When I saw the lanterns flown during the Prabarana Purnima light up the sky, a hope was instigated within me. A hope for harmony and cooperation among the people of my country. In a year marked by noise, social instability, and the fatigue of daily struggles, it often feels as though the collective spirit of a nation is stretched thin.

Standing amid the evening chill in the Badda monastery, as I look up towards the newly built Sampriti Bhaban, I wonder how much harmony is left within this society.

A fanush begins as something fragile. When left alone, it collapses under its own weight. Similarly, our society is collapsing under its weight and ego. People lined up together to release the lantern into the sky; some prayed for their well-being, and some prayed for their success.

But among them, I prayed for my country, prayed for stability, and prayed that the people of my country could live within a harmonious society. In the lanterns that were moving towards an unknown destination, I saw a beacon of hope. A hope that everything will turn out great for the nation’s future. Like hundreds of lanterns that lit the dark night, I wished that hundreds of good deeds would light up hope within the people. Societies are not healed through grand declarations of reform alone, but through the quiet, shared realisation that we inhabit the same space and we must work together for our next generation.

In Buddhist philosophy, the ritual of lantern flying symbolises shedding negative deeds, anger, and ego, letting them float away into the darkness. The festival is marked as a step towards diminishing our inner evil. Societal hope is rarely born out of optimism.

It is not the belief that everything is inherently good, but rather the stubborn urge that circumstances are not permanent.

When a country undergoes circumstances, whether economic pressure, political transformation, or social tension, hope is sustained through collective harmony rather than prejudice. True change within a society almost never begins with a few words of hope.

A country changes when its people stop waiting for an ideal hero to fix the system and begin realising that society is held together by the daily choices, integrity, and mutual trust of its ordinary citizens. Like the lantern, it requires hands to steady it, fire to lift it, and the courage to release it into the unknown, trusting that together, our shared light can guide us forward.