March 5, 2025 • 23 mins
Note: the next episode, no 44, will be the last of Season 1. Season 2 is in the works!
Buddhism is all about simplicity, isn’t it? Well, no, at least not when it comes to Tibetan style Buddhism. The very essence may be simple, but typical practice makes use of an enormous amount of kit - malas, dorjes, bells, hand-drums large and small, trumpets, vases, conch shells...
As beginners, we may well be tempted to start collecting some of those magical bits and pieces, but if we’re not careful we end up with a lot of clutter on our table, and little idea of what to do with it. Is any of this necessary, and how much of it is even useful?
Mala with counters, dorje and bell
And more:
Words or phrases you might want to look up:
- Mala
- Mala counter strings and clips
- Mandala plate with/without rings
- Dorje and bell
- Damaru
- Kangling
#Buddhism #Vajrayana #DoubleDorje #Dzogchen #Nyingma #Dorje
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:10):
Buddhism is all about simplicity, isn't it? Well no, at least not when it comes to Tibetan style Buddhism. The very essence may be simple, but typical practice makes use of an enormous amount of paraphernalia.
As beginners, we may well be tempted to start collecting some of those magical bits and pieces, but if we're not careful, we'll end up with a lot of clutter on our table and very little idea of what to do with it.
(00:39):
How much of this is necessary? And how much is even useful?
So, hello dear listeners! Some of you may be new, some of you may be returners, but you are all more than welcome to the Double Dodge podcast.
I'm Alex Wilding and in this episode I want to offer you a few thoughts about all this Tibetan stuff
(01:02):
some of us, and I'm one of those, I have to confess, rather tend to collect.
Of course I have to begin by asking you to please, please, like, better still subscribe, and even better than that to tell your friends about this podcast. And if you are looking for the extra material and that extra material doesn't appear in your channel - as it doesn't on most channels -
(01:27):
take a look at where the Double Dorje Podcast is actually hosted. At the moment that is podbean.
OK. So on some sort of very refined theoretical level, we don't need any paraphernalia at all.
The Buddha himself does not appear to have said anything about it.
In practice, if we want to engage with actual Buddhism at this time and this place, having the right accoutrements is going to be really very helpful. So let's take a look at a few.
(02:01):
First of all, we're going to want some sort of shrine as a real, concrete, actual physical representation of well, yes, of what? The obvious answer is the three jewels, 3 refuges.
So the one totally indispensable element is a picture, or even better, a small statue, but a picture will do, of the Buddha in one shape or form or another.
(02:28):
There are many shapes and forms, don’t forget.
In a pinch, that representation of the Buddha can be thought of as including all the sources of refuge. But better still would be some text, perhaps something small, maybe a practice text or a prayer that you use.
Pictures of the classic Buddha for want of a better word, nice and golden sitting in a meditative pose under a tree
(02:54):
will often show 2 disciples, 1 on either side. This is Maudgalyayana and Sariputra,
the two most important disciples.
You may also have representations of the Buddha’s body, speech and mind, and these will correspond to a form of the Buddha for the body, a text for the speech, and something like a crystal or a small stupa for the mind.
(03:21):
It's pretty obvious - and you will probably already know - that the whole thing can get very big and very elaborate, massively elaborate, to be frank. If you look at the main altar of a large Buddhist temple, you'll soon see what I mean.
(03:49):
Going back to something you might set up in your home,
it's very important to grasp that your altar has, as an absolute minimum, at least two things, or you might call them 2 levels. They may be physically 2 levels. One of these is the representations we just described
of the refuges, and the second thing is the offerings, placed ideally on a somewhat lower level in front of the refuges.
(04:18):
Just as the refuges can proliferate into Buddhas and deities and protectors and lineage teachers and so on. The second, the offerings, can also become very elaborate.
There may be outer, inner, secret and ultimate offerings, both real and imagined. So an elaborate shrine can have quite a number of levels.
The absolute minimum however, is two (04:39):
1 for the refuges and one for the offerings, so to be supremely minimal without quite giving up everything,
you could have an image of the Buddha with a candle in front of it.
The thing is, it's not as if these are just two nice things to induce peaceful feelings. “Oh, a Buddha image and maybe some incense and a candle, how sweet!”
(05:09):
Refuges, however, elaborate or simple they are, and the offerings, again however elaborate or simple, are two different things.
Keeping to a very simple set, the offerings, rather than just being 1 candle or one bowl of pure water,
could be a candle, flower, and a bowl of pure water, or may have 7 bowls of pure water, or seven bowls with drinking and washing water, flowers, incense, food and so forth in them.
(05:38):
As with so many things, there are many traditions of practice, so when you are connected with, let's say, some Buddhist centre or some authorised teacher,
you may well want to refine and elaborate on your shrine in accordance with that tradition, whatever it is.
Before leaving the thoughts of this home shrine, I want to stress that it's very important to think about where you are going to put it.
(06:05):
It should be a reminder of your aspirations, and in fact, your living room is not usually an appropriate place. In your living room, people are likely to chatter about this, that, and the other. Perhaps they will, dare I say it, smoke, drink,
Argue, consume entertainment, play loud music and so on.
It can also attract the kind of attention you may not want it to have at this tender stage in your development as a Buddhist.
(06:34):
Your bedroom does come into consideration, but that is a place also used for other purposes. So in that case your shrine should be screened off in some way, and only opened when you are going to use it.
One solution, which is quite common in Asia, is to have a cupboard, either a free standing cupboard or a wall mounted cupboard, with doors that can easily be opened when the shrine is in use and closed again afterwards, without any fuss or fiddle.
(07:04):
If you're lucky enough to be able to dedicate a whole room to this shrine purpose, then congratulations and of course this will not be an issue.
So you've set up your shrine, lit the candle, perhaps you've lit some incense as a further offering.
Where are you going to sit?
If you are particularly stiff jointed, you can of course sit on a chair.
(07:29):
It's not uncommon for there to be one or more chairs at the back of a common shared practice room for those who need one.
It is all the same, a very strong tradition that we sit on the floor and for more advanced meditation practices it's to all intents and purposes essential.
If you're new to this, you need to treat your knees gently, and you can expect weeks or more likely months to go by before those knees go down onto the floor and you feel fully comfortable.
(08:01):
But the key element in this, governing the arrangement of the joints around your pelvis, is your cushion.
Over the years I've seen a lot of cushions and I've tried a few, and my little opinion is that the great majority of cushions in the great majority of Buddhist centres, at least as far as I've seen,
are highly unsuitable.
(08:22):
Some are far too low.
Some don't look too low, but are far too soft. Some on the other hand, are too small and hard. Firm is good, but there are frankly some horrid little, more or less spherical or more or less cube-like, cushions that
only support your bum and inevitably become a literal pain in the bum. So let me explain the specifications I learned from Ato Rinpoche many years ago. I can assure you that these really work, and I strongly recommend that you do try it.
(08:56):
The basic shape is of course rectangular, technically speaking a rectangular prism, matched to your own body size.
So for the height, do this (09:05):
make your hand into a fist, thumb on top of the index finger, and the height should then be the same dimension as the four knuckles, perhaps also with the tip of the thumb included. This is after all
not exactly precision engineering.
Front to back, open your palm and extend your thumb and little finger as far out as they will go. That's your front to back dimension.
(09:35):
For the side to side width, take the dimension from the tip of your elbow to your wrist. The cushion should be quite firm so that the height dimension is the one I mentioned a minute ago even when you are sitting on it.
Avoid anything like the piping that cushions with a rectangular shape often have, because this will press into your flesh and become irritating after a period of time.
(10:03):
It's almost impossible for this cushion to be too firm. The one that I've used for years is made, in fact, from an offcut of kitchen worktop. So it is as hard as wood, but the edge is nicely rounded. It's mounted on a couple of wooden blocks to give it the right height.
You will find, if your cushion is the right height, that your back can be comfortably straight and is not under the sort of tension that it usually does have if you try and sit on a completely level floor.
(10:35):
If you have one that's hard, you might want to put some thin padding on top, but frankly I haven't found it necessary.
And now, what about your practice paraphernalia? The bits, the pieces, the ritual objects that you may well have on your practice table. How much do you want? How much do you need? These are not necessarily the same question!
(11:03):
Once again, let's look at the simplest possible setup. The one thing that everybody in Tibetan Buddhism has is at least one mala.
The normal Buddhist mala consists of a string of 108 identical beads - or more or less identical - together with a guru bead, usually larger, at the top.
(11:27):
Let me say here that we call that one hundred, so that, if we are doing for example, 1000 recitations, that simply means 10 times around the mala. We ignore the fact that it's actually slightly more than 100.
In one tradition, which I think may be the Sakyas, but I'm not actually sure, there are 111 beads with the three extra ones looking a bit different, and positioned at the three quarter points, so to speak. That's a quarter round, halfway round, three quarters of the way round.
(12:00):
Which is to say, in other words, every 27 beads.
In the shops, especially those that are oriented towards tourists and passing trade, you will find malas made of all sorts of substances.
It is true that some special practices do call for a mala made of something particular, such as crystal, bone, meteoric iron or whatever the particular sadhana calls for, but these are very much the exceptions,
(12:31):
and would not be used on a day-to-day basis, attractive and exciting as they may seem.
My tip would be that for your first mala you should get something fairly plain, such as bodhi seeds or some kind of wood.
Malas containing all sorts of different coloured beads have much more of a whiff of tourism about them than of actual practice, so you'll have to decide what sort of look you want to go for.
(12:59):
Simple I think is good because this is something that's likely to be your friend for many years.
If you've been given a practice with specific instructions to use a particular kind of mala, then of course you do that. In such cases it would be usual for that mala to be kept in a very private place, probably looked on as secret.
(13:22):
In fact, it's a good idea in general to keep your best mala somewhere private, and this means that a knockabout mala can be very handy. This is the one that you keep in your pocket, and perhaps use to recite a few mantras
as you wander down the High Street.
You will also see what are often called wrist malas. These come with both 21 beads and with 27 beads. I'm not really sure what the 21 bead malas are used for. Perhaps that is a more convenient number for people who are not really using them
(14:00):
as a mala, but as a bracelet - I don't know.
The 27 bead mala does have a particular purpose, as it is much more suitable than 108 beads for counting full length prostrations. And as you may know, we do count quite a lot of full length frustrations in Tibetan Buddhism!
If you try to do this exercise with 108 bead mala, it will flap about, it will clatter and clack. It will slap disrespectfully on the floor, and then, as a result of that treatment, it will break.
(14:34):
The 27 beads fit easily around the hand and it's not too hard to keep track, either just keeping a mental note or with some counting aid, so that you know that you've done 4 rounds of this little mala making the 108 that is the standard mala round.
27 is of course 1/4 of 108.
Funnily enough, we had some wind damage a couple of weeks ago and I had to get two guys in to repair the roof of the garden shed.
(15:03):
When I finished my morning practice they were at work and I went out to see how they were getting on and I still happened to have my knockabout mala and some book, I can't quite remember what, in my hand.
Now the boss of these two is a local,
probably notionally Roman Catholic. Whether he takes it seriously or not, I don't know, it's none of my business. But the number two guy was an immigrant. I think he was from Morocco. There are quite a lot
(15:29):
of those here.
He pointed at my mala, smiled, and pulled out a string of his own beads from his pocket.
We compared notes.
I explained, using a little bit of recitation of the Mani mantra, that Buddhists like myself would use it for counting 108 mantras,
while his was for reciting the 99 names of God or something similar. We didn't actually have an awful lot of language in common.
(15:56):
Now 99 is a large enough number and it doesn't divide by 4, but it does divide by three, giving you the 33 beads on the string of beads that this guy had.
That makes it easy to use for the 99 count, and I explained how we might use a 27 bead mala, though I didn't have one with me, and go around it four times to make 108! So we parted on good friendly terms.
(16:26):
And then there is the question of counters.
It's all very well using your mala to count 108 recitations of a mantra, which we call 100, as I mentioned earlier.
That will take you about a minute for a short mantra like the mani, or maybe 20 minutes for something like the Dorje Sempa mantra.
But what if we are doing a hundred thousand, or a million or more, accumulating the count over weeks or months?
(16:53):
If you look at practitioners of this kind of Buddhism, you'll see that nearly all of them have two dangly things hanging off their malas, attached partway down on either side of the header bead.
One of these is used to count the hundreds, i.e. the times round the mala, and one for the thousands. So each has a decorative stop at the end and 10 little rings, often made of silver, that can slide up and down the string when you pull them.
(17:20):
You start with them all at the bottom, and with each round of the mala, you pull one of the rings up on the string to the top. When all 10 have been pulled up to the top, you've counted 1000. You pull all the rings down and pull up one of the rings on the second string.
So in that way
you can count up to 10,000.
(17:43):
But you may be counting more, say 100,000, which is called a “bum” in Tibetan, corresponding to the Indian lakh. You have a choice here. One is to have a little notebook under your practice table, and put a mark in to show one bum complete.
The other is to use a kind of clip that starts off next to the Guru bead, and at this point, when your second string is full, you move the clip on one bead. Take all the little rings down to the bottom.
(18:15):
By the time you've got most of the way around the mala with that clip, you've actually counted a million - so well done!
I've gone into possibly painful levels of detail here, so if it's not clear then do use a search engine to look for images of, and I quote, “mala counter strings and clips”.
(18:36):
Then all will become clear.
It might have occurred to you to use a third string of 10 rings instead of a clip, but that's not actually usual.
I did hear a story that in Bhutan people have nine of these strings on their mala, and when I heard that I was gobsmacked and frankly didn't believe it.
(18:58):
With a technical background, I saw straight away that this would be able to count up to 100 billion even without a clip, or, if a clip was used as well, 10 trillion.
Even the first would be physically impossible, however short the mantra, in a single life by a factor of hundreds or probably thousands.
(19:19):
It was only later that it dawned on me that they were counting more than one mantra on the same mala and using different strings to tot up different mantra counts. I can only suppose so, and if any of you happen to know a Bhutanese Buddhist,
let us know in the comments.
(19:40):
So much is, I'd say, indispensable for a proper practitioner, and it's not necessarily expensive at all.
I'll remind you that I don't really know who is listening to the podcast, though it seems to be typically about 50, so it's more than likely that some of you are relatively new.
Therefore, if you are a beginner, my suggestion would be to stop and take a breather
(20:04):
before you buy much more kit.
Most of the other things that you may well acquire in the course of time are only used in the context of teachings and practices that you have received.
That is to say, empowerments, text transmissions, instructions, and the explanations and permissions given by your teacher.
(20:28):
And since those things are going to be very special to you, it's best to go slow rather than be tricked into getting low quality items that turn out only to be halfway appropriate.
If, for example, you start doing the preliminary practices, you will want a mandala plate, or rather two. One is used to make your offering of a mandala repeatedly. The other is more elaborate and represents the refuges and so on -
(20:57):
the ones to whom you are making the mandala offering.
Once again, a search engine will show you images of these things, and you'll see what I'm talking about.
Quite likely at some stage you will move on to acquire a dorje and bell.
(21:21):
You can pick these up easily enough, though if you want to practise properly, they are amongst the items that you only use when you are doing a practice to which you have been properly introduced.
Then there is the small hand drum or damaru.
(21:44):
The large damaru for chod practice.
The trumpet or “kangling” in the form of a human femur.
(22:17):
The conch shell.
It actually goes on and on and on, which is another reason why it's best to go slow and acquire these things as and when, and indeed if, you ever need them.
So this my quick rundown on basic paraphernalia. Once more, please do remember to like, subscribe and tell your friends about the Double Dorje podcast. And remember that all this equipment is great fun, but it's the compassion and the clarity that really matters.
(23:00):
Bye!
Buddhism is all about simplicity, isn't it? Well no, at least not when it comes to Tibetan style Buddhism. The very essence may be simple, but typical practice makes use of an enormous amount of paraphernalia.
As beginners, we may well be tempted to start collecting some of those magical bits and pieces, but if we're not careful, we'll end up with a lot of clutter on our table and very little idea of what to do with it.
(00:39):
How much of this is necessary? And how much is even useful?
So, hello dear listeners! Some of you may be new, some of you may be returners, but you are all more than welcome to the Double Dodge podcast.
I'm Alex Wilding and in this episode I want to offer you a few thoughts about all this Tibetan stuff
(01:02):
some of us, and I'm one of those, I have to confess, rather tend to collect.
Of course I have to begin by asking you to please, please, like, better still subscribe, and even better than that to tell your friends about this podcast. And if you are looking for the extra material and that extra material doesn't appear in your channel - as it doesn't on most channels -
(01:27):
take a look at where the Double Dorje Podcast is actually hosted. At the moment that is podbean.
OK. So on some sort of very refined theoretical level, we don't need any paraphernalia at all.
The Buddha himself does not appear to have said anything about it.
In practice, if we want to engage with actual Buddhism at this time and this place, having the right accoutrements is going to be really very helpful. So let's take a look at a few.
(02:01):
First of all, we're going to want some sort of shrine as a real, concrete, actual physical representation of well, yes, of what? The obvious answer is the three jewels, 3 refuges.
So the one totally indispensable element is a picture, or even better, a small statue, but a picture will do, of the Buddha in one shape or form or another.
(02:28):
There are many shapes and forms, don’t forget.
In a pinch, that representation of the Buddha can be thought of as including all the sources of refuge. But better still would be some text, perhaps something small, maybe a practice text or a prayer that you use.
Pictures of the classic Buddha for want of a better word, nice and golden sitting in a meditative pose under a tree
(02:54):
will often show 2 disciples, 1 on either side. This is Maudgalyayana and Sariputra,
the two most important disciples.
You may also have representations of the Buddha’s body, speech and mind, and these will correspond to a form of the Buddha for the body, a text for the speech, and something like a crystal or a small stupa for the mind.
(03:21):
It's pretty obvious - and you will probably already know - that the whole thing can get very big and very elaborate, massively elaborate, to be frank. If you look at the main altar of a large Buddhist temple, you'll soon see what I mean.
(03:49):
Going back to something you might set up in your home,
it's very important to grasp that your altar has, as an absolute minimum, at least two things, or you might call them 2 levels. They may be physically 2 levels. One of these is the representations we just described
of the refuges, and the second thing is the offerings, placed ideally on a somewhat lower level in front of the refuges.
(04:18):
Just as the refuges can proliferate into Buddhas and deities and protectors and lineage teachers and so on. The second, the offerings, can also become very elaborate.
There may be outer, inner, secret and ultimate offerings, both real and imagined. So an elaborate shrine can have quite a number of levels.
The absolute minimum however, is two (04:39):
1 for the refuges and one for the offerings, so to be supremely minimal without quite giving up everything,
you could have an image of the Buddha with a candle in front of it.
The thing is, it's not as if these are just two nice things to induce peaceful feelings. “Oh, a Buddha image and maybe some incense and a candle, how sweet!”
(05:09):
Refuges, however, elaborate or simple they are, and the offerings, again however elaborate or simple, are two different things.
Keeping to a very simple set, the offerings, rather than just being 1 candle or one bowl of pure water,
could be a candle, flower, and a bowl of pure water, or may have 7 bowls of pure water, or seven bowls with drinking and washing water, flowers, incense, food and so forth in them.
(05:38):
As with so many things, there are many traditions of practice, so when you are connected with, let's say, some Buddhist centre or some authorised teacher,
you may well want to refine and elaborate on your shrine in accordance with that tradition, whatever it is.
Before leaving the thoughts of this home shrine, I want to stress that it's very important to think about where you are going to put it.
(06:05):
It should be a reminder of your aspirations, and in fact, your living room is not usually an appropriate place. In your living room, people are likely to chatter about this, that, and the other. Perhaps they will, dare I say it, smoke, drink,
Argue, consume entertainment, play loud music and so on.
It can also attract the kind of attention you may not want it to have at this tender stage in your development as a Buddhist.
(06:34):
Your bedroom does come into consideration, but that is a place also used for other purposes. So in that case your shrine should be screened off in some way, and only opened when you are going to use it.
One solution, which is quite common in Asia, is to have a cupboard, either a free standing cupboard or a wall mounted cupboard, with doors that can easily be opened when the shrine is in use and closed again afterwards, without any fuss or fiddle.
(07:04):
If you're lucky enough to be able to dedicate a whole room to this shrine purpose, then congratulations and of course this will not be an issue.
So you've set up your shrine, lit the candle, perhaps you've lit some incense as a further offering.
Where are you going to sit?
If you are particularly stiff jointed, you can of course sit on a chair.
(07:29):
It's not uncommon for there to be one or more chairs at the back of a common shared practice room for those who need one.
It is all the same, a very strong tradition that we sit on the floor and for more advanced meditation practices it's to all intents and purposes essential.
If you're new to this, you need to treat your knees gently, and you can expect weeks or more likely months to go by before those knees go down onto the floor and you feel fully comfortable.
(08:01):
But the key element in this, governing the arrangement of the joints around your pelvis, is your cushion.
Over the years I've seen a lot of cushions and I've tried a few, and my little opinion is that the great majority of cushions in the great majority of Buddhist centres, at least as far as I've seen,
are highly unsuitable.
(08:22):
Some are far too low.
Some don't look too low, but are far too soft. Some on the other hand, are too small and hard. Firm is good, but there are frankly some horrid little, more or less spherical or more or less cube-like, cushions that
only support your bum and inevitably become a literal pain in the bum. So let me explain the specifications I learned from Ato Rinpoche many years ago. I can assure you that these really work, and I strongly recommend that you do try it.
(08:56):
The basic shape is of course rectangular, technically speaking a rectangular prism, matched to your own body size.
So for the height, do this (09:05):
make your hand into a fist, thumb on top of the index finger, and the height should then be the same dimension as the four knuckles, perhaps also with the tip of the thumb included. This is after all
not exactly precision engineering.
Front to back, open your palm and extend your thumb and little finger as far out as they will go. That's your front to back dimension.
(09:35):
For the side to side width, take the dimension from the tip of your elbow to your wrist. The cushion should be quite firm so that the height dimension is the one I mentioned a minute ago even when you are sitting on it.
Avoid anything like the piping that cushions with a rectangular shape often have, because this will press into your flesh and become irritating after a period of time.
(10:03):
It's almost impossible for this cushion to be too firm. The one that I've used for years is made, in fact, from an offcut of kitchen worktop. So it is as hard as wood, but the edge is nicely rounded. It's mounted on a couple of wooden blocks to give it the right height.
You will find, if your cushion is the right height, that your back can be comfortably straight and is not under the sort of tension that it usually does have if you try and sit on a completely level floor.
(10:35):
If you have one that's hard, you might want to put some thin padding on top, but frankly I haven't found it necessary.
And now, what about your practice paraphernalia? The bits, the pieces, the ritual objects that you may well have on your practice table. How much do you want? How much do you need? These are not necessarily the same question!
(11:03):
Once again, let's look at the simplest possible setup. The one thing that everybody in Tibetan Buddhism has is at least one mala.
The normal Buddhist mala consists of a string of 108 identical beads - or more or less identical - together with a guru bead, usually larger, at the top.
(11:27):
Let me say here that we call that one hundred, so that, if we are doing for example, 1000 recitations, that simply means 10 times around the mala. We ignore the fact that it's actually slightly more than 100.
In one tradition, which I think may be the Sakyas, but I'm not actually sure, there are 111 beads with the three extra ones looking a bit different, and positioned at the three quarter points, so to speak. That's a quarter round, halfway round, three quarters of the way round.
(12:00):
Which is to say, in other words, every 27 beads.
In the shops, especially those that are oriented towards tourists and passing trade, you will find malas made of all sorts of substances.
It is true that some special practices do call for a mala made of something particular, such as crystal, bone, meteoric iron or whatever the particular sadhana calls for, but these are very much the exceptions,
(12:31):
and would not be used on a day-to-day basis, attractive and exciting as they may seem.
My tip would be that for your first mala you should get something fairly plain, such as bodhi seeds or some kind of wood.
Malas containing all sorts of different coloured beads have much more of a whiff of tourism about them than of actual practice, so you'll have to decide what sort of look you want to go for.
(12:59):
Simple I think is good because this is something that's likely to be your friend for many years.
If you've been given a practice with specific instructions to use a particular kind of mala, then of course you do that. In such cases it would be usual for that mala to be kept in a very private place, probably looked on as secret.
(13:22):
In fact, it's a good idea in general to keep your best mala somewhere private, and this means that a knockabout mala can be very handy. This is the one that you keep in your pocket, and perhaps use to recite a few mantras
as you wander down the High Street.
You will also see what are often called wrist malas. These come with both 21 beads and with 27 beads. I'm not really sure what the 21 bead malas are used for. Perhaps that is a more convenient number for people who are not really using them
(14:00):
as a mala, but as a bracelet - I don't know.
The 27 bead mala does have a particular purpose, as it is much more suitable than 108 beads for counting full length prostrations. And as you may know, we do count quite a lot of full length frustrations in Tibetan Buddhism!
If you try to do this exercise with 108 bead mala, it will flap about, it will clatter and clack. It will slap disrespectfully on the floor, and then, as a result of that treatment, it will break.
(14:34):
The 27 beads fit easily around the hand and it's not too hard to keep track, either just keeping a mental note or with some counting aid, so that you know that you've done 4 rounds of this little mala making the 108 that is the standard mala round.
27 is of course 1/4 of 108.
Funnily enough, we had some wind damage a couple of weeks ago and I had to get two guys in to repair the roof of the garden shed.
(15:03):
When I finished my morning practice they were at work and I went out to see how they were getting on and I still happened to have my knockabout mala and some book, I can't quite remember what, in my hand.
Now the boss of these two is a local,
probably notionally Roman Catholic. Whether he takes it seriously or not, I don't know, it's none of my business. But the number two guy was an immigrant. I think he was from Morocco. There are quite a lot
(15:29):
of those here.
He pointed at my mala, smiled, and pulled out a string of his own beads from his pocket.
We compared notes.
I explained, using a little bit of recitation of the Mani mantra, that Buddhists like myself would use it for counting 108 mantras,
while his was for reciting the 99 names of God or something similar. We didn't actually have an awful lot of language in common.
(15:56):
Now 99 is a large enough number and it doesn't divide by 4, but it does divide by three, giving you the 33 beads on the string of beads that this guy had.
That makes it easy to use for the 99 count, and I explained how we might use a 27 bead mala, though I didn't have one with me, and go around it four times to make 108! So we parted on good friendly terms.
(16:26):
And then there is the question of counters.
It's all very well using your mala to count 108 recitations of a mantra, which we call 100, as I mentioned earlier.
That will take you about a minute for a short mantra like the mani, or maybe 20 minutes for something like the Dorje Sempa mantra.
But what if we are doing a hundred thousand, or a million or more, accumulating the count over weeks or months?
(16:53):
If you look at practitioners of this kind of Buddhism, you'll see that nearly all of them have two dangly things hanging off their malas, attached partway down on either side of the header bead.
One of these is used to count the hundreds, i.e. the times round the mala, and one for the thousands. So each has a decorative stop at the end and 10 little rings, often made of silver, that can slide up and down the string when you pull them.
(17:20):
You start with them all at the bottom, and with each round of the mala, you pull one of the rings up on the string to the top. When all 10 have been pulled up to the top, you've counted 1000. You pull all the rings down and pull up one of the rings on the second string.
So in that way
you can count up to 10,000.
(17:43):
But you may be counting more, say 100,000, which is called a “bum” in Tibetan, corresponding to the Indian lakh. You have a choice here. One is to have a little notebook under your practice table, and put a mark in to show one bum complete.
The other is to use a kind of clip that starts off next to the Guru bead, and at this point, when your second string is full, you move the clip on one bead. Take all the little rings down to the bottom.
(18:15):
By the time you've got most of the way around the mala with that clip, you've actually counted a million - so well done!
I've gone into possibly painful levels of detail here, so if it's not clear then do use a search engine to look for images of, and I quote, “mala counter strings and clips”.
(18:36):
Then all will become clear.
It might have occurred to you to use a third string of 10 rings instead of a clip, but that's not actually usual.
I did hear a story that in Bhutan people have nine of these strings on their mala, and when I heard that I was gobsmacked and frankly didn't believe it.
(18:58):
With a technical background, I saw straight away that this would be able to count up to 100 billion even without a clip, or, if a clip was used as well, 10 trillion.
Even the first would be physically impossible, however short the mantra, in a single life by a factor of hundreds or probably thousands.
(19:19):
It was only later that it dawned on me that they were counting more than one mantra on the same mala and using different strings to tot up different mantra counts. I can only suppose so, and if any of you happen to know a Bhutanese Buddhist,
let us know in the comments.
(19:40):
So much is, I'd say, indispensable for a proper practitioner, and it's not necessarily expensive at all.
I'll remind you that I don't really know who is listening to the podcast, though it seems to be typically about 50, so it's more than likely that some of you are relatively new.
Therefore, if you are a beginner, my suggestion would be to stop and take a breather
(20:04):
before you buy much more kit.
Most of the other things that you may well acquire in the course of time are only used in the context of teachings and practices that you have received.
That is to say, empowerments, text transmissions, instructions, and the explanations and permissions given by your teacher.
(20:28):
And since those things are going to be very special to you, it's best to go slow rather than be tricked into getting low quality items that turn out only to be halfway appropriate.
If, for example, you start doing the preliminary practices, you will want a mandala plate, or rather two. One is used to make your offering of a mandala repeatedly. The other is more elaborate and represents the refuges and so on -
(20:57):
the ones to whom you are making the mandala offering.
Once again, a search engine will show you images of these things, and you'll see what I'm talking about.
Quite likely at some stage you will move on to acquire a dorje and bell.
(21:21):
You can pick these up easily enough, though if you want to practise properly, they are amongst the items that you only use when you are doing a practice to which you have been properly introduced.
Then there is the small hand drum or damaru.
(21:44):
The large damaru for chod practice.
The trumpet or “kangling” in the form of a human femur.
(22:17):
The conch shell.
It actually goes on and on and on, which is another reason why it's best to go slow and acquire these things as and when, and indeed if, you ever need them.
So this my quick rundown on basic paraphernalia. Once more, please do remember to like, subscribe and tell your friends about the Double Dorje podcast. And remember that all this equipment is great fun, but it's the compassion and the clarity that really matters.
(23:00):
Bye!
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