What Color is Your Buddha?

Yellow, Pink, Green, Light Green, Orange, Blue, Purple, or Red. No fuscia, lavender, crimson, or jade. The rainbow of colors adopted by Thai Buddhists based upon the day of the week (and in one case time of day) on which an individual is born was assigned hundreds of years ago but is still taken seriously today.

Can’t remember your day of the week? You can calculate yours at:

http://pregnancy.about.com/cs/boyorgirl/l/bldayofweek.htm

The specific assignments are:

Monday Yellow
Tuesday Pink
Wednesday (day) Green
Wednesday (night) Light Green
Thursday Orange
Friday Blue
Saturday Purple
Sunday Red



The king of Thailand was born on Monday and the country shows this by having yellow flags near palaces, on billboards, and most impressively on the King Rama IX Bridge. As a close cousin to Boston’s new Big Dig bridges, the King (an engineer by schooling) designed the basics of this bridge and arranged its construction as a gift to the Thai people on his 72nd birthday. Apparently, every 12th birthday in Buddhism is a special celebration (guessing this is tied to the celestial resetting of the calendar) and the King thought this a great manifestation of his thanks. The bridge has bright yellow cables and sashes. We caught them from a striking water view we had on our final day in Bangkok and driving over the bridge the day before.


The Queen. Her birthday was celebrated during the month before we were traveling.

Eric is green; I’m yellow (in good company); the queen’s is blue. What’s yours?