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How to Pray | Poem + video

In a world that teaches
me first, me only, me always,
prayer is a quiet rebellion.
It begins with a bow,
a loosening of the fist
that clutches at control.

It dares to whisper:
I am not the center.
I am not the crown of all things.
I am a thread in the tapestry,
a note in the chorus,
a servant of something vast.
Something holy.

Prayer is an act of defiance
against the tyranny of ego,
against the hunger that never fills.
It topples the empire of the small self
and builds, stone by stone,
a sanctuary for all beings.

In prayer, we betray the myth of isolation.
We kneel not in defeat,
but in devotion and love.

Prayer is rebellion,
the most radical kind,
for it wages war not on others,
but on the walls within,
until only openness remains.

Through the power of prayer,
we can align ourselves with life and light itself. What a miracle.

We can call for the aid
of both ancient and recent Masters,
Beyond space and time.
Their luminous wisdom and boundless
compassion can touch our hearts as intimately as the Sun’s warmth opens flowers in the morning mist.

Prayer is not just mere words.
It is the trembling of the soul reaching for our wholeness, a candle lit in the dark, a river bending toward the ocean.
Prayer is tantra and transformation.

-M

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Something old

Bought a new diary, in hopes of finding time to write again; haven’t written anything in over a year. Initiated first page with this poem ๐Ÿ˜Š๐Ÿ™๐Ÿผ๐Ÿ’Ž

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Zen revitalisation?

A zen tradition that doesnโ€™t separate buddhanature from substrate consciousness (skt. alaya vijnana), doesnโ€™t speak or teach kensho but then claims to be able to just sit (j. shikantaza), that doesnโ€™t have one on one instruction (j. sanzen/dokusan), that has no emphasis of any type of dynamicity or physicality in training, where lineage blessings go unnoticed, where students and roshis spend sesshin after sesshin half asleep, has got to be the most decadent form of Zen to ever exist. These are the very problems that Bodhidharma corrected by teaching the weak, sleepy and ignorant meditation monks dynamic movement practices but also how to transform, stretch and strenghten tissues (c. yijinjing) and how to transform all three bodies from samsaric to nirvanic state (c. xisuijing, bone marrow washing). Itโ€™s been long since Bodhidharmaโ€™s time but the state of some systems that claim to be zen buddhism merely based on lineage transmission and mimicked external form, proves that the deluded mind is master in deluding itself, without much ability to learn from the mistakes done by others. It is indeed difficult to find practitioners who are able to analyze and extract the essential meaning of dharma thus demonstrating abundant merit (skt. punya).

Baba,
Revitalized Zen
16 March 2025

Yes, this seems to be true; that the state of Zen lineages today is simply not producing Masters, as was the whole point of Zen training. The state of Dharma is seemingly in a bad shape all around. Therefore, I find it very refreshing and interesting to read such quotes as the one above. Here is the YouTube channel of Revitalized Zen, the facebook group and here is the blog. Excellent reading for any spiritual seeker ๐Ÿ™๐Ÿผ๐Ÿชท

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Warrior who carries no weapons

Chatral Rinpoche (8. June 1913 – 30. December 2015). Yogi whom has helped me on my spiritual path ๐Ÿ’Ž๐Ÿ“ฟ

You might spend your whole life pursuing only food and clothing,
With great effort and without regard for suffering or harmful deeds,
But when you die you cannot take even a single thing with you โ€” consider this well.
The clothing and alms needed to keep you alive are all you need.
You might dine on the finest meal of delicious meat and alcohol,
But it all turns into something impure the very next morning,
And there is nothing more to it all than that.
So be content with life-sustaining provisions and simple clothes,
And be a loser when it comes to food, clothing and conversation.

No matter where you stay, be it a busy place or a solitary retreat,
The only things that you need to conquer are mindโ€™s five poisons (jealousy, pride, anger, ignorance, attachment).
And your own true enemies, the eight worldly concerns (hope for pleasure and fear of pain, hope for gain and fear of loss, hope for praise and fear of criticism, hope for good reputation and fear of bad reputation).

There is no better sign of accomplishment than a disciplined mind.
This is true victory for the real warrior who carries no weapons.
When you practise the teachings of the sลซtras and tantras,
The altruistic bodhicitta of aspiration and application is crucial,
Because it lies at the very root of the Mahฤyฤna.
Just to have this is enough, but without it, all is lost.

It is far better to eliminate your doubts and misconceptions,
By relying on the instructions of your own qualified teacher,
Than to receive many different teachings and never take them any further.

If you lack the wealth of contentment in your mind,
Youโ€™ll think you need all kinds of useless things,
And end up even worse than just an ordinary person,
Because you wonโ€™t manage even a single session of practice.
So set your mind on freedom from the need for anything at all.
Wealth, success and status are all simply ways of attracting enemies and demons.
Pleasure-seeking practitioners who fail to turn their minds from this lifeโ€™s concerns
Sever their connection to the authentic Dharma.

Limit yourself to just a few activities and undertake them all with diligence.
Not allowing your mind to become fidgety and restless.

All quotes by Chatral Rinpoche

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The Laws of The Sun

Have to share this absolute gem of a film ๐Ÿ™๐Ÿผ Found it very well made and entertaining to watch, and a good Dharma film to show kids. I don’t usually watch a lot of animรฉ but I liked it!

Here is the sequel also; The Golden Laws

Happy new year. May all being be free!

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It has to touch the heart

When we are small children, it comes natural for us to think of others. We don’t see much separation between ourselves and others, and so wanting to be kind, to help and be generous comes as naturally as dusk and dawn.

As we age and experiences shape us, we get hardened. We are no longer soft and supple like babies, now we have frozen places in our bodies and mind that makes us feel and act in certain negative ways, or it even makes us ill. We get prickly edges, we might be ‘difficult’ for others to be around and as much as we wish to feel soft, authentic and playful again, it just don’t seem to happen by will alone.

This is where yogic practices (dharma) can help, because it targets and addresses both the physical body, and the subtle energy bodies. Focusing only on one aspect, will not be a holistic solution, in my experience. And focusing only on my own healing, without regard to others who are also suffering, is not sufficient; it has to be for the benefit of others – it has to touch the heart (bodhichitta).

Prayer flags in our garden

Here is the youtube channel and the website of the Amrita Mandala dharma lineage which I practice and which has helped me the most in my life and healing ๐Ÿ™๐Ÿผ

(Header image art of Isha Natha by MysticMantraGallery)

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Photo series: Everyday life

In my summer sea sรกmi gรกkti. And small baby “shoes” made by mother-in-law ๐Ÿ™๐Ÿผ
Shades of blue shell
Rusty colours
Blue and purple hues
“Det er morgen igjen, vesle hรฅp
og verden frotterer seg med nyvasket solskinn.
Livets ansikt er aldri det samme
selv om vi ser pรฅ det i all evighet.” – Kolbein Falkeid
#home #kitchen #midnightsun
Curious little guy on a short hike in the rain. โ˜”๏ธ
Summer details in some of my older paintings.
Just playing and experimenting with colours and techniques so that I will hopefully find the Joy of painting again ๐Ÿ˜„ I guess I have a little dry spell in my creative life at the moment..
Blue, orange and yellow are great together.
A bouquet I picked by the side of the road.
Details
Beef tallow.

Son and daddy ๐Ÿ’™๐Ÿ’›โค๏ธ๐Ÿ’š
My partner of 14 years meditating. #yogisondisplay
Our shed with some new flowers.
Curious little rabbit in our garden.

Xx Monica Amrita Mani

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Yogi on display

Yogi on display in nature for the birds, foxes and rabbits to see ๐Ÿ˜„ also i found a long-ish animal bone that was perfect to use for hitting on a rock to keep the rhythm while chanting and singing prayers.  ๐Ÿฐ๐Ÿฆ๐ŸฆŠ๐Ÿฆด

What is #YogisOnDisplay?

“Unlike in cultures long established in the dharma, spiritual practice is not visible in the everyday life of Western society. While many Westerners practice some form of spiritual practice, the actual practice is often kept private. This is a great pity. Not only does it speak volumes about the level of spiritual maturity of the West, but it also means that many people never encounter dharma in the first place. If spirituality is not publically displayed, the fact that there is an alternative to existential confusion and suffering does not reach the masses.

In an attempt to counter this, Amrita Baba has initiated the Yogis on Display project. The idea behind Yogis on Display is to encourage spiritual practitioners of the West to become living examples for others. Instead of hiding away in our modern city caves, we need to bring meditation, mantra singing, yoga practice, and so on, directly to where it matters; straight to the middle of the hamster wheel. Displaying the solution to existential confusion and suffering is a hands-on, time-tested way of practicing care and compassion for all beings.

To spread the message of Yogis on Display the hashtag #yogisondisplay has been created. Practitioners who chose to take part are encouraged to take a picture of themselves and share it on social media using this hashtag. This way more people can learn about the initiative and become inspired to light the torch of dharma in our public spheres.” (AmritaMandala.com)

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Two wings of the same bird

I often think about how the two genders are put up against each other in todays’ society, and we forget how to cooperate. We forget that men and women are dependant on each others’ strengths and that we complement each others’ weaknesses. We tend to focus on “who has it worse and who does what is most important”, instead of focusing on “what can we accomplish together, and how can we best raise the next generation, and be there for one another in life’s traumas, challenges and victories”. We hear absurd statements like “what is a woman”, and “do we need men”. The feminine and the masculine are two wings of the same bird, we need both to soar. The feminine power represents creation and wisdom, while the masculine represents stability and action. The whole Universe – and thus you and me – are made of these, and we should not forget that.

(Acrylic and oil pastel drawing/painting size A4, on mixed media paper)

– Monica

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The healer within

The following text is from Barbara Brennan’s book “Light Emerging”, page 337 – 343 ๐Ÿ’œ

“Once upon a time, aeons ago before time was known as it is today, there was a spark of light in the heart of the divine. That spark in the divine burst forth into millions of stars. Each star had a name that was written in the word of God. One of those stars is you. As a star, you grew and developed and sang across the heavens to the other stars. In this time before you were born as a human, you knew light, love, and wisdom. Being unborn, of course you had no body, so there was a great deal of freedom. You were completely aware of the essence of your being. You had great freedom to move about the universe at your will. You moved in the direction that you focused in. With your intention, you began creating things. If you had a wish, you automatically created it. You created stone and earth; tree and flower; star and planet; even cloud and wind.

Your essence moved easily, changing from one form to another. You experienced being a cloud, a moon, a sun, or a fish, or a cat. You continued to move as your pleasure led you. As you moved from one form to another, creating more forms, you slowly became identified with form, and shadow was born. You got so excited in the creating that memory slipped and you forgot who you were. You were so busy creating, you didnโ€™t even notice that you began to think you were form.

Shadow grew darker, and pain was born out of forgetting that the true self is essence. The true self is the creator, that which is beyond form. That is how you created shadow and pain. You forgot who you are. You split yourself in two: the part that forgot and the whole that remembers.

Within every human being, there is the spark of the divine in every cell of your body. It is the essence of self. Within that true essence of who you are is the healer within you who has all of the creative power of the universe. The healer within you is named according to the word of God. That is who you truly are. Move your awareness now to your inner essence, your power and light that are completely unique. You are the word of God made manifest. Move your awareness to the total essence of your beingโ€”that is the healer within you. You have felt it your entire life. The golden threads of this power have been woven through the tapestry of your life since before you were born. You knew as a small child, as you know now, what this means. Feel the essence, the power, flowing through you. It is your uniqueness. It is your beauty. It is your love. It is the sweetness that you experienced life to be as a child.

Your power lies within the sweetness of who you are. It is within the sweet longings you have protected and shielded from others. You are like a flower unfolding in the sunlight. Feel the power and the nature of your divinity, unlike any other. Now ground that well in your body. That part of you is still free. That part of you can still move freely through space, time, and other realities. Feel yourself in this freedom now. As you are moving through time and space to different types of reality, in the far distance you hear a cry. That cry wells up and becomes more audible, and you say, โ€œOh, what could that be?โ€ You hear the longing in the cry for help. Then you spot it and you see the beautiful blue and white shimmering planet in the sky. You are drawn closer to that beloved planet by the cries of need. As you get closer, you say, โ€œWhat can I do to help? How can I answer this cry, this call? How can I help heal the pain that is upon the earth?โ€ Then you have a great idea. You decide to create a physical form by drawing it up out of the earth and drawing the pain with it. You intend to use the physical form to heal the pain. You descended into a tiny physical body.

After nine months or so, you were born into this world as a human being. The longer you remained attached to that body, the dimmer the memory of your original essence became. As a child, and perhaps way before that, you began taking on the pain. During the experience of the pain, you completely forgot who you were. When the pain would leave, you would remember. When the pain would come back, you would forget. The pain that you chose to heal grew inside of your body.

Look over your childhood. Find the deepest pain that you have carried in all those years. With that pain, you will find your deepest longing. What is it that you want to be? What is it that you longed to be as a child that you now and then thought you could never be? Did you want to move among the stars? Did you want to heal everyone on earth? Did you want to paint or to create beautiful music? Did you want to make everyone feel safe? What was it that you wanted more than anything? If you could be or could have anything you wished on earth, have any fantasy come true, what is that fantasy? How is the un-fulfillment of that related to your very deep pain?

Look backward over your life. As you moved through each moment of your life carrying that pain, there is one thread: a repeated cycle on the spiral of life, where that deepest pain from childhood has been repeated over and over and over again in the many different experiences that you have had. If you look at all of those experiences, you will find a common thread among them all. When you find that common thread, then allow yourself to begin feeling that pain. Allow your body to experience this pain. Where has it affected your body? When you feel it in your body, where does your body tense? Explore now throughout your body where that pain has affected your psychic, your spiritual, your mental, your psychological, and your physical being. That thread runs holographically through every portion of your being, and as it runs through your body it hits in particular places that eventually become experienced as physical pain. Find it in your body. If you are sensitive to the auric field, then find it in the auric field.

As you find that pain, on whatever level it has manifested most profoundlyโ€”perhaps a fear, perhaps a problem with relationship, perhaps in a physical disorder, perhaps in your professionโ€”then ask yourself a question: โ€œWhat has this to do with my deepest longing? How is this particular problem associated with my deepest longing of who I wish to be, what I want to do with my life, where I wish to live?โ€ The first job you have is to heal that pain within the body. For it is by the pain in your body and life that you will learn the personal skills that you need to fill your longing, no matter what it is. Find that pain within your body, and put your hands on it: that which you have carried for a lifetime, that darkest belief system that has the most profound forgetting, that one major, deepest pain, be it in your heart, your belly, or in your throat. Put your hand there now, and experience the consciousness there that believes in separation. It is the shadow. It believes it is separate and isolated from everything, isolated and separate with no hope. Find that pain that has been there from the earliest of days, and let that shadow begin to dissolve. Enter into the shadow. Accompany yourself into the dungeon within the self that needs healing. Do not deny the human experience of that real pain from the human perspective. It is not a new pain. It has been there ever since you can remember. It is not the kind of pain that goes away easily, for it is deeply, deeply ingrained. Spend some time with the pain. Then when you are ready, move your conscious awareness to the healer within you. Here is your wisdom. Here is your longing and your light with which you came here to heal the pain that is in your body. Move back to the pain and feel the pain. Then move to the longing and feel the longing. Move back to the pain and then to the longing again. Continue moving from one to the other until you find the association between the two, until you can answer the question, โ€œWhat does this pain in my life mean to me? What is it trying to tell me? What is the message it brings to me?โ€

While you are feeling that pain with your hands, from the human perspective, ask the essence of healer that you are what you need to do. What is the deepest cause of this pain? Ask for help to heal this pain. Ask the healer within for help to heal that which you have been unable to heal in yourself up until now. Truly ask, and it shall be answered. Ask very specifically what you can do. What is the cause? What is the belief system? What do you need to do every day? Allow the essence of the healer within you to work through your hands to heal your body. Be a channel to heal the self. Let the light flow through you. After you have received as much information as you can, reach for the highest spiritual reality you know; your higher self or your guides. Reach for the memory of who you are from that highest spiritual reality. You will find that the pain within you is precisely the pain that you were drawn to earth to heal, way back before you were born, when you were that wondrous spiritual being. That is who you truly are. So reach up to that part of the self that has incarnated in order to heal the very pain that you carry within yourself and that you have carried since your birth. For it is precisely the pain you have come to heal, and it is you who have chosen to take on this pain and in doing so you chose to incarnate with precisely the best combinations of energies and wisdom and love to heal that particular pain. That is what you have come to heal, and you are fully equipped to do so. You have fully equipped yourself to heal it. And that wondrous spiritual being that you were before your birth when you heard the cries and the longing from the earth and were drawn toward the earth is the healer within you.

You are the person who knows how to heal that pain more than anyone else. That is your healer within. Be the healer within you, and heal that thread of pain that you have carried throughout your whole life. Touch your body in places you feel pain. As you are working, move your consciousness back and forth between the healer within and the inner person who is in pain. As you continue to move back and forth, you begin to understand the relationship between the healer within you and the pain that it has come to heal. You have drawn this pain up from the earth to transform it. Give yourself plenty of time to complete this process. You are integrating the pain within, the longing that you carry within your heart, and the healer within that can heal you. Let the healer within you draw out that pain and return you to wholeness. Move back and forth between the human with the deep pain, and the healer with universal power. Move them closer and closer together as you move back and forth until they merge. Continue the process until you become completely merged. When you feel satisfied that the merging is complete and has stabilized, I would like you to remain silent for at least an hour. Remain silent, sit in meditation, or simply get up and go for a walk in the woods.”

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November in photos

The sky is always so colourful right before polarnight sets in
Early in November
An important topic and film (“The silence in Sรกpmi”) Saw it in the cinema, I think it will be put online later.
Made some Christmas decor with our son โค๏ธ
From high up! Propeller plane ride from Arctic to Southern Finland โ„๏ธ๐Ÿค๐ŸŒŒ
His third plane ride, and he isn’t even two!
Amrita Mandala yoga retreat
20+ people in person and online, practising yoga-dharma together for 4 days.
In Porvoo
Me doing Dzogchen Metta practice with Jenna โœจ๏ธ
Photo of calender I printed with my own photos. These are for June, because they were taken in June at midnight.
I chose this photo for March because that is when these little birdies return.
11 am ๐Ÿ’œ๐Ÿ’›๐Ÿค

Soon we enter December and thus the last month of 2022. Hope you are all staying warm and safe, and that Christmas is not a source of stress, but a time for relaxing and magic โœจ๏ธโ„๏ธ

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A shift in attention

“Regardless of the emotion being experienced โ€” be it desire, anger, pride, jealousy, envy, greed, or whatever โ€” what is really going on is a shift in attention.  The mind is expressing itself in a different way. Nothing implicitly requires one to presume that this emotion has any reality in and of itselfโ€ฆ It is just that the mind is expressing itself in a different way than it was a moment ago.” – Kalu Rinpoche

Photos from late autumn when it was still a bit warm. Woke up today to the first snowfall of the year!

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What is Samsara?

Photo from Sommarรธy earlier this summer

“What is Samsara?

According to buddhism, this world is a samsaric world and the minds of sentient beings are samsaric minds. What does this mean? Samsara means being stuck in a repeated loop of confusion. In this repeated loop we keep making misassessments and misjudgements because we see all things in a distorted way. Being deluded and confused means that our perception of the world, ourselves and others is corrupted. Because our mind interferes with direct experience of anything faster than a blink of an eye, is the reason why there is vast confusion and conflict in this world. No matter how hard we try, samsaric beings cannot avoid thinking and feeling in distorted ways, and this makes this world a world of pain and suffering, when potentially it could be a paradise.

From morning until night we keep thinking about “I” or “me”. We perceive the things of the world and other people in terms of me and other, or me and something else. Every single day we have strong opinions even about small petty things. Every day we have high hopes and expectations about things and then we get disappointed, frustrated and angry when things don’t go like we hoped. We are simply unable to not think in this way.

Just like the arteries of the physical body get calcified over time due to bad diet and lack of exercise, so does our mind get fixated and habituated around the compulsory notion of me. This makes us small and miserable. It makes us bitter, angry, deluded and dirty. The thought of me-ness literally steals our life from us.

You can go ahead and say to yourself, “I, I, I” or “me, me, me”, a number of times. Say it in a way as if you were a bit angry about something, like you were earlier today or yesterday. Say, “me, me, me, me” with a frustrated tone, then stop and see how it makes you feel. This is not difficult.

Through this simple thought affirmation, you will feel different sensations in the body and mind. You’ll feel that your energy contracts as if you suddenly became smaller or tighter. It feels as if a loose knot was made tighter. You might feel that your belly gets tense, heart area becomes anxious or you might feel a tight band around your head. Pardon my language but this affirmation makes you feel like shit.

But wait a second… What did we do again? We only said “me” or “I” to ourselves… This is the same I-thought that we keep thinking and saying aloud every day, and it makes us feel awful. That it makes us feel awful is exactly what we need to discover.

We go around in circles and see the world in a distorted way because we are habitually centered around this thought – me. It affects everything at all times. It makes us feel small and constricted during the day and it creates weird dreams and nightmares during the night. Just like it is important to discover that the I-thought makes us feel like shit it is as important to realise that all thoughts, including the I-thought are transitory, impermanent. This means that all thoughts come and go, and do not stay, and yet we give so much meaning to them.

In samsaric mind, thoughts and thought associations define us and this creates havoc and destruction in our lives. This is psychological habituation that can be entirely removed.

Read more about the Two-Part Formula here.

Thank you for reading,

-Kim, 8/2021″ by Kim Rinpoche, Finnish dharma teacher

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An open heart is the best medicine

“Practice being here until ‘now’ disappears. Dwell nowhere. Be beneficial to others, and you will lack nothing. Flash open your heart. Be a child of wonder, playing with generosity. Floating in a seaย of billions of universes, whatever that is, โ€œThatโ€ is all we are. It is as much out there, as it is in here. How amazing. Trade in all your wrongs, injustices, hurts, and fears for mercy, hope, compassion, and kindness. An open heart is the best medicine, open it a little more with every breath. Be like a little kid, running with Wonder, โ€œWhat is this?โ€ – words by Tilopa, the mahasiddha.

Photo from way back when. I used to love horses but now I must admit being a bit scared of them ๐Ÿ˜„๐Ÿ™ˆ

How is your spring going?๐ŸŒป Myself, I am very busy with the new mama life. Barely time to write this post ๐Ÿ˜„๐Ÿ™๐Ÿป It’s hard, wonderful and all worth it.

Will be back with more photographies and updates soon. xx Monica

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ยซDark Night: What All Meditators Need to Knowยป

Excellent talk/discussion on the topic of “dark nights”. Very nice to know how to handle, especially if you are a yoga/meditation practitioner or just prone to experience them, and how to get out of it.

I think it’s great when spiritual teachers talk openly about these matters. Many meditators get into spiritual practice because they want answers to their discontentment with life, to get happy. And often with practice we will hit spots in our minds that makes waves into daily life, for example if you have anxiety, it can momentarily get amplified when it is uncovered with practice. So it’s good to know that the goal is not to bypass all our problems, but to face them and to “cut through” them so that our natural state gets revealed. Over and over until all karmas are erased.

The yogic path was never about feeling good and calm all the time, but to unravel and reveal our true selves, our buddha nature, to understand ourself and how the mind works. ๐Ÿ“ฟ

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The Copper Coloured Mountain: Pure land

A little snow leopard put her print in the snow ๐Ÿพ Tara dancing in the snow next to it โ„
10 x 10 cm. Colours used: white, blue and copper/gold.
Our Christmas altar. Put my new painting there next to Vajrasattva statue.
‘During practice, the Buddhas and bodhisattvas are omnipresent. Theyโ€™re always here, but we donโ€™t see them because of our obscurations. We practice in order to clear away the obscurations and to acquire pure perceptionโ€”not with the eyes, but with the heart.’ โค๐Ÿ™๐Ÿป

The copper coloured mountain is also known as Zangdok Palri; Guru Rinpoche Padmasambhava’s non-physical pure land.

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Endangered and extinct: Sรกmi languages today

Photo coloured by Per Ivar Somby. In the photo: Brita Somby, wearing traditional dress (gรกkti) with traditional wool shawl. Reindeer pants and boots.


The eight remaining Sรกmi languages are spoken here in the north of Europe (see map and gallery below) in a cross-border region which includes Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Kola Peninsula of Russia. This region is generally called Sรกpmi – mostly by northern Sรกmis, and is sometimes referred to as Lapland or Samiland. Laponia in Swedish Lapland is the one of the World’s largest unmodified UNESCO nature area still cultured by natives. Sรกmis are indigenous to Sรกpmi/Northern Europe and Kola Peninsula, our heritage and ancestry traces back to Ural mountains and Siberia. Sรกmi is part of the Uralic language family, alongside Khanty, Mansi, Nganasan and Karelian, to mention a few. Lap is considered a deragatory term for Sรกmi person.

Sรกmi languages speakers estimate:

Southern Sรกmi 300 โ€“ 500 speakers

Ume Sรกmi – less than 20 speakers

Lule Sรกmi 2 000 โ€“ 3 000 speakers

Pite Sรกmi – less than 20 speakers

Northern Sรกmiย – 20-30 000 speakers. There are three main North Sรกmi dialects.
Northern Sรกmi is the most accessible language, both in terms of literature, news broadcasts, and other material for those who want to learn a Sรกmi language as a foreign language.

Kemi Sรกmi  extinct

Inari Sรกmi 300 โ€“ 500 speakers

Akkala Sรกmi – considered mostly extinct since 2003

Kildin Sรกmi 300 โ€“ 700 speakers

Skolt Sรกmi 300 โ€“ 500 speakers in Finland, fewer than 20 speakers in Russia

Ter Sรกmi – less than 5 speakers left, all elderly (update 2023: Ter Sรกmi is extinct)


Today we are around 90 000 Sรกmis, but as you can see from the numbers they do not match up to speakers of Sรกmi languages. Roughly 4/10 Sรกmis speak and use one of the Sรกmi languages today.


Why is this so?

To avoid humiliation and to give their children “better chances in life”, indigenous and minority parents often decide to speak a dominant or official language with their children. Sรกmi parents have not been an exception to this rule, especially in the very near past.

For the sake of how long this post would be in order to include all four countries’ history with the Sรกmi people, I will mainly focus on Norway.

Title: Samiske barn undervises i norsk / Sรกmi children learning norwegian
Opphaver: Fotograf Sverre A. Bรธrretzen
Rettighetshaver: Leverandรธr NTB scanpix


Up to the 17th century, Sรกmi society lived pretty much its own life, with little interference from the outside. But with the new borders of the Nordic countries, interference was inevitable. Historically, the language situation after interference can be divided into three distinct periods: a missionary phase; a harsh assimilation phase; and the present phase, with potential for integration and revitalisation.

The 17th and 18th centuries characterise the beginning of missionary activities, with some very positive projects for the benefit of the Sรกmi languages: teaching was conducted through the medium of Sรกmi and religious texts were translated into Sรกmi (the Lรฆstadian faith was introduced to Sรกpmi). From the middle of the 19th century however, a new policy based on national romanticism and ‘vulgar Darwinist ideas’ led to a harsh suppression of Sรกmi and the languages. The Norwegian Parliament and government pursued overtly a policy aiming at assimilating the whole Sรกmi population in Norway in the course of one generation. One can only say that this assimilation was very effective.

The “dark century,” 1870 to 1970 ca, had detrimental effects which can still be felt on both the languages themselves and on their status and speakers. In the coastal areas of Norway (and elsewhere), negative attitudes were transmitted by the Sรกmi themselves as a result of the policies, and inter-generational transfer of the language ceased in only a few generations.

Approx distribution of the languages/dialects today. The biggest blue area is mainly Troms and Finnmark.

New efforts in maintaining the languages were revived in the 1970s and still continues to this day. However, one of the most striking failures of the Sรกmi strategies is that the smaller Sรกmi languages (in numbers of speakers as listed above) have not seen success in improving their situation or even in defending their previous position. This failure is partly due to the fact that most speakers live apart from the larger Sรกmi groups. Dispersed among Norwegians, Swedes, Finns, and Russians, they do not have the demographic concentration that would enable them to use their language in the workplace and in official situations, including schools.

A language’s development, aging, and dying was considered “natural,” out of human reach. Languages were not killed, they “died of old age.” This agentless “model” for the prediction of the future of languages is still found among politicians, and legitimates their way of treating minority languages. The view that a minority is not autonomous and their own people, is devastating to that people’s culture and language.

In Norway, many municipalities with a Sรกmi population had developed procedures to give the Sรกmi some local linguistic rights. Yet, when the Sรกmi language law (in force since 1992) designated certain areas as belonging to the Sรกmi administrative districts, many of the municipalities left outside these official districts – often municipalities where the speakers of the smaller Sรกmi languages lived – withdrew services in Sรกmi, claiming that the law did not require them. Even today, there is strong resilience towards using official Sรกmi names in for example Norwegian towns and municipalities. This seems to stem from the view that Sรกmi people somehow belong to Norway, Sweden, Finland or other countries, and not to ourselves as our own people with our own unique language, history and culture.

South Sรกmi name for Bodรธ not welcome, 2011.

Currently, education, official documents and the media use Northern Sรกmi almost exclusively. This variant is used as a de facto โ€œofficial languageโ€ and the most significant efforts have gone into the development of this particular language, to the detriment of other Sรกmi languages.

Opinions also differ on whether the different versions of Sรกmi are actual languages or dialects, and how to designate their speakers. Here is a an example what ‘Have a good weekend’ is in 6 Sรกmi languages:

“Buorre vahkkoloahppa” – North Sami

“Buerie hรฏelje” – South Sami
ยซBuorre vahkkogiehtjeยป – Pite Sami
“Buorre vahkoloahppa” – Lule Sami
“ล iรตวฅวฅ neรคโ€™ttel-loopp” – Skolt/East Sami
“Pyeri oholoppรข” – Inare Sami

Eastern Sรกmi is the most different from the other languages.

Official Sรกpmi flag by artist Astrid Bรฅhl from Skibotn, Troms. Photo: ร˜rjan Bertelsen


Most Sรกmis today speak either Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, Russian, or even English as their everyday tongue (some migrated to the USA). Many are bilingual as well. Another factor is that some Sรกmis do not identify as Sรกmi or even know that they are due to the heavy assimilation of the past. They do not have any relationship with the language(s), and thus have lost their door to that culture.

Unlike the Indo-European languages spoken in most of Europe, the Sรกmi languages belong to the Uralic language family.
Photo I took at the main square in Tromsรธ 2019. Demonstration against violence and discrimination towards sรกmi.

South Sรกmi women and a man in Sweden. Colourised photo by Per Ivar Somby.
Many young Sรกmis today use the traditional handwoven wool shawl as an everyday garment in a more urban way in order to still show our Sรกmi identity, and belonging. (Photo by NatGeo of Jokkmokk Sรกmi Ella-Li Spik, herder).
Portrait of my relative Johannes from 6 generations ago. Wearing a pesk/finnmudd. Finnmark, Arctic Sรกpmi. I think we have the same nose, and eyebrows.  It was a black-white photo by S. Trombolt but Per I. Somby colorised it.

Norway, Sweden and Finland was in 2019 urged by the UN to increase public funding of Sรกmi parliaments as a response to the dire state of the disappearing languages. But even if the situation seems dire for many languages, it is still possible to revitalise them and start using them more often. Which languages survive and which do not ultimately seems to be a question of human will, not of any rules of nature.

I know that languages and cultures come and go, but I do feel it a great loss to lose what has been native for Sรกpmi for literally thousands of years, in only a few generations, when it can be perserved. I am happy that some schools and institutions are giving sรกmi language courses to anyone who wishes to learn it (although this is mostly in Northern sรกmi), and I do also wish that my children will learn it, which I never did due to the Norwegianization process in Finnmark. Language is a huge part of culture and when it’s taken away, people get confused about their own community, identify and sense of belonging, and even turn on each other as a result of feeling alienated.

The languages we learn from our parents shape our brains, literally!, and our worldview, how and who we relate to. The immense loss of language and culture for the Sรกmi people cannot be described as anything else but traumatic.

Me keeping warm and optimistic about the future of the languages and culture.



Thanks for reading! xx


Sources and texts used in this post:

https://site.uit.no/sagastallamin/

http://www.sorosoro.org/en/sami-languages/#:~:text=Yes.,beginning%20of%20the%2021st%20century.

https://blogs.loc.gov/international-collections/2019/12/will-the-sami-languages-disappear/

https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/saami-languages-present-and-future

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Pastel coloured skies

My favourite shawl. Head dress I made by hand.
A tantric Padmasambhava and Yeshe Tsogyal statue I helped repaint for a friend. The union of wisdom and compassion. Wish I had a similar one! Hopefully one day I will afford one ๐Ÿ™๐Ÿป

You know how you need to pretend to sleep in order to fall asleep? And at some point it just happens. Maybe it’s the same with other areas of life. Fake it till you make it, kind of, not in a bad way – just a dedicated one. I have noticed at least that the same applies to yoga and meditation sometimes. If I feel stressed, anxious and restless, I force myself to do the practice anyway. And at some level it still does its magic, of that I am 100% sure. In between the sleepless thoughts and rough emotions – they become like clouds in the pastel coloured sky.

Wishing all a lovely calm Polar night, and remember that it’s in darkness you shine the brightest ๐ŸŒŒโœจ๐ŸŽ†

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Gold hidden in its matrix

“You might ask, โ€ŸIf I have Buddha nature, why can’t I perceive it right now?โ€
It is because, like gold hidden in its matrix, that nature is hidden by our habits that we have accumulated since beginningless time. These habits have been created by our disturbing emotions and then reinforced by the actions that those disturbances have produced.”

~ Shechen Gyaltsab