Laba porridge, also known as Qibao Wuwei porridge, Buddha porridge and everyone's rice, is a kind of porridge made of various ingredients. "Drinking Laba porridge" is the custom of Laba Festival. The traditional ingredients of Laba porridge are rice, millet, corn, coix seed, red dates, lotus seeds, peanuts, longan and various beans.
The custom of drinking "Laba porridge" on Laba Festival began in the Song Dynasty. Tsui Hark said in Qing Notes: "Laba porridge began in the Song Dynasty. On the eighth day of December, temples in Tokyo cooked porridge with seven treasures and five flavors of glutinous rice, and others followed suit." Wu's Dream in the Southern Song Dynasty says: "On the eighth day of this month, the temple name is Laba. Dasha and other temples have five kinds of porridge called Laba porridge. Laba drinks Laba porridge on this day. The origin of this custom is also related to the story of Buddha becoming Buddha.
Historical origin of Laba porridge
According to legend, Buddha Sakyamuni had been practicing penance for six years before becoming a Buddha. He often eats one wheat and one hemp and becomes very weak. When two shepherdesses saw it, they gave the Buddha chyle made of milk to eat, which revived him. He went to Nilian River to bathe and wash clothes, and came to a bodhi tree in Bodhgaya. After sitting for forty-eight days, he became a Buddha on the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month. Therefore, believers use bathing Buddha and eating Laba porridge to express their commemoration of Buddha.
On the day of Laba, various monasteries held ceremonies to cook porridge for the Buddha with fragrant grains, named Laba porridge. In some monasteries, monks hold bowls and give alms along the street before the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month. The collected rice, chestnuts, dates and nuts are boiled into Laba porridge and distributed to the poor. Everyone thinks that eating it can be blessed by the Buddha, so the poor people call it "Buddha porridge" year after year, and the tradition of making Laba porridge in temples has spread widely to the people, gradually forming the custom of "Laba Festival" in the northern region.