In the latter 20th century, as yoga meditation and East Asian iconography emerged in the mind of Western popular culture, the word mudra entered the Western lexicon. Images of yogis seated in cross-legged postures, hands on knees, palms up with the first (or second, or third) fingertip touching the thumb. Of the Buddha, standing or seated, right hand at chest level, palm out. These were everywhere, from postcards to posters. Mudra meant a hand(s) gesture representing a concept or a ‘state of mind’. Books were written on how to use hand gestures, mudras, to do everything: become more attractive, cure flatulence, become enlightened. Well…maybe.
Mudra however is not just a gesture of the hand(s). Provisionally speaking, the whole body-mind is continuously manifesting a mudra, the mudra of right here, right now.
Early translators of Sanskrit into English defined mudra as: “manual signs indicative of various ideas”. Synonyms were ‘symbol’, ‘emblem’, ‘proof’. The mudra of the salute on the battlefield, palm open at head level… proof of ”no weapon here”.
Early translators of mudra into Chinese took it to mean ‘seal’, a mark of ownership or identity. A seal is made by pressing an engraved piece of wood or stone in a cinnabar paste, then pressing it on a document or a painting. The resultant mark is the seal, a ‘proof’ of relationship between object and person, the identity of object and person. Just as in medieval Europe, when pressing a ring into molten wax ‘sealed the deal’ of a treaty or a bill of sale.
From a yogic view a mudra is not a hand gesture, or a mark on paper, it is the entirety, the totality, of a particular. Not symbolic, not representational, particularity as it actually is. We know this mudra of the whole body-mind appearing in context: the head in hands of the kneeling mother in grief; the exultant outstretched arms, upturned face of the race winner breaking the ribbon. The mudra of the whole body-mind, no possible doubt, no inside of this outside, no outside of this inside. A whole.
One of Zen’s roots, Yogacara Buddhism, says something like: “for every body-state, a corresponding mind state; for every mind-state, a corresponding body state”. This concept has antidotal properties: in a bad mood-exercise, tension in the body-meditate. Non-antidotally it is a description of how the world actually is. Dichotomies resolving into a whole; inside is outside, vice versa. The Tathagatagarbha womb-embryo creator-creation idea.
In Zen practice the body-mind shapes the mudra of zazen even as the mudra of zazen shapes the body-mind. The mudra of co-dependent origination. Mudra shapes mudra, zazen shapes zazen. The interpenetrating and interdependent mudra of the Tathagata, coming-going. Finding the mudra of zazen where the outside doesn’t represent the inside, but (co)creates the inside; the mudra where the inside doesn’t reflect the outside, but (co)creates the outside. Shape as/is shaping. Mudra as the whole shebang. Mudra as wholeness.
Manifestation of the mudra of wholeness, whether standing, walking, sitting or lying, is called…zazen.