Pets blessed at Buddhist festival

These happy crowds are celebrating Vesak day in Thekchen Choling temple, Singapore. The festival's important in the Buddhist religion - it remembers Buddha's birth, life and death.

The temple's director, Singha Rinpoche, has invited families to bring their pets along for a blessing. It's an event which demonstrates Buddha's respect for all living things.

Singha Rinpoche: "I want to stress the importance of actual love for all beings to be equal, whether they are animals or whether they are human beings. you know Buddha taught equanimity, and then we should really try to love and respect all life in all forms. So the blessing is not just for humans, the blessing also for animals."

For Buddhists, people are 'reincarnated' or reborn. This goes for pets as well, so animals might be reincarnated as human beings. Dennis Yee was keen for his cat, Blackie, to receive a blessing.

Dennis Yee: "I am a Buddhist. So we always likes to accumulate merits for our current life and also for the future life. And also we, we, we see our animals as a family and also as - in our, in our animal realm. So we like to accumulate merit for, for my pets, so that in future he may be, he may be, become a human just like us and not be an animal."

The rich variety of animals included furry pets like guinea pigs and rabbits, but also reptiles. Turtle owner Eng Jui Goy states that Shelly was once a very shy pet.

Eng Jui Goy: "But when I first adopted her, she's a, a, a pet that was given up. She was very shy. It took us quite a while, for, for us to get close to her. And now that she has warm up to us, we feel that adopting to being blessed together with us in a Vesak Day even will bring all of us closer."

The event provided proud pet owners with plenty of photo opportunities to remind them of Vesak. Families also made offerings of candles at the temple. They hoped this would benefit their pets.

Singha Rinpoche explains the event's importance for pet owners. It can help improve an animal's chances in the next life.

Singha Rinpoche: "We pray to plant a seed of enlightenment for the pet. Because in - we believe that even a pet will become a Buddha one day."

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