(sorry, plug doe not work. Please click on the link above to view animation..sorry)
In a wink of an eye, we are at it again. This the beginning of another year. In the Chinese calendar is the dragon year. To be precise, it is the water dragon and comes round once every sixty years. That kind of makes it special. Well, I suppose every year is special.
When I think of the dragon, it is of a magical being with great miraculous powers. I see it soaring up into the heavens and disappear in a cloud of fog, magical! Probably the young boy listened to too many tales of serpents with horns which eventually transformed into dragons once they have accumulated sufficient merits and mastered the occult arts.
Do dragons do exist? Probably not those fire breathing Arthurian ones, if not, National Geographic would have done hours of them and bored us to death with repeats! But there is one story which I find most fascinating and helps bridge that gap between the mystical and our reality. One morning, a very respected Thai Buddhist monk, Phra Ajahn Mun, told his close students to look for a track in the forest. He said they would find one left by the Nagas (a magical serpent/human like being) who had came for teachings the night before. As the ground was soft after the rain, the students found a large circular track in the forest that stopped abruptly as if a huge serpent like being had just soared off into the sky.
Dragons are very much a part of our folklore. We can see its importance in it being the first hexagram (or more correctly the Gua of the Yi Jing). For whatever it is, dragons are depictions of courage, nobility and steadfastness. To me, it symbolizes righteousness and good over evil. They remind of the law of cause and fruition, of duality. It underlines the message that it is our destiny to work for and reach the highest goal, perfection. It hints of a higher level of existence that we can aspire to. On the ordinary level, the first Gua of the Yi Jing teaches the need of masculine strength, patience, leadership and interconnectedness of all living beings.
May all have a great dragon year!
(Credits to owners of images and animations)
This book is a translation of a text by FengShui Master Jiang Da Hong (ca1640) with my explanations and comments. The root text is a section on yang dwellings from his book “5 Songs of the Heavenly Principles”.