Buddha image from Alchi Monastery, Ladakh

It is my dream to one day visit Alchi Monastery in Ladakh, sigh! I came upon this beautiful image of Sakyamuni Buddha on Buddhist Art News, click here to see more images. On reading the article I was happy to know in advance that photography isn't allowed inside, that way I won't feel disapointed when one fine day I actually do visit Alchi Monastery, I imagine I can always sketch what inspires me... which I find is a much better way to appreciate and assimilate art :-)

love + light
x

Spring diary

Hello everyone :)

Have you noticed any trees around your neighbourhood which are in full bloom? Don't you just love the bright colours of spring? the thing that fascinates me the most is the sight of a tree completely dry, devoid of leaves, fully crowned with fragrant flowers!

This Sunday I took a walk in Aarey and the path-ways were lined with fallen blossoms, makes you wish the rest of the city was kept that way...

Now, a little bit of what I've been upto, last June-July, I'd enrolled for the Post Graduation course in Buddhist studies at K.J.Somaiya Centre for Buddhist studies . One of my teachers whom I have grown to love and adore, Mrs. Sharda Sanghvi suggested I try the Pali language class (Diploma) and before I knew it I was studying both!

It has since been an amazing journey, and I wish to keep studying, exploring....
I'm grateful to Mrs. Sanghvi for putting me onto Pali, without which my studies would have been incomplete.

If your wondering, Pali is an ancient Indian language, older than classical sanskrit. The Buddha taught in Pali and majority of the Buddhist texts are preserved in it. Hence, its importance.

At present, I'm studying for my exams, just got over with Pali and I have four more papers to give (Buddhist studies), so wish me luck! :)

I wish to leave you with these pictures of Lotuses I took during my last vipassana course at Dhamma Pattana, Gorai. They inspire me towards my goals :)

Love + light!

Urban serenity

Hello! :-) Today I would like to share a few pictures of our resident Buddha, he is just over an inch in height. Sometime back I had placed him at the root of a potted ficus, in a symbolic gesture to invite Buddha delight and protection into our home. The little house I bought from 'Mitti', a store selling ceramic products at Versova road. Recently, my sis-in-law brought to my notice how it seems as if the Buddha is meditating outside his hut, I never thought of it that way, how lovely!

hope you enjoy this tiny landscape......peace and serenity to everyone!

may all beings be happy! :-)

love + light!

Origami Buddha by Takashi Hojyo

This perfectly folded stunning Buddha is by Takashi Hojyo, a contemporary Origami master living in Tokyo. Hojyo creates figures especially rich in texture and three-dimensionality, utilizing pleats and multiple layers of paper to build depth in his subjects with attention to pose and gesture.

Origami never fails to amaze me. I would love to make this Buddha, and have it amongst my 'soul-objects' of inspiration. Personally, I prefer designs that are more minimal and leaning towards the abstract. I hope I find instructions to make this beautiful design and try my hand at it :)

While I was looking on the web for an Origami Buddha, I also found the site of India's own Origami club! Origami Mitra . My friend Sarita had told me about them while I was working on the installation I did at the Kalaghoda arts festival, which used origami lotuses. I found them through my flickr page, they have a group where you can pool in origami pictures.

Sources: Robert Lang's Origami website

Hope you enjoyed the image.
Love + light!!

Landscaping my balcony

I don't know if I have a green thumb, as they say but I love having plants around me. Blessed is a home that is full of vibrant plants. My yoga teacher's balcony is so organic, it is like a miniature jungle, and I was not surprised when a pair of purple-rumped sunbirds made a hanging nest among her creepers. Each class we could see and hear the chirpy little ones until one day the egg hatched and the baby flew away. Such positive energy!

May more and more people in cities fill out their windows, balconies, terraces and building compounds with helpful plants and trees!

wooden bird chime


ficus in a ceramic pot

happy little corner with pudina/mint in a polka-dot ceramic pot, money-plant which I intend to grow like a screen, small jade with a little Buddha scuplture which is not visible here and a hanging plant with three diffrently coloured flowering plants. It will be fun to see them grow :)

Love & light!

Making that Quantum Leap

'Leap of Faith' by Laurel Schwartz.

Have you ever had the experience, where, for no particular reason, you kept hearing a word or a particular phrase in your head and you didn’t really know why? and then when you were least expecting it, someone mentions it to you or you read it in a book or a magazine without having made a conscious effort to know its meaning or significance. Déjà vu anyone? You see, for a while now I’ve been hearing, ‘quantum leap’ in my head. My first strong memory/ association of it is from a passage in Susanne F.Fincher’s book, 'Creating Mandalas'.

“Early Buddhists established the belief that there are two planes of existence, two absolutely different worlds, between which there is no communication......one world is our familiar reality in which karma operates, and which is forever dying and being born again. The other world is nirvana, which is reached by a quantitative leap when karma, and the force which derives from it, is stopped or suppressed. This is accomplished when, through cognition and living experience, it is realized that the universe is “solely a becoming a flux” (Tucci, 1961:3). This arrests the momentum of the karmic process, and makes possible the leap into nirvana."
- Excerpt from ‘Creating Mandalas’ for insight, healing and self-expression by Susanne F.Fincher.

On reading this I had an aha! moment....I had never understood (on an intellectual level of course) how one could go from one's present mental state to that of total enlightenment (still a long...long way for me).

Nirvana or no nirvana, what has stayed embedded in my head is the phrase, ‘quantum leap', it has become my newest mantra (if I have'nt slipped into my old habbit-patterns....again!) towards reaching a goal however mundane or cherished! You can say I am able to trick my mind into doing things it would otherwise take ages to accomplish.

For example, if I say to myself during my saddhana/yoga practise, especially in a difficult pose, or one in which in which I'm trying to push my boundaries, that, I’m going to 'make that quantum leap', than I do! Which means there is hope for us mere mortals.........
by way of a quantum leap :)

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While surfing the internet for an inspiring image to go with this post I stumbled upon artist Laurel Schwartz ’s site. I love it that her paintings seem like personal mandalas as she does them intuitively, being guided by her higher self. These are my words but do read her artist statement :)

Love & light!
Om

Balance the Universe

Too loud and we are not heard.
Too bright and we are not seen.
Too fancy and we are hidden.
Too much and we are obscured.
Let speaking come from deep within, from the quiet place.
Let silence speak.
Listen for silence.
Hear the sound between words.
Be patient and attentive.
It is the surface that is apparent.
Give time for depth to find depth.
During each moment, balance the universe.


The Tao of Relationships
Ray Grigg


Love & Light !

Guru - thoughts on what is our/my understanding of "Guru".

It is fun to see how things are connected. Reading a book or 'reading from the book of life' as the Chinese say (which means to learn from experience - life itself) can make you see deeper, often very unexpectedly something reveals itself to you of which you were'nt even aware you were thinking of or had stopped thinking about for a while. When you least expect it, you read about it and the inter-connection/ relation takes you by surprise. In one such moment, I was reading 'the Zen commandments' by Dean Sluyter, where he elaborates about who is a "Guru",

"Related to the word "gravity", it signifies someone who's heavy where the rest of us are lite, who has the gravitas to be grounded, as immovably as a rock, in the unchanghing nature of reality, even as the rest of us our blown away like dry leaves.........In some Asian cultures one might call a dozen people "my guru". Every teacher, as he or she points toward infinity, stands in a slightly different place; the spot on the horizon where all those pointing fingers converge is where we want to go."

After reading this, I thought of the day I visited my girl-freind. She was in the midst of preparing her home for Diwali and when I asked her what she was doing, she said she was cleaning the space where she kept her "Gurus". I liked the fact that she did'nt say "Gods", by calling them "Gurus" she had intensified their benevolent presence. No more were they deities to be feared but Gurus, pointing to us the way.

Thinking about what the author says of having many Gurus, I feel fortunate to have been introduced to Buddhism, I don't take to it outwardly by way of rituals but have allowed it to grow slowly. I feel blessed to invoke Medicine Budda or as my husband affectionately and respectfullys says in Tibetan/Ladakhi - Sangyes Men-Lha and Sakyamuni Buddha or the historical Buddha. I feel happy to think of Guruji Goenkaji and my Reikhi teacher Dr. N.K.Sharma. Although, I may not see or meet my teachers/Gurus I feel happy simply to think of them, I am lifted even if it is an inch.

To all my Teachers of the Past, Present and the Future -
my deepest gratitude.

Love and Light.