What is the significance of the Bhumisparsha Mudra?
The ascetic Gautama (A Prince of one of the Kingdoms in India and before he became enlightened and known as Buddha Sakyamuni) who, after renouncing his princely life, realised that meditative dhyana was the right path to awakening. He discovered “the Middle Way”—a path of moderation away from the extremes of self-indulgence and self-mortification. After his break with asceticism, He sat down to meditate with the determination not to get up until full awakening had been reached.
Thus, he sat for seven days under the bodhi tree as he continued to meditate and contemplated the various aspects of the Dharma such as Dependent Origination, the Five Spiritual Faculties and Suffering.
Some legendary biographies depict an attempt by Mara, the Lord of the desire realm, to prevent the Gautama’s nirvana. He did so by sending his daughters to seduce Gautama, by asserting his superiority and by assaulting him with armies of monsters. However Gautama was unfazed and called on the earth as witness to his victory over the seductive forces of illusion, by touching the ground. This gave the Bhumisparsha mudra its significance right till today.
Gautama thus became known as the Buddha or “Awakened One”. The title indicates that unlike most people who are “asleep”, a Buddha is understood as having “woken up” to the true nature of reality and sees the world ‘as it is’. A Buddha has achieved liberation, also called Nirvana, which is seen as the extinguishing of the “fires” of desire, hatred, and ignorance, that keep the cycle of suffering and rebirth going.