7 Things on a String
I had such a good time finding 10 Things to represent the 10 Perfections (which I wrote about here), that I decided to do something similar for the 7 Factors of Awakening.
This time I chose things I could string. I started with a little brass bell for mindfulness (sati), then bone, glass and clay beads for investigation (dhamma-vicaya), energy (viriya), joy (piti), and tranquility (passaddhi), a polished jade circle for concentration (samadhi), and a little silver heart for equanimity (upekkha).
I’m not sure what I’m going to do with them now. The string is a little too heavy to wear as a bracelet, but I like having it on my desk and picking it up every now and then. It makes a nice little jingling sound that I find…well….pleasant.
I also like that it reminds me of what U Tejaniya says about the 7 Factors: “The first three factors — mindfulness, investigation and energy — are causes. The latter four — joy, tranquility, concentration and equanimity — are effects. We need to cultivate the causes, because these are what we can work on. We don’t need to do anything for the effects. We can’t create them, nor can be make them happen.”