Ritual Implements in Tibetan Buddhism

Ritual Implements in Tibetan Buddhism:
A Symbolic Appraisal Rites and rituals are an essential part of Tibetan religion and reflect its practical side. Not restricted to temples alone, they are performed in a variety of places and circumstances, for a myriad of purposes. Daily ceremonies are conducted in temples, although they are perhaps not so elaborate as those that take place in Hindu temples in Nepal and India.
Throughout the year, too, special rituals are performed to propitiate deities, to precipitate rain, to avert hailstorms, diseases, and death, to ensure good harvests, to exorcise demons and evil spirits, and of course to destroy the passions of the mind and, ultimately, the ego. All these practices-whether occult, magical, or shamanistic, require various implements which are as important as the images of the deities in whose service they are employed.
Some deities Statues Hold Ritual Implements

Each such object is pregnant with symbolic meaning and is frequently imbued with magical power and potency
Many of these ritual implements also occur as hand-held attributes of various important Buddhist deities (Above Statues Click for Detail). Many of these weapons and implements have their origins in the wrathful arena of the battlefield and the funerary realm of the cremation grounds. As primal images of destruction, slaughter, sacrifice, and necromancy, these weapons were wrested from the hands of evil and turned-as symbols-against the ultimate root of evil, the self-cherishing ego.

In the hands of wrathful and semi-wrathful deities, protective deities, the siddhas and the dakinis, these implements became pure symbols, weapons of transformation, and an expression of the deities' wrathful compassion, which mercilessly destroys the manifold illusions of the inflated human ego.
Read Some of the important ritual implements:
· The Vajra or Thunderbolt, also known in Tibetan as dorje.

· The Bell, known in Sanskrit as the Ghanta, and in Tibetan as dril bu.

· The Phurpa (Ritual Dagger)

· The Skull Cup, known as kapala in Sanskrit. (will be posted soon)
Also See some detail picture of Crystal Kapala



Dakini Using Skull Cup (Kapala) and Kapala offering Painting

· The Curved Knife or Chopper

· The Curved Knife or Chopper