Earth and Heaven Witness

Dear Friends,

We will repeat and extend our work with the Earth Witness mudra. With his right hand Buddha calls the earth to witness. She knows all about his past earth lives and his readiness for enlightenment. With his left hand he is receptive to his grounding "above," in the heavens of the soul, or what we might call the supra-conscious origins of insight, invention and love.

The demon Mara, like all abusers, wants Buddha to feel alone and disempowered, so he asks, derisively, who the Buddha has as a witness to his possible enlightenment. The playground taunt, "Oh yeah? You and what army?" is much like Mara's challenge. We can all feel alone, disconnected, and ineffectual. But we are using this mudra, as the Buddha did, to answer Mara's taunt substantially, and to establish our individual and collective embeddedness in the various realms of existence. We witness heaven and earth just as they witness us. With this embeddedness, this connection, we become adequate to the enormous task at hand.

Heaven and earth meet in the human heart. Today, we'll practice the empowered heart as a source of blessing for our world.

with love,

Michael