poured out water and "all the flowers on land and water bloomed simultaneously" [writer's almanac]. As a consequence, people celebrate this day by decorating with flowers, carrying flowers to temples ceremonially, and in Japan children pour tea over the heads of statues of Buddha... It makes me think: maybe we DO need to canonize scriptures--this is likely not an Essential Buddhist belief, is it? Besides, wouldn't he have been born TOO LATE for Dragons? I suspect that is also why some books were excluded from the Christian canon, e.g., because they held accounts of Jesus' acts or teachings that were markedly inconsistent with what was already accepted and known to have happened...odd, divergent accounts needed to be excluded on the basis they could not be credited...So here we see something in Buddhist lore that [and I realize this
The Great Dialogue