“Dharma is a natural system. It is not fabricated. The spacious nature of the mind can be discovered through the methods of Dharma. The methods themselves have spontaneously arisen as a response to the expression of confusion and pain of beings. The practices of Dharma were not created through someone having had an idea about how to solve a problem. They arise as a natural, realised response. When we are thirsty we drink – we do not have to fabricate a reason for drinking when we are thirsty: drinking is simply a natural response. Dharma arises through the needs of beings. Dharma reflects every nuance of human experience.”
Spacious Passion by Ngakma Nor’dzin, Aro Books worldwide, 2009, Chapter 2, page 26.
The Aro gTer is a hidden treasure discovered by Khyungchen Aro Lingma at the beginning of the twentieth century. In this video from February 2010, Ngakpa ’ö-Dzin talks about the Aro gTer Lineage.
Transcript
Ngakpa 'ö-Dzin: I would like to talk a little bit about the Aro gTer
Lineage and where it comes from. In terms of its style and approach it
is part of the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism. In terms of its
particular qualities, the word ‘gTerma’ means ‘hidden treasure’, and in
this case a hidden teaching.
So these were teachings that were
hidden by Padmasambhava and Yeshé Tsogyel for discovery at a later time
when the teachings would be most effective and most appropriate to be
put into action.
The Aro gTer is described as ‘a very small
gTerma’ in terms of the number of teachings and practices that exist
within it, although it actually seems quite huge in terms of what kind
of capacity of person it would take to be able to encompass it all. So
these teachings were discovered by Khyungchen Aro Lingma at the
beginning of the twentieth century, and passed on to her son Aro Yeshé,
who later reincarnated as Ngak'chang Rinpoche.
“When riders are involved in all aspects of the life and care of their horses, intimate relationships develop. This intimacy offers the potential for harmonious riding and the achievement of the greatest capacity of horses and riders.
The purpose of preparation in the context of Buddhist preliminary practice, performs the same function. These practices give a beginner a means of beginning. They enable deeper involvement once some experience in practice has been gained. They eventually enable practice to be fully embraced as a method of awakening.
Horse riders may retire from riding, but Buddhist practitioners never retire from riding Mind Training. The relationship with practice continues to deepen and strengthen. This creates commitment and capacity, and eventually awakening.”
Battlecry of Freedom by Ngakma Nor’dzin, Aro Books worldwide, 2019, Part II - the slogans, p. 30.
To see more about the horses mentioned in Battlecry of Freedom, visit the blog ‘Ceffylau’.
“Buddhism is not a religion of truth – it is a religion of method. Its teachings are not overly concerned with expressing truth – but with methods of practice. In a sense, one could actually say that there is only one ‘truth’ in Buddhism: that form and emptiness are nondual.
As beginners, we start to become familiar with form and emptiness in the context of sitting meditation. We learn to experience emptiness as an absence of thought, that is simultaneous with presence of awareness. We experience form as thoughts and sensations which arise from within the condition of non-thought. We eventually begin to glimpse nonduality in those moments when thought and the absence of thought have the same taste.
The essential practice of Buddhism is to attempt to understand nonduality in the widest and most encompassing way possible, and to integrate this with every moment of one’s life. Buddhism is a set of infinitely varied methods to help us achieve this.”
The third and final video explaining and demonstrating the last stage of creating an amulet is now posted on YouTube. The final stage is weaving the threads across the wound bands of colour.
The first stage of creating a protection amulet is to bind the paper containing the image of the demon-dispelling scorpion. By following video two of the three videos, you will create a square with wound blocks of thread of the five colours, as shown in the illustration above. There are two blocks of green in the centre. The blocks of colour are made up of threads. The number of threads in a block of colour will depend on the size of your folded square, and the thickness of your thread. How to calculate this is explained in the second video.
In effect, this stage of the process creates the vertical warp threads across which the weft threads will be woven to create the finished design.
The finished design.
The third video will explain and demonstrate the woven cross threads to complete the design.
Creating amulets is a Tibetan Vajrayana ritual practice. Their purpose can be for healing or protection, or to help effectuate any beneficial intent. In the thangka painting above, Ngakpa Dawa Ngödrüp, who was a herbalist at the Aro Gar in Tibet in the 1900s, is shown wearing many amulets.
Ngakma Nor’dzin is producing a set of three videos explaining a method of creating a protection amulet. In the Aro gTer Lineage, amulets are woven in the five elemental colours: yellow/earth, white/water, red/fire, green/air, and blue/space. Some amulets only use two or three colours, but they will still be a combination taken from the five elemental colours.
The protection amulet in the tutorial will be woven as a single ‘sky’. This means one of each of the elemental colours in their order moving from earth to space. Green will be the focus in the centre, so the cycle of the five colours will be green, followed by blue, then yellow, white and finally red as the outer colour. The reason for placing green—the air element—in the centre, is that the Covid 19 pandemic has been causing people to experience anxiety, and this arrangement of the elements is a manifestation of an intent to reduce anxiety, the neurotic emotional response of the air element.
The outer design of the amulet is in fact the binding to contain and seal the intention of the hidden charm inside it. Ngakma Nor’dzin will be using the Tibetan woodblock print of the demon-destroying scorpion as the active ingredient on the folded paper, around which the threads are woven. The photograph below was taken of this amulet charm by Ngakma Nor’dzin in Bhutan, where it was on a personal shrine.
If you wish to follow the video tutorials, and join in with creating a protection amulet, you can download the demon-dispelling scorpion for printing using this link: scorpion image.
The image below shows a group of embroidery threads that are a good combination of colours.The white and yellow are both Anchor perle cotton, numbers 1 and 298. The red, green and blue are DMC perle cotton, numbers 666, 699 and 796.
The materials and equipment you will need to create a protection amulet are as follows:
a print-out of the demon-dispelling scorpion
a 30 cm ruler
a pencil
a pair of scissors
a skein of thread in each of the five colours
a long needle with a large eye and a blunt point
Please see the first video on Aro Ling Cardiff’s YouTube channel.
