Thursday, April 24, 2008
Stupa
Stupas come in many sizes, as huge as a building or up to as small as a pendant. In stupas, normally is encased with holy relics of High Enlightened beings or Precious Items such as High Lama's prayer bead.
For small Stupas, we can insert holy relic inside and place on the left hand side of the Buddha Image (our Right) It serves as a reminder to us, to have the mind of an enlightened being.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Holy Items Part 2
Wednesday, January 3, 2007
Holy Items Part 1
How do we define the Blessed Items? Blessed items have received blessings and these blessings are on anything which is able to open up “something” within us and it will inspire us to be going forward to a much more positive way of living and encourages the “universal qualities” of being compassion, altruism, love and peace.
That “something” in us may be a lot of things, it may have been our previous life’s prayers or something that we had engaged in strongly and this consciousness remains in our mind even it has been one life time away.
Receiving these blessings from Highly Realized Guru can causes the imprint in our minds to grow such that we can continue our journey on the path we have chosen. One of the way of grow these imprints is to See, Touch and Feel these holy objects.
Holy items and the relics are being holy not because of the thousands of prayers that we recited using them but because of these items are imbued with Special Energies of the Guru that owned them.
The Holy Lamas, whom these items belongs to are revered and as well as respected as a Holy People who have
- Taken and held their monastic vows for decades
- Engaged in the everyday practices which is prescribed by their Lamas to transform their minds
- Reciting mantras and prayers continuously in conjunction with all the necessary visualisations, as set out and also practised by generations of spiritual masters before them.
Through all these practices and keeping clear and pure commitments, these rare and Holy Lamas have attained a level where they have the Special ability to strive continuously towards benefits of all sentient beings and generating the qualities of generosity, kindness, compassion, endurance, patience, forgiveness and peace.
By doing this, the mind which they embody, had extends to every single thing about them, everything items that a Holy Guru or Beings touches, uses or does with wholehearted and pure motivation in order to benefit others.
Tuesday, January 2, 2007
Varja and Bell
The Varja Symbolize immovable or indestructible state of Buddha hood. The 5 spokes Varja Resembles of the 3 wisdoms and the 9 spokes Varja Resembles the Buddha of the 5 Families and also the 4 mothers.
When a Varja is always paired with a Bell and Varja represents a method or compassion.
The Bell, also known as Dri bul, has many different heights, from 8 finger’s height to a 22 finger widths in height that comes with a round base. The Hollow of the bell symbolizes the wisdom of cognizing emptiness and the clapper represents the sound of emptiness.
When a Bell is paired with Varja, it represents wisdom, which means the wisdom for the method. As both of the Varja and Bell is always together and never separated.
Another saying is that the Varja Represents the Compassion of the Buddha and the Bell Represents the Wisdom. The Bell is always visualized as the Buddha’s Body and the Varja is the mind and the sound made by the bell represents the Buddha’s Speech in spreading the Dharma.
Friday, December 29, 2006
Chantting Beads
The 1st mala is made out of Bodhi Seed, as Lord Buddha was sitting under the Bodhi Tree where he is enlightened, the King of that time (forgotten his name) came to Lord Buddha and asked for advice to take the path to enlightened.
Lord Buddha told him (the king) to pick 108 seeds under the tree and string them together and start chanting (wanna know more about power chanting? Go to http://www.tsondruegyatso.blogspot.com)
Well, that way how it started. Nowadays, there are many types of materials people use to make malas, some use yak boned (to remind one self that death is unavoidable) some uses wood crafted from trees such as Bodhi Trees, Precious stones such as Coral, Turquoise, Tiger eye, Crystals and much more.
What is the material used is not important, but to chant and practice Buddhism with “Effort” (Tsondrue – my name) and be devoted like a Varja and Bell (whenever there is a Varja, there is a bell) and hold on to the Buddhism practice is very important.
Wanna know more? Wait for the next post !
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Tibetan Incense Sticks
A good incense are made from non toxic fragrance and punk sticks as it will cause throat and nasal to irritate and sometimes it will causes headaches as well. The Process of making incense is to exercise our creativity in a both joyful and meditative manner.
There are also a few type of incense available in powder form made out of variety of natural ingredients, for example Aloe wood has very minimal aroma until it is heated over fire. These incense are sprinkled over burning incense or charcoal to release the aroma of the incense. These incenses are normally used to "give a pleasant scent to the surrounding", for relaxation and meditation, purification, or used in Puja.
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Butter Lamp
Silver Polished Butter Lamp is a simple and wonderful item to be placed on the Altar, Normally Butter Lamp has very attractive hand carved design. The best Quality of Butter Lamp that I have seen so far are from Nepal, The practice of using Butter Lamp starts from a long long time ago (cant get any information on that)
The name of a Butter Lamp came from the lamp itself, it is belief that it is normally filled with butter and was lighted and put on one's shrine as an offering to the Buddhas.
As the time passed and you wont want ants and bugs to swim in your Butter Lamp, people nowadays, replace butter with oil and some even with candles. Normally Butter Lamps are made out of Brass or Copper sometimes even Silver or Gold, but no matter what it is made out of, it is the offering that we offer to Buddha. There is also High Realized Lama that uses the Butter Lamp for Divination