Five Ritual Inspirations from India
Highlights from the Compassion Summit with Dalai Lama 3/3
This is a three-series reflection on our participation in the Compassion Summit with Dalai Lama. The first piece talked about the Dalai Lama’s conversation with the summit participants and ritual design session for compassion. The second post talked about the highlights of the summit sessions. In this final post, We’d like to share a couple of inspirations for ritual design — what moved and intrigued us during this 10 day trip to India.
Inspiration 1: Wind as a disseminator of wishes, good thoughts
We learned that these flags are meant for prayers. The idea is that whenever the wind blows the flags, the prayers travel with the wind and help the people in need in the community. It’s a poetic and colorful concept.
Inspiration 2: Whirling rolls
These whirling rolls are inscribed with sacred texts. Whenever you give a spin to them, prayers are activated, and when you are on a roll of spinning a series of them, prayers are multiplied. Again this fluidity of prayer in motion is an inspiring concept.
Inspiration 3: Skit exercise for Empathy Building
Philip Himberg, artistic director of the Sundance Theatre Program ran a short skit exercise on the last day of the summit. He gave the paired up participants an opening and closing line, two images, and then asked us to create a skit. Images were intriguing with their creative tension and open to interpretation. At the end of the exercise, a couple of groups acted out their skit in front of the group. My partner and I did a short yet quirky dialogue. We enjoyed this a lot, thinking how it might be used in experience design challenges.
Inspiration 4: Fluidity versus structure
During our stay, we received khatas — Tibetan scarves for multiple occasions. They are like prayers in a textile form, and symbolize the compassion, purity, and welcoming people. We learned that the length of khata shows the length of blessings. Some of the khatas have actual prayers inscribed on them. This reminds us of the Tilsim Shirts of Ottomans — which were believed to protect you from the evil. When reflecting on the khatas, I realized that like the flags, they are there with their fluidity. Each person wears them in a unique way, each person would benefit from it based on how much they believe in the symbolic power of the khata.
Inspiration 5: Light and space
During my Delhi visit, I got the chance to visit Mughal sites, such as the Humayun’s tomb, and Taj Mahal. They are marvels from an architectural point of view, especially in their interplay with light and space. This below one is from the Humayun’s Tomb. This transcendental quality of light reminds me of the theatrical quality of space/place design.
This concludes our reflections on the Compassion Summit with Dalai Lama. We will be writing another reflection piece on the AI and Culturally Relevant Interactions Summit that we attended at Stanford MedX , stay tuned.
