In Tibet, giving a Buddha statue can be a very noble gift to express your good wishes to the other person. www.tibettravel.org/
To congratulate my friend on the opening of his new restaurant, I specifically chose a Buddha statue of Zambala, the God of wealth in Tibetan Buddhism, to give him.
According to our tradition, newly purchased Buddha Statues need to be consecrated. And before the blessing ceremony finished, the face of the statue should be covered by cotton.
Here, I will show you how we Tibetan consecrate a Buddhist Statue in a traditional way.
Step 1: Bring the statue to a master to get spirit for the Buddha statue by filling Buddhist sutras
Just like humans have a mind, soul, and body, the statue needs to be filled with different scriptures representing the soul, the mind, and the organs.
The first thing to do is to remove the dirt from the inside of the statue and clean it with a variety of herbs.
After drying it under the sunshine, the master started to fill the Buddhist sutras and relics inside the statue. All blessing things that would be filled into the statue were given by monasteries.
The fillings can be roughly divided into three parts, starting with scriptures and a pearl that represents the mind part of the Buddha. In Tibetan culture, the pearl refers to the brain of the statue.
Then he put other scriptures of the soul into the statue, which formed the soul part of the statue.
After the soul part was completed, the master put some incense into the statue, and the mind part finished.
For the organ part, the master filled different scriptures into the statue, which referred to the heart, and the organs of the statue, just like we human have heart, stomach, etc.
Next, the statue was filled with nine different kinds of relics. For example, the master left the paper that had been printed the wheel of an auspicious symbol on it.
Then he filled it with five different kinds of seeds, rice, barley, wheat, bean, and so on. Also, he put the needle into the statue, which referred to the weapons of the Buddha.
The small piece of yellow thing put into the statue referred to the dress of the Buddha Sakyamuni.
The final step was to seal the state with a piece of yellow cloth and glued it with a metal base.
From this video, you can take the rare chance to see the complete process of how to get spirit for the Buddha statue in Tibet. The whole process took about 1 hour.
Step 2: Go to a monastery and get the blessing from holy monks
With lots of scriptures inside, the Buddha statue could be brought alive after the monks’ blessing in the monastery.
After the blessing, the statue was covered by the holy Khatag, and I need to hold it and walk around the monastery and finish the ceremony.
It is how we consecrate Buddhist Statues in Tibet. At that point, we could believe him as an alive God and remove the cotton from his face.
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