Buddhist Flag: The Five colors of the flag represents the six colors of aura which Buddhists believe emanated from the body of the Buddha when he attained Englightenment.

The sky was clear, and very blue on Wesak Day this year. I was not planning to do any shoot that day. In fact, I never followed any of the Wesak Day morning activities at all! I brought along my EOS 50D, paired with only EF 50mm f/1.8 II. I decided to drop by over at Sarawak Buddhist Association after breakfast. My only regret that morning was for not bringing my other lenses. I couldn’t do wide, nor I could do a tele shoot.

For this shot, I hid the sun behind this Buddhist Flag. Shooting on Aperture Priority mode, I set the aperture value to f/14, and tried to meter the flag.

The five colors of the flag represent the six color of the aura which Buddhists believe emanated from the body of the Buddha when he attained Enlightenment:

• Blue (Nile): Loving kindness, peace and universal compassion
• Yellow( Pita): The Middle Path — avoiding extremes, emptiness
• Red (Lohita): The blessings of practice – achievement, wisdom, virtue, fortune and dignity.
• White (Odata): The purity of Dharma — leading to liberation, outside of time or space
• Orange (Manjesta): The Buddha’s teachings ‚ wisdom

The sixth vertical band, on the fly, is made up of a combination of rectangular bands of the five other colors, and represents a compound of the other finve colours in the aura’s spectrum. This compound color is referred to as Pabbhassara.

Information on Buddhist Flag for this entry was referred to its Wikipedia entry here: Buddhist Flag.