WHERE IS MY PENCIL?

Having just listened to the vajrasattva mantra three times, I feel very saintlike and clean. The vajrasatva mantra is the perfect spiritual detergent for the mind, appropriate when starting new things or bringing stuff to completion. I listened to it because it was on a linguistics page in meme form, with sound. The Tibetan version combines two languages in several different developmental strata, and consequently is dense and almost gibberish. Kind of like Old Church Slavonic. I am not a believer, and other than linguistic curiosity there was no purpose to it.

To quote: "ha ha ha ha ho" -- an exclamation of joy.

It's all about anuraktam.



Vajrasattva, the great purifier, is a popular subject for thankas, tapestries, and stupid-ass white hipster tattoos. Because white hipsters are enlightened and spiritual. Which explains why in downtown Berkeley you will sometimes see one person worshipping another's bare back, lighting candles and incense, or pouring ghee. Or so I've heard.
I haven't been in Berkeley for several years.

Thankas are Tibetan Buddhist scroll paintings, usually on cloth, depicting one of the deities or suitable subjects like the wheel of existence, They serve more as meditational aids for picturing or internalizing what is represented than as representations, thus differing somewhat from the icons in the eastern churches, and are often both fascinating (possibly an element of their function) as well as artistically splendid.

17th century Central Tibeten thanka of Guhyasamaja Akshobhyavajra, Rubin Museum of Art

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:17th_century_Central_Tibeten_thanka_of_Guhyasamaja_Akshobhyavajra,_Rubin_Museum_of_Art.jpg

Wikipedia commons -- Guhyasama Akshobhyavajra

All of which highlights an obsession with minor matters. Unimportant in the grand scheme of things, staggeringly mundane and not fundamental to existence. Like why can't I find a pencil? I have tonnes of pencils -- drafting pencils with different hardnesses of lead, architects pencils ditto, even old fashioned long wooden pencils and their dwarfish kin the short golfers stroke count pencils -- yet now, when I need one, I have to search for them.
Somewhere I have a box with drafting equipment.
Among which are mechanical pencils.
Where did I put it?



Guna anuraktam.




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