From PublicAddress.net
Apologies for the very short notice, but anyone in Auckland who would like to learn about the 37 practices of bodhisattvas may attend a teaching given by Tibetan Buddhist monk the Venerable Geshe Sangyey Thinley (Geshe-la) on Tuesday 5 August at 7.30 pm, Onehunga Community Centre, 83 Church Street, Onehunga. Phone: 021-267 4932. And on Wednesday 6 August at 7.30 pm, Geshe-la will teach Eight Verses for Training the Mind at The Long House, 155 Nick Johnstone Drive, Church Bay, Waiheke Island. Phone: 372 8988.
But if you don't have time to get to either of these teachings this month, stay serene… Geshe-la, who formally trained at Sera Je Monastery in southern India, will be coming down to Auckland once a month from his base at the Jam Tse Dhargyey Ling Tibetan Buddhist Centre in Whangarei, where he is the resident teacher. He'll be at the Community Centre in Onehunga on the first Tuesday of each month and at The Long House on Waiheke Island on the first Wednesday of each month. His teachings will be translated into English by Tsering Samdup.
In the latest edition of the Dharma News – you can get it by emailing dharma@igrin.co.nz and placing New Member in the subject line – Geshe-la speaks about the importance of undertaking dharma practice in a clean environment. (This is a tenet of ashtanga practice as well. Don't come to the mat without showering or bathing first.) Cleanliness is preparation for meditation. In Tibetan this is called the 'chi-dor' – getting rid of garbage, blowing away dust as a reminder that the inner garbage has to be dumped as well. By cleaning inside, Geshe-la says, we remove our disturbing emotions and our minds become calm and clear. A calm and clear mind is inspiring to others – which returns positive feeling to the self.
I'm not entirely Mrs Spick'n'Span. I throw my clothes on the floor. I leave a book face down on the sofa. I don't thrill to the ceaseless chore of housework. But there are some circumstances …. for example, I don't like to write or to cook in messy surroundings. I like my writing space and my kitchen to be calm and orderly. Mostly, I have never thought of this preference as having even a shred of a spiritual dimension. I worked as a cleaner for a long time. I've cleaned a LOT of houses. And from my days as a chef, I learned to clean up as I cook and I rarely turn in for the night without doing the dishes and wiping down surfaces. So I guess you could just say that I'm well-trained in menial work; but I'm starting to see that my desire for order means more to me than a place for everything and everything in its place. Cooking, like writing, is a ritual of making something for others and proper preparation for its undertaking is not only practical but a way of honouring the task and its object.
Or maybe it is just that I like being practical; using my hands. I like to write by hand first before typing my draft out on a keyboard. I like the hand-eye connection. In Vedic thought the hands are conduits for the five elements, one of which courses through each finger. (Thumb= space, forefinger=air, middle finger=fire, ring finger=water, little finger=earth.) This Vedic mantra invokes the healing energies of our hands:
Karagre vasate Lakshmi karamule Sarasvati
Karamadhye tu Govindah prabhate karandarsanam
On the tip of my fingers is Goddess Lakshmi
On the base of my fingers is Goddess Saraswati
In the middle of my fingers is Lord Govinda.
In this manner, I look at my palms.
Lakshmi symbolizes the energy of wealth. Saraswati, the energy of inspiration and wisdom. Govinda, the energy of Divine Love.
I'm not sure how I wandered on to this subject of hands, but while I'm here, I might as well say what a tremendous feeling of well-being you can get, you can really feel the resonances, when you work with mudras (ritual hand gestures). "Dana" means "open-handedness". The more we give, the greater our gifts become and the greater is that which comes back to us. I'm trying hard in my life to practise loving-kindness. And "hard" is the operative word. But you can develop the spirit of openhandeness by practising dana mudra .
Extend your right hand with fingers pointing downwards and the palm of the hand facing outward. Close your eyes and focus inwardly on your heart. Hold the mudra for a few minutes and then release it. Practice this mudra whenever you experience difficulty in being generous or in asking for what you need.
According to Ian Cyrus, kwon bup 9th Dan, of the International Chosondo Federation, the origins of the names of the martial arts kwon bup, chuan fa, kempo, and kuntao are a transliteration of the Sanskrit term Dharmamutki or Vajramutki (Teachings of the Clasped/Closed Hand of Buddha). He says that popular works about these martial arts or their derivatives such as karate, taekwondo, and hapkido have ignored any serious consideration of Buddhism, even though martial arts can be traced to both Chinese Buddhist and Taoist Traditions and eventually to Indian Buddhist and Brahmin traditions.
Cyrus has a theory that the Korean Hwa Rang and the Japanese Samurai drew their structure and function from the Indian Ksatreya, an elite force of usually royal or noble-born warriors, who were trained from infancy in a wide variety of military and martial arts, both armed and unarmed, religion, medicine, arts, and literature. The Ksatreya practiced a skill called Vajramutki (Sanskrit for Thunderbolt Closed/Clasped Hands), where, as I mentioned earlier, each of the five fingers represent one of the five elements.
The story goes that an Indian Buddhist monk called Bodhidharma came to the Shaolin Temple in China and taught a series of exercises derived from the Ksatreya's Vajramutki forms. These forms were known as the 18 Subduings and essentially consist of 18 classical sets of mudra, combined with respiratory patterns, steps, muscle tension and relaxation, and specific meditation themes. (Kind of like ashtanga, I think.) The 18 Subduings was taught as a Nata, a Buddhist term for the art of ritual movement practiced for spiritual purposes, and used by Vajramutiki practitioners in India. It was also used as a means of neutralizing attacks without harm to those involved, and as a self-inquiring moving meditation.
Here's where the dana mudra turns up again, but in a slightly different form. Vajramukti practitioners formed it with the left hand, the palm held upward at the height of the waist with the fingers extended. It means safety and protection. Together with abhya mudra, describing a circle in front of the body with the right hand, it represents the ultimate and unselfish form of self-defense.