The Water Element
Tibetan Buddhist Encyclopedia is now 14 years old
Our Encyclopedia recently received a wonderful opportunity for a major renewal on its 14th birthday . After many years of growing our Encyclopedia had become bit slow and sometimes even decided not to answer when people knocked on the door.
A very big thank you and blessings to Dmytro Rudiy (rudiy.nl) for his great work in upgrading the server, website and all of the infrastructure and helping make TBE fast and reliable again for everyone!
We kindly ask our readers to help us cover the cost of this important upgrade and also help with the ongoing costs of keeping the Encyclopedia alive and freely available.
or card
Every little donation helps and every one is deeply appreciated. 🙏🙏🙏
OM AH HUM VAJRA GURU PADMA SIDDHI HUM 🙏🙏🙏
May blessings shower down on all of yous 🙏🙏🙏
We started with the grossest element, and in the remainder of the practice we progress to those that are increasingly subtle. So now we call to mind the Water element within the body — that which is liquid.
Starting with those manifestations that we can directly experience, we feel saliva in the mouth, mucus, the pulse of the blood, sweat, the feeling of moisture in the outbreath, the pressure of urine in the bladder.
Then we move on to those things we can only experience more imaginatively: lymph, fat, synovial fluid, cerebrospinal fluid, and all the liquid that permeates and surrounds every cell in the body.
Then we contemplate the element outside of ourselves: calling to mind the oceans and rivers and streams, the water that permeates the soil, the rain and clouds, the water inside plants and animals. We see, hear, and feel these things as we recall our experience of them.
Then we recognize that all of the Water within the body, which we think of as “us,” and “ours,” as “ourselves,” is in reality simply borrowed for a while from the outside world, that it’s quite literally flowing through us, and that we don’t own it. There is only one Water element — there’s no “me” Water and there’s no “other” Water. And so we reflect: “This is not me. This is not mine. I am not this.”