By: Bimol Bee
Submitted: 2011-11-16 04:58:38 | Word Count: 504
According to Buddhism, in order to live a happy life a person should have an ideal balance in everything. When this balance is reached the individual starts to understand the laws and the interconnectedness of the whole world. This balance is comes from creating a peaceful mind and soul inside you, that can be achieved with the help of living a moral life, meditation, prayer, and detachment. These ideals are usually depicted on Buddhist jewelry intending to remind the believer of them every day.
The Buddha and The Middle Way
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The Buddha accomplished the creed and beliefs of Buddhism in about 490BC. Born Siddhartha Gautama to royalty, Buddha led an unusual life in the beginning of his life. That happened until he learnt what the suffering and sickness was after which he changed his way of life - an ascetic life. In time, he understood that in order to get freedom from any suffering, an individual should follow the so called Middle Way which is the ideal balance between poverty and richness as well as between negative and positive poles.
The Middle Way means many other things such as not being influenced by immediate anger or even joy as well as perceiving everything from different sides and not being biased while making judgments. The Middle Way presupposes being detached from earthly opinions and means including material things, money, excess, negative thoughts, and power. Nevertheless, it doesn't mean being detached from humanity. On the opposite, Buddhism teaches people to love one another, everything around – the universe and nature. It teaches to be compassionate and always willing to help others.
Buddhist Jewelry and Awakening
The word "detachment" is really often used in Buddhist teachings, so some people think that there's a conflict between The Middle Way and the using Buddhist jewelry. They think that it's impossible to follow The Buddha and wear jewelry with material value at the same time.
The matter is that Buddhist jewelry shouldn't be viewed as "valuable jewelry" , but one should view Buddhist jewelry as wonderful reminders of the teachings of Buddhism and The Middle Way. One shouldn't wear Buddhist jewelry with the intention of improving his or her appearance, but these unique pieces of jewelry should remind of the teachings of balance, harmony, and detachment being close to one's soul. As an example, a lotus ring will remind you of the lotus flower's unfolding and awakening still being rooted to the ground.
The other example of Buddhist jewelry is the Dharma pendant, an exquisitely carved pendant depicting the Sacred Fig Leaf and the Dharma Wheel that symbolize the path (The Middle Way) to freedom from suffering.
Buddhist jewelry are also represented with rings. For instance, wedding rings remind the married couples of their vows of love to each other. Generally, Buddhist jewelry rings remind wearers of loyalty to the laws of Buddhism. Thus, the Happiness Ring hass the words "This will also change" in Hebrew meaning the fleetingness of human life and that permanent things of the world change.
