Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Holding Hands With the Earth


His Holiness Urgyen Trinley Dorje, the 17th Gyalwang Karmapa, has written recently about the importance of of maintaining a better relationship with the earth and the elements. His Holiness is the head of the Karma Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism; some of you may remember reading about him when he escaped Tibet at the dawn of the new millennium, or when he visited the United States for the first time last year.

The pin, pictured above, is His Holiness's logo design for the Monlam, the large prayer festival held by Karma Kagyu followers every year at Bodh Gaya in India, site of Shakyamuni Buddha's enlightenment.

"Ever since the human race first appeared on this earth, we have used this earth heavily," Karmapa says. "The earth has given us immeasurable benefit, but what have we done for the earth in return? We always ask for something from the earth, but never give her anything back."

Karmapa goes on to explain that his logo design looks like two hands clasping each other. I find this idea of holding hands with the earth not only noble and inspiring, but also healing at a very deep level.

What would it mean to care for the earth as if she were our friend, neighbor, or family member? Because, really—she is.

You may read the whole article that His Holiness wrote about this subject at: http://tinyurl.com/dx664p

I bought my Monlam pin from Namse Bangdzo, the bookstore affiliated with Karma Triyana Dharmachakra in Woodstock, New York:  www.namsebangdzo.com

2 comments:

  1. Lu, your URLs have not converted to links. That should happen automatically when you are "composing" in Google's blog editor. Perhaps if you go in and edit again, but make sure you put a space or a return after the URL the software *might* look at what comes before that and convert it to a link.
    Or are you editing in the HTML mode?

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  2. Hi Alex, not sure why this is happening, I will check it out. I wondered about it too. Forgive me, I'm a newbie at blogging!

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