Birth element's role in Dharma practice

Forum for discussion of Tibetan Buddhism. Questions specific to one school are best posted in the appropriate sub-forum.
Post Reply
User avatar
Palzang Jangchub
Posts: 1008
Joined: Wed Dec 12, 2012 10:19 pm
Contact:

Birth element's role in Dharma practice

Post by Palzang Jangchub »

I recently came across a teaching about how you should hang prayer flags of the same color as your birth element to help eliminate obstacles. It seems to have disappeared into the ether that is cyberspace, but I'll post it here if I come across it again.

This got me thinking, however, about what role the element of one's birth year plays in Dharma practice as a whole. For instance, could it influence which of the Five Buddha Families one identifies with most? Could it have an effect on which yidam one practices in this life?

Incidentally, I noticed that there's a lot of conflicting information online about which of the five elements is associated with which color. I was always under the impression that space was blue, fire was red, earth was yellow, wind was green, and water was white (though I can't remember which source this stems from). Are there particular texts about this? Do the associations of colors and elements vary depending on school/lineage?
Image

"The Sutras, Tantras, and Philosophical Scriptures are great in number. However life is short, and intelligence is limited, so it's hard to cover them completely. You may know a lot, but if you don't put it into practice, it's like dying of thirst on the shore of a great lake. Likewise, a common corpse is found in the bed of a great scholar." ~ Karma Chagme

དྲིན་ཆེན་རྩ་བའི་བླ་མ་སྐྱབས་རྗེ་མགར་ཆེན་ཁྲི་སྤྲུལ་རིན་པོ་ཆེ་ཁྱེད་མཁྱེན་ནོ།།
རྗེ་བཙུན་བླ་མ་མཁས་གྲུབ་ཀརྨ་ཆགས་མེད་མཁྱེན་ནོ། ཀརྨ་པ་མཁྱེན་ནོཿ
Post Reply

Return to “Tibetan Buddhism”