Native Americans used to fight each other for hundreds of years, but a legendary native chief ”Deganawida” and a great warrior “Hiawatha” called a meeting for 5 tribes at the end of 16th century and they decided to bury all the weapons underground after discussions. (renunciation of war and weapons) This was the eternal peace alliance which is called the “Iroquois charter”. And surprisingly even the Constitution of Japan inherited this philosophy through the U.S. Constitution.
Don’t you feel familiar with native Americans after hearing this story?
I would like to introduce native American wisdom with motherhood and harmony little by little. First I picked up an essay “10 pieces of Native American wisdom that will inspire the way you live your life” written by a white American guy (a mindfulness and meditation teacher).
Years ago, my little brother and I were playing cowboys and Indians.
As the older brother, I dictated the play session (of course), so I decided that my brother was supposed to die when I shot him. Of course, he was the Indian. The cowboy kills him, right?
Bang. There goes the Indian.
This might sound insensitive, but when you consider the fact that I was 5 at the time, you begin to realize that it was less about a lack of awareness or sensitivity and more about a widespread misconception about Native American culture and “American’s” relationship with them.
Growing up in the U.S., my understanding of Native American culture was vague at best.
To start, we grew up calling them Indians. You’d think that 500 years after Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas we’d have stopped calling them Indians. I guess not.
Next, all we ever thought “Indians” did was build teepees, carve arrow stones, hunt animals, at times fight each other, and dance.
And while they did do those things, what we knew was nothing more than a surface understanding of Native American culture.
I’ve always been fascinated with how wisdom transcends time and space. Completely separate countries, cultures, and time periods point us directly towards the same universal principles. I consider them the most important principles to live by. The foundation of how we should live our life, let’s call it.
A few months back, I started researching Native American wisdom in my efforts to continue pulling together the wisdom traditions of the world to find those common themes.
What I found blew me away. The depth of wisdom that has and still exists within the Native American culture today is astounding.
There was no known system of writing within any of the ancient Native American cultures (not until 1821), so the wisdom of these beautiful people continued for hundreds of years (if not longer) by word of mouth.
Luckily, just as the words of the Buddha were passed down by word of mouth for 400 years until they were written down by anyone, the wisdom of the many Native American cultures has now been written down and recorded for everyone to experience.
I hope you enjoy these beautiful pieces of Native American wisdom.
10 Pieces of Native American Wisdom That Will Inspire the Way You Live Your Life
1）Enter the Sacred Space
Wakan Tanka, Great Mystery, Teach me how to trust My heart, My mind, My intuition, My inner knowing, The senses of my body, The blessings of my spirit. Teach me to trust these things So that I may enter my Sacred Space And love beyond my fear, And thus Walk in Balance With the passing of each glorious Sun.
– Lakota Prayer
According to Native American wisdom, the Sacred Space is the space between the in-breath and out-breath.
If you’ve studied Eastern philosophy of any kind or are at all familiar with meditation techniques, you’ll immediately recognize this as significant.
Paying attention to the space between the in-breath and the out-breath, or inhalation and exhalation, is a meditation technique that’s been practiced for thousands of years. This is because the space between the two has much spiritual significance.
The space between breaths is said to be where we enter back into our natural state, where “I” falls away and we exist as “one” with the world around us.
It’s in releasing the ego, the sense of a separate self, which thinks it’s independent when it’s really interdependent, that we transcend fear and realize true love.
Also, the phrase Walk in Balance refers to having spirituality (referred to as Heaven) and physicality (referred to as Earth) in harmony.
This as well is profound. This old Lakota prayer is telling us what Eastern wisdom (and our own intuition) has told us for thousands of years: that Heaven and Earth are not separate.
They can at first feel as though they’re separate, but with practice we realize they’re really two aspects of the same thing, therefore balance between the two is balance within our lives.
（To be continued）
Source: https://buddhaimonia.com/blog/native-american-wisdom
