The Buddhist Flag

The most prominent colour concept in Buddhism is that of the rainbow body, which is the highest level of meditative achievement wherein the body is transformed into pure light. The rainbow body is the highest achievement other than Nirvana, which is the essential end-goal for Buddhists. Since the “pure light” on the spectrum contains all colors, and is white, to possess a rainbow body means to possess all colors, and to do some means meditating on colors that embody specific teachings.

The principle colors involved in Buddhism are Blue, Black, White, Red, Green, and Yellow, and each — except for Black — are aligned to a specific Buddha. Associated with the Akshobhya Buddha and the healer ‘Blue Buddha,’ Blue represents tranquility, ascension, the infitine, purity, and healing. Over all, the colour represents wisdom, but light and dark blue have different meanings. The light blue that Buddhists meditate upon is said to be no better represented than by turquoise. It speaks of the limitless heights of ascension, but it is opaque as earth, holding the wisdom of the earth and sky within it. Simultaneously, it embodies the duality of living and dying. This colour change this stone undergoes — from light exposure or skin oil — is thus a reminder of human life. Wearing the stone is thought to give the wearer long life, and it is believed to absorb sin.

Black in Buddhism is not so different from Western Culture in that it refers to darkness and hate. Meditating upon hate, anger, and darkness may not seem like the path to peace, but the principle revolves around coming to an understanding. Learning, rather than revelling in the black of ignorance, is the path to clarity and truth. Black is often used as a reminder of conquest by not annihilation, but turning evil into good. Black is most commonly found in black paintings, more specifically black thangkas, which are representations of deities, usually. Gold outlines and vibrant colors against a black background seemed even more capable of portraying other-worldly manifestations than those typically on plain, white backgrounds. Seen to the left is a female Bodhisattva who rids of miseries and disasters.

White is representative of the principles of purity, as in Western Culture, but it is also considered the colour of knowledge and longevity. It is consider a colour of extremes, associated with the cold of snow and the smelting of metal. White is associated with the Buddha Vairocana. According to Buddhist legend, Buddha’s mother, Maya, dreamt of a white elephant touching her right side before Buddha was born. Elephants, associate with rain clouds and fertility, are seen as good fortune, and following that the elephant was white meant purity and learnedness for the child. Because of this dream, seeing a white elephants spells remarkable fortune, which holds truth whether in reference to mysticism or not, as they are quite rare. The white elephant is thought to be Buddha descended from the heavens.

The colour red symbolizes lifeforce, preservation, fire, and sacred things or places. Also riddled with duality, fire can represent warmth and comfort, but can also be a destructive force. Red is associated with the Buddha Amitabha. Throughout Tibetan culture, red is a marker of sacred areas, and a true mark of a Buddhist scared area are the simplistic, tall gates at the entrances. We also see this colour on the garments on the monks. It is believed to be a protective colour, like that of shamanistic wards.

Green denotes youth, vigour, action (Karma), and harmony. Because it is the colour at the middle of the spectrum, it is also represents balance and is associated visually with the lush trees. Green is associated with the Buddha Amoghasiddhi.

Yellow is the colour that possesses the highest symbolic quality because of the saffron colour of the monks’ robes. Previously a colour worn by criminals, it was chosen as a symbol of humility and separation from materialistic society. It symbolizes renunciation and desirelessness. Because it is also the colour of the earth, yellow denotes stability and grounded nature.

Coming to understand the principles represented by these colors, applying that wisdom to life, and being free from desire is how the Rainbow Body, and possibly Nirvana, is achieved.

Original Link

A Buddhist RPG

Dewi Lestari: Kisah retret 5 hari bersama Thich Nhat Hanh di Hongkong

Monday, May 28, 2007

Meniti Jalan Tengah

Sebuah e-mail saya terima bulan Maret lalu, info tentang retreat lima hari
bersama Master Zen Thich Nhat Hanh di Hongkong. Hati saya seketika
terangkat, intuisi saya berkata: pergi. Saya pengagum karya-karya beliau,
tapi tidak mempelajarinya secara mendalam. Bisikan kedua datang dari guru
sekaligus sahabat saya, yang juga berkata: pergi.

Bahkan hingga saya menginjakkan kaki di Hongkong pada tanggal 11 Mei lalu,
menempuh perjalanan satu jam lebih ke Wu Kai Sha, dan meletakkan koper
saya di dalam kamar yang akan dihuni bersama lima orang lain selama lima
hari ke depan, saya masih belum tahu pasti apa yang saya cari, dan apa
yang akan saya dapat.

Tercatat sekitar 400 orang yang menginap di kompleks retreat, 400 orang
datang pulang-pergi, plus 60 anggota Sangha yang didatangkan dari Plum
Village. Ini memang retreat skala besar. Hampir 900 orang berkumpul di
dalam aula setiap harinya. Suasana riuh dan tempo cepat yang membungkus
kami seketika bertransformasi seusai Thich Nhat Hanh muncul dan memberi
orientasi tentang "Five Mindfulness Trainings" yang akan kami jalankan
selama retreat. Tidak hanya dalam bentuk penjelasan tapi juga pengalaman
langsung yang akan dijalankan lewat meditasi berjalan, meditasi duduk,
makan, minum teh, bicara secukupnya, dibantu oleh energi kolektif Sangha
yang hadir membaur dengan para peserta.

900 orang lalu mulai bergerak dalam keheningan, dalam tempo lambat, dengan
bungkukan hormat dan tangan berpose anjali, diiringi bunyi bel yang
sesekali digaungkan untuk mengingatkan semua orang berhenti beraktivitas
dan pulang pada irama napasnya. Lambat laun saya mulai memahami mengapa
saya memilih pergi.

Sungguh, tidak ada kegiatan "luar biasa" yang saya lakukan di sana. Kami
sarapan, bermeditasi duduk dan berjalan, mendengarkan ceramah, makan
siang, istirahat, berdiskusi dalam kelompok kecil saat sore, makan malam,
tidur. Namun hidup seolah-olah ingin menunjukkan bahwa sesungguhnya setiap
hari adalah ritual kesadaran. Dan kita telah melewatkan kegiatan-kegiatan
sederhana ini bagai angin ribut yang menyapu padang bunga. Angin yang
berlomba menuju ruang kosong tanpa tahu banyaknya keindahan yang gugur di
bawah sana. Dan selama lima hari kami dilatih untuk menahan laju angin
badai ini, kembali menjadi udara yang bergerak semilir agar sempat
memetiki bunga-bunga cantik yang selama ini tumbuh tanpa disadari di
padang hidup kita.

Pemamahan itu pun terus membulat dari hari ke hari. Mulai saya mengerti
mengapa guru saya menyuruh saya pergi. Pada bulan Maret, beberapa hari
sebelum info tentang retreat tersebut tiba, saya terlibat percakapan
dengannya, dan Sang Guru berkata: Remember that nature isn't just about
drives and impulses. Reality shouldn't be perceived as all restriction or
compromise, but as a pathway to ensure your safety towards your highest
purpose. And as the middle path walker you should be aware of the dynamic
between your inside and the outside world. To walk safely and respectfully
means you take both realms into consideration. Dan ketika saya bertanya
balik, koridor apa yang harus saya pakai, jawabannya singkat saja: five
precepts.

Lima Sila ini telah digaungkan Sang Buddha sejak 2500 tahun lalu, sekilas
pintas tak jauh berbeda dengan Ten Commandments, atau nasihat standar
orang tua: Jangan membunuh. Jangan mencuri. Jangan berbohong. Jangan
berbuat asusila. Jangan mengonsumsi apa pun yang melemahkan kesadaran. Dan
terkadang, dengan konteks zaman yang jauh berubah, pola pikir yang
memodern dan kian canggih, sungguh tidak mudah mengerti kedalaman
perintah-perintah singkat itu, bahkan terasa naif dan tidak realistis.

Kita sering lupa, bahwa penderitaan dalam kehidupan manusia, begitu juga
kebahagiaan yang didamba semua manusia tetap sama, terlepas dari zaman
Abraham manusia naik unta dan sekarang manusia terbang dengan Boeing.
Lebih riskan lagi, terkadang kita terjebak dalam pencerahan sebagai
momentum. Kita lupa bahwa menjadi tercerahkan melibatkan disiplin dan
praktek yang dijalankan seumur hidup. Kita tersesat dalam "spiritual"
sebagai konsep tinggal telan, dan mengabaikan aspek "spirit" yang tak
lepas dari "ritual".

2500 tahun telah berlalu, guru-guru yang merupakan emanasi dari
kebijaksanaan Sang Buddha telah hadir dan pergi, dan saya bersyukur dapat
bertemu dan berpraktek langsung dengan salah seorang guru yang berhasil
menerjemahkan Lima Sila ke dalam pengertian modern. "Five Mindfulness
Trainings" yang dirumuskan Thich Nhat Hanh tak lain adalah penerapan Lima
Sila dalam konteks zaman sekarang, sebagaimana bernamaskara dijembataninya
menjadi ritual bersyukur pada bumi, orang tua, dan leluhur. Triratna
dijembataninya menjadi ajaran cinta kasih, pemahaman benar, dan komunitas
yang harmonis. Pada saat itu baru saya mampu mengapresiasi apa yang telah
dilakukan Thich Nhat Hanh selama ini. Beliau mampu menghidangkan kemurnian
ajaran Dharma dalam kemasan masa kini, tanpa mengintimidasi, tanpa
kehilangan otentisitas.

Sejak lama saya menerima dan menyepakati ajaran Sang Buddha. Namun
Mindfulness Retreat menjadi titik balik bagi saya. "Five Mindfulness
Trainings" bukan kesaktian atau momen tunggal pencerahan yang
sekonyong-konyong menghajar kesadaran, melainkan komitmen harian dan kode
etik yang, jika dijalankan dengan setia, niscaya akan membuahkan mental
yang bersahaja, bermakna, dan peka. Sesuatu yang masuk akal dan konkret
untuk mewujudkan hidup damai yang didamba semua makhluk­terlepas apa pun
bentuk dan keyakinannya. Bagi saya, koridor tersebut relevan untuk konteks
hari ini dan relevan pada setiap masa.

Hari terakhir retreat. Sejak pukul setengah enam pagi semua peserta
berkumpul dalam aula. Kami, yang memilih untuk berkomitmen pada lima
praktek kesadaran, duduk berlutut. Dan saat saya bernamaskara, mengucapkan
komitmen saya, hati sayalah yang sesungguhnya bersujud mensyukuri
setidaknya tiga hal. Pertama, saya berkesempatan terlahir menjadi manusia.
Kedua, saya berkesempatan mengenal ajaran kebenaran dan kasih. Ketiga,
saya berkesempatan untuk meniti jalan tersebut.

Kita dapat berdiri jauh dari jalan itu, membayangkan untuk meraihnya satu
hari tanpa menggerakkan satu pun kaki. Kita dapat berdiri begitu dekat
dari mulut jalan, tapi kabut tebal menghalangi pandangan hingga kita
berdiam lama tanpa berbuat apa-apa. Kita dapat melancong ke tepi jalan
itu, berfoto sejenak, lalu pergi untuk menambah koleksi tempat-tempat
wisata kita. Dan kita dapat pergi ke jalan itu, menitinya perlahan,
langkah demi langkah, tanpa terbebani iming-iming yang menanti di ujung
sana, dan hanya mengapresiasi komitmen dan upaya kecil kita setiap hari.
Memetiki bunga-bunga mungil yang selama ini terabaikan, menahan laju angin
badai yang senantiasa menggusur kaki ini keluar dari koridor. Jalan Tengah
dicari bukan hanya demi filosofi, tapi bukti untuk dijalani.

Teks "Five Mindfulness Trainings" saya renungkan berkali-kali selama
retreat, bahkan saya menangis jika perlu. Ada keindahan yang tak
tertampung tubuh ketika pemahaman ini mengutuh. Perjalanan hidup saya…
pertemuan saya dengan sahabat sekaligus guru saya… hingga selembar tiket
elektronik yang menerbangkan saya ke Hongkong… tampak sebagai rangkaian
penggalian untuk kembali menemukan apa yang telah tertimbun oleh debu
batin dan waktu: vajra­permata yang bersemayam dalam diri. Terakhir, saya
bernamaskara bagi mereka, bagi kalian, bagi kita, bagi semua makhluk, yang
dengan caranya masing-masing telah menjadi guru terbaik saya.

* Teks lengkap dari "Five Mindfulness Trainings" dapat dilihat di situs
resmi Plum Village: www.plumvillage.org

Da Vinci's Guide to Healthy Living

If you want to be healthy observe this regime.
Do not eat when you have no appetite, and dine lightly,
Chew well, and whatever you take into you
Should be well-cooked and of simple ingredients
He who takes medicine is ill advised.
Beware anger and avoid stuffy air.
Stay standing a while when you get up from a meal.
Make sure you do not sleep at midday.
Let your wine be mixed with water, take little and often,
Not between meals, not on an empty stomach.
Neither delay nor prolong your visit to the toilet.
If you take exercise, let it not be too strenuous.
Do not lie with your stomach upward and your head
Downward. Be well covered at night,
And rest your head and keep your mind cheerful.
Avoid wantonness and keep to this diet.

=Da Vinci=

A True Hero

WARSAW, Poland - Irena Sendler saved nearly 2,500 Jewish children from the Nazis, organizing a ring of 20 Poles to smuggle them out of the Warsaw Ghetto in baskets and ambulances.
The Nazis arrested her, but she didn’t talk under torture. After she survived the war, she expressed regret - for doing too little.
Lawmakers in Poland’s Senate disagreed Wednesday, unanimously passing a resolution honoring her and the Polish underground’s Council for Assisting Jews, of which her ring of mostly Roman Catholics was a part.
Poland’s goverment-in-exile set up the secret organization in 1942 to help save Jews from the Nazi-established ghettoes and labor camps.

Anyone caught helping Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland risked being summarily shot, along with family members.
The resolution honored Sendler for organizing the ”rescue of the most defenseless victims of the Nazi ideology: the Jewish children.”
Sendler, now 97 and living in a Warsaw nursing home, was too frail to attend but sent a letter read by Elzbieta Ficowska, one of the children she rescued.
”Every child saved with my help and the help of all the wonderful secret messengers, who today are no longer living, is the justification of my existence on this Earth, and not a title to glory,” Sendler wrote. ”Over a half-century has passed since the hell of the Holocaust, but its specter still hangs over the world and doesn’t allow us to forget the tragedy.”
President Lech Kacyzinski said in an address to senators that Sendler is a ”great hero who can be justly proposed for the Nobel Peace Prize.”
After smuggling the children out of the ghetto and placing them with non-Jewish families, Sendler wrote their names on slips of paper and buried them in jars in a neighbor’s yard as a record that could help locate the children’s parents after the war. The Nazis arrested her in 1943, but she refused _ despite repeated torture _ to reveal their names.
In 1965, Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial awarded Sendler one of its first medals given to people who saved Jews, the so-called ”Righteous Among the Nations.”
She was given the honor in 1983 after Poland’s communist authorities finally agreed to allow her to travel abroad.
”I think she’s a great lady, very courageous, and I think she’s a model for the whole international community,” Israel’s ambassador to Poland, David Peleg, said after the ceremony. ”I think that her courage is a very special one.”
Poland was once home to around 3.5 million Jews, most of whom were killed in the Holocaust.
After World War II, many Polish Jews suppressed their identities and married into the Roman Catholic majority, fearful of postwar pogroms and the anti-Semitism of the Moscow-backed communist regime.
Allegations of anti-Semitism in Poland have continued to the present day.

The happiest man in the world?

... and you can learn how he does it, says academic-turned-Buddhist monk

By Anthony Barnes
Published: 21 January 2007

To scientists, he is the world's happiest man. His level of mind control is astonishing and the upbeat impulses in his brain are off the scale.

Now Matthieu Ricard, 60, a French academic-turned-Buddhist monk, is to share his secrets to make the world a happier place. The trick, he reckons, is to put some effort into it. In essence, happiness is a "skill" to be learned.

His advice could not be more timely as tomorrow Britain will reach what, according to a scientific formula, is the most miserable day of the year. Tattered new year resolutions, the faded buzz of Christmas, debt, a lack of motivation and the winter weather conspire to create a peak of misery and gloom.

But studies have shown that the mind can rise above it all to increase almost everyone's happiness. Mr Ricard, who is the French interpreter for Tibet's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, took part in trials to show that brain training in the form of meditation can cause an overwhelming change in levels of happiness.

MRI scans showed that he and other long-term meditators - who had completed more than 10,000 hours each - experienced a huge level of "positive emotions" in the left pre-frontal cortex of the brain, which is associated with happiness. The right-hand side, which handles negative thoughts, is suppressed.

Further studies have shown that even novices who have done only a little meditation have increased levels of happiness. But Mr Ricard's abilities were head and shoulders above the others involved in the trials.

"The mind is malleable," Mr Ricard told The Independent on Sunday yesterday. "Our life can be greatly transformed by even a minimal change in how we manage our thoughts and perceive and interpret the world. Happiness is a skill. It requires effort and time."

Mr Ricard was brought up among Paris's intellectual elite in the 1960s, but after working for a PhD in biochemsitry he abandoned his distinguished academic career to study Tibetan Buddhism in the Himalayas.

A book of philosophical conversations he conducted with his father Jean-François Revel, The Monk and the Philosopher, became an unlikely publishing phenomenon when it came out in France in the late 1990s.

Mr Ricard is to publish his book Happiness for the first time in the UK next month.