Posted: Fri Nov 11, 2005 11:51 am Post subject: Thousand-hand Bodhisattva dance....
This is called the Thousand-hand Bodhisattva dance, its performed by 21 hearing impaired girls and boys by China Disabled Peoples Performing Art Troupe.
Posted: Fri Nov 11, 2005 3:04 pm Post subject: Re: Thousand-hand Bodhisattva dance....
awesome. i saw this last year and have wanted a copy of it ever since, now i have it!
this dance represents avalokiteshvara who is the bodhisattva of compassion. the story goes, avalokiteshvara wanted to rid the world of suffering, so he told his spiritual father, amitabha this and promised that if he couldn't do it, he didn't deserve to live and would explode himself into 1000 pieces. so then he sat down and meditated on it and ridded the world of suffering.
then, for good measure he waited a bit, saw the world filling again with suffering, so he did it again. then again. three times he ridded the world of suffering, then told amitabha that he'd done it. amitabha said to look again and so avalokiteshvara did and saw it filling again with suffering, and so because of great sadness and being true to his word, he self destructed. amitabha felt sad and knew that the job was too big for one being to do, so he gathered up the pieces of avalokiteshvara and put them all together again, only this time he gave him 1000 arms so he could help more people at a time, and on each arm he gave him an eye so that avalokiteshvara could see more people in need of help, he also gave avalokiteshvara 11 heads so that he could see in all directions at once (including one wrathful head for times when anger is necessary). in his sadness for the world, he cried once and a tear from each eye formed a sacred lake and from that arose the taras, which are another of my favorite bodhisattvas (i'll wait for another time to tell you about them!)
this dance is a representation of that. also, interestingly, the dalai lama is considered to be an incarnation of avalokiteshvara, and i'm going to washington dc tomorrow to hear him speak. he's a spiritual influence on me in a big way.
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