PHOTO: WARI OM
ORIGIN COLUMNIST: SIANNA SHERMAN
In the story of the Buddha’s awakening, we discover a call to the earth that echoes through time and speaks to all of us living on the great mother earth today. The Buddhist tradition describes Siddhartha Gautama Buddha just before his enlightenment, sitting steadily beneath the Bodhi tree while being attacked by demons. With whirling demons all around him, he is challenged by the horrific demon Mara, who wants to claim the Buddha’s seat for himself and demands to know who bears witness to the enlightenment of the Buddha? It is in this moment, that the Buddha, still in mediation, lightly touches the earth with his right hand, while keeping the left hand receptive and open on his lap. This symbolic gesture is an iconic image of the Buddha known as bhumi sparsha mudra: touching the earth mudra. It is a call to remembrance that the earth bears witness to each of us every day, and now is the time of sacred shifting where humanity is being asked to step up and bear witness to the earth and all her children. The demons of corporate and political greed cannot originmagazine.com | 34
continue to claim the seat for all of humanity. This is a time of immense awakening and the summoning of each person to take the unshakeable seat of the warrior, where inner truth shines and personal transformation emanates forth into collective transformation. Indigenous traditions of all times have spoken of these truths, with the Mayan tradition being a central focus in this year of 2012. Renowned healer, spiritual activist, and yoga teacher Saul David Raye, speaking about his own studies with the Mayan Shamans, offers these insights: “There are many sacred teachings and prophecies that speak to this time as a time of the ‘the great shift,’ but perhaps none more directly than the Mayan teachings. The Mayan sacred calendar does not predict the end of the world; it speaks to the beginning of the next cycle of our evolution and deep transformation of consciousness. The shift of the ages is real; it is happening now and the Maya are in the center of the action. They are keepers of cosmic time, the divine plan unfolding in real time. The knowledge they hold in their calendar speaks directly to the heart.”