Earlier this week, I found myself in my cubicle at work, tussling with a brown string tied around my left wrist. This string is my protection cord, which my dharma buddy C had tied around my wrist just a few weeks ago during the Seattle Insight Meditation Society's annual refuge vows ceremony. During that ceremony, the sangha members gather together, chant in Pali the commitment to take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma (the "truth of what is"), and the Sangha (the community of Buddhists), then tie protection cords around each others' wrists. The cords serve to remind us of the vows we made until, impermanent as all things, they finally wear off our wrists and must be discarded.

This year, C remembered my story about the first time I took refuge vows with the sangha a few years ago. It happened that I had sat in an area surrounded by couples, so when the time came to tie refuge cords around each others' wrists, everyone around me turned away from me and towards their partners, leaving me feeling more than a little forlorn as they happily tied cords around each others' wrists and I was left to my own devices. This year, C kindly made sure to be sitting next to me, ready to tie on my cord--and such gratitude I feel for her compassionate act!

So why, then, was I trying so hard to wriggle this very special cord--sign of a friend's caring suppport as well as my spiritual commitment--off my wrist? The problem was that I'd followed a whim, asking C to tie my cord around my left wrist--my "hand of power" as I had joked, because I'm left-handed. But now I was looking ahead to a weekend receiving teachings from Younge Khachab Rinpoche, a Tibetan teacher. I realized that a refuge cord on my left wrist would likely look disrespectful to someone from a part of the world where the left hand is reserved for toilet activities and a protection cord would without question be tied around the right wrist.

So I tugged, wriggled, and fussed for a few more minutes, and to my delight was able to get the cord off my left wrist and onto my right. Now I was nearly presentable enough to be in the same room with Rinpoche. Only one thing was still lacking: I felt a strong call to polish up my Tibetan etiquette. In two previous weekends with Rinpoche, I'd seen his experienced students perform prostrations when entering and exiting the teaching hall. I hadn't known how to do those prostrations, and had settled for a Japanese-style pressing of my palms in front of my heart, hoping that I wasn't being terribly disrespectful. This time, I wanted to be better prepared to avoid a cross-cultural gaffe. So this morning, I googled for instructions for properly honoring Tibetan lamas, and found some detailed, step-by-step guidance. I practiced bowing to my laptop until I felt that I had memorized the steps. Now I was ready!

Earlier this evening, I took a seat in the meditation hall, and waited with the other students for Rinpoche to enter the room, feeling far more confident than last time. When he did, we all rose and began to bow in near-unison. Perhaps I wasn't the only one who had been googling etiquette rules. But our formality proved to be over-the-top for Rinpoche. With an eloquent wave of his hand and a gently humorous expression, he indicated that we should just sit down and make ourselves comfortable. To press his point home, he sat himself down, picked up a meditation cushion, and balanced it on his head, grinning, as we settled ourselves.

And thus was an ancient teaching conveyed to us, one that must have been passed down century after century by one great lama after another, perhaps starting with Padmasambhava himself: Don't get your knickers in a knot about unimportant things.