Earth and Space News: Thich Nhat Hanh, Walking Meditations and Ajanta Cave Wall Paintings

Summary: Perhaps walking meditations from Vietnamese peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh best articulate Ajanta cave wall paintings in their 200th anniversary year.

Vietnamese peace activisit Thich Nhat Hanh has familiarized the world with the ancient Buddhist tradition of meditative walking, a practice encouraged by Ajanta Caves' circumambulatory architecture; photo by Paul Davis: Thich Nhat Hanh gems via Facebook July 29, 2017

Perhaps the most amenable, authentic acquaintance with the Ajanta cave wall paintings in their 200th anniversary year of European access arises in the walking meditations of Vietnamese peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh.

The walking meditations of Vietnamese peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh brings balanced breathing, Buddha half-smiles and mindfulness of the moment together in natural, private, public places. Balanced, belly, diaphragmatic breathing correlates with cultivating a continuous half-smile, air coming into the body coming back out, congruently counted steps and conscious contemplation of surroundings. Vietnamese peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh declares that "Your half-smile will bring calm and delight to your steps and your breath, and help sustain your attention."

The Ajanta cave wall paintings in their 200th anniversary year of European access in Maharashtra state, central-west India, exhibit the Buddha's (from Sanskrit बुद्ध, "awakened") half-smile.

Ajanta cave wall paintings and sculptures figure Sakyan Crown Prince Siddhartha Gautama (from Sanskrit सिद्धार्थ, "successful" and गोतम, "light [dispels] darkness"), with enlightenment, as Gautama Buddha.

Buddha sitting, Buddha standing and Buddha supine respectively give right understanding, thought, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness and concentration; a walking meditation; and his last breath. Handing his horse Kanthaka to his charioteer Channa heralded six- and 45-year walking meditations as 29- to 35-year-old enlightenment-seeking Siddhartha and 35- to 80-year-old Gautama Buddha. Fifty-one-year walking meditations impelled Siddhartha Gautama from the Koliya, Malla, Marya and Sakya kingdoms southward into the Magadha kingdom and westward into Kalama, Kashi and Koshala.

Enlightenment seekers journey, like Maharashtra monks 1,600 to 2,300 years ago, through conscious, mindful contemplation in the 200th anniversary year of European-accessed Ajanta cave wall paintings.

Buddha's apranihita (from Sanskrit अप्रणिहित, "wishlessness") kindles Vietnamese peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh knowing "we do not put anything ahead of ourselves and run after it."

Walking meditations from Thich Nhat Hanh around Ajanta cave wall paintings laud Buddha "Looking deeply at life as it is in the very here and now." They motivate 1,300- to 1,600-year-old and 2,000- to 2,300-year-old modeling pradakshina (from Sanskrit प्रदक्षिणा, "to the right-turning") aisles and vihara (from Sanskrit विहार, "walking [hall]") caves. Chaitya (from Sanskrit चैत्य, "funeral mound, pedestal, pile") aisles and vihara dormitories nurtured walking meditations around Buddha in 550 bodhisattiva (from Sanskrit बोधिसत्त्व, "enlightened existence") reincarnations.

European-accessed Ajanta cave wall paintings in their 200th anniversary year still offer stone floors where "Your feet touch the Earth. The path is your dear friend."

That "The air is cleanest in the early morning and late evening" prompts Vietnamese peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh performing walking meditations in or near nature.

Semi-cultivated and wild nature respectively qualify as environmental contexts for walking meditations in Thich Nhat Hanh's Plum Village, Thénac, Dordogne, southwestern France, and Ajanta, central-west India. Thich Nhat Hanh recommends walkers "Visualize a tiger walking slowly, and you will find that your steps become as majestic as the steps of a tiger." Ajanta cave wall paintings, bats, boar, deer, gazelles, hares, jackals, jungle-fowl, langurs, leopards, pea-fowl, squirrels and tigers shared the Waghora (from Sanskrit व्याघ्र, "tiger") River bend.

Walking meditations around the Ajanta cave wall paintings and with Vietnamese peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh testify to Buddha's last words, "Strive earnestly to attain perfection."

Vietnamese peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh describes Boddhisattva Padampapani, the Buddhist embodiment of compassion, as bringing "forth a universe of art" by "Holding gracefully a lotus in his hand" ("Padapani" in Call Me By My True Names: The Collected Poems of Thich Nhat Hanh [1999]); half-smile of Bodhisattva Padmapani ("one who holds the lotus") in Ajanta Cave 1; Ajanta Caves, Maharashtra, central-west India; March 8, 2017: Photo Dharma from Sadao, Thailand (Anandajoti Bhikkhu), CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

Vietnamese peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh has familiarized the world with the ancient Buddhist tradition of meditative walking, a practice encouraged by Ajanta Caves' circumambulatory architecture; photo by Paul Davis: Thich Nhat Hanh gems via Facebook July 29, 2017, @ https://www.facebook.com/319228401438031/photos/a.319236131437258.87388.319228401438031/1867221496638706/

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Earth and Space News

Friday, March 29, 2019

Thich Nhat Hanh, Walking Meditations and Ajanta Cave Wall Paintings

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