Mudrā (ritual gesture)

A mudrā is a symbolic hand-gesture or "seal" (the Sanskrit word mudrā literally means a seal or stamp). In Buddhist art and ritual, the position of a figure's hands is a kind of silent language: each gesture expresses an inner quality or marks a moment in the story. When you look at a statue of the Buddha, his hands are almost never random. They are speaking.

A few gestures recur so often that they are easy to learn. An open palm raised outward means "do not be afraid" (the gesture of fearlessness). A downward, open palm means "giving" or generosity. Both hands held at the chest, fingertips curled into small circles, means "teaching"—the moment the Buddha set the wheel of his teaching turning. A right hand reaching down to touch the earth recalls the night of his awakening: challenged to prove his worthiness, he called the earth itself to witness. Hands resting one atop the other in the lap, palms up, signal deep meditation.

It is worth knowing that this gesture-language is not uniquely Buddhist. It is pan-Indian, shared with Hindu sacred imagery and with classical Indian dance, where dancers tell whole stories through the hands. Buddhism inherited this common vocabulary and elaborated it—especially in the rich imagery of the Mahāyāna traditions (the "Great Vehicle," a later, expansive current of Buddhism) and in the rituals of tantra, a still later esoteric stream of practice. There, forming a mudrā with the hands becomes part of meditation itself: a way of using the body to express and reinforce the awakened quality the mind is cultivating.