I've been thinking about a lot of little things this holiday season. Mostly I've been trying to give my attention to the things I'm doing, "be there", and enjoy the meaningfulness.
I was thinking about how wrapping gifts is kind of like an active meditation. The joy of giving is a huge component of the holiday spirit, and to maximize that pleasure it's fun to really be mindful of the action of wrapping and preparing gifts. Then I started thinking of the 64 arts of the Kama Sutra, and how wrapping gifts is like practicing those arts. Anyway, here's the list of arts:
Singing
Playing on musical instruments
Dancing
Union of dancing, singing, and playing instrumental music
Writing and drawing
Tattooing
Arraying and adorning an idol with rice and flowers
Spreading and arranging beds or couches of flowers, or flowers upon the ground
Colouring the teeth, garments, hair, nails and bodies, i.e. staining, dyeing, colouring and painting the same
Fixing stained glass into a floor
The art of making beds, and spreading out carpets and cushions for reclining
Playing on musical glasses filled with water
Storing and accumulating water in aqueducts, cisterns and reservoirs
Picture making, trimming and decorating
Stringing of rosaries, necklaces, garlands and wreaths
Binding of turbans and chaplets, and making crests and top-knots of flowers
Scenic representations, stage playing Art of making ear ornaments Art of preparing perfumes and odours
Proper disposition of jewels and decorations, and adornment in dress
Magic or sorcery
Quickness of hand or manual skill
Culinary art, i.e. cooking and cookery
Making lemonades, sherbets, acidulated drinks, and spirituous extracts with proper flavour and colour
Tailor's work and sewing
Making parrots, flowers, tufts, tassels, bunches, bosses, knobs, etc., out of yarn or thread
Solution of riddles, enigmas, covert speeches, verbal puzzles and enigmatical questions
A game, which consisted in repeating verses, and as one person finished, another person had to commence at once, repeating another verse, beginning with the same letter with which the last speaker's verse ended, whoever failed to repeat was considered to have lost, and to be subject to pay a forfeit or stake of some kind
The art of mimicry or imitation
Reading, including chanting and intoning
Study of sentences difficult to pronounce. It is played as a game chiefly by women, and children and consists of a difficult sentence being given, and when repeated quickly, the words are often transposed or badly pronounced
Practice with sword, single stick, quarter staff and bow and arrow
Drawing inferences, reasoning or inferring
Carpentry, or the work of a carpenter
Architecture, or the art of building
Knowledge about gold and silver coins, and jewels and gems
Chemistry and mineralogy
Colouring jewels, gems and beads
Knowledge of mines and quarries
Gardening; knowledge of treating the diseases of trees and plants, of nourishing them, and determining their ages
Art of cock fighting, quail fighting and ram fighting
Art of teaching parrots and starlings to speak
Art of applying perfumed ointments to the body, and of dressing the hair with unguents and perfumes and braiding it
The art of understanding writing in cypher, and the writing of words in a peculiar way
The art of speaking by changing the forms of words. It is of various kinds. Some speak by changing the beginning and end of words, others by adding unnecessary letters between every syllable of a word, and so on
Knowledge of language and of the vernacular dialects
Art of making flower carriages
Art of framing mystical diagrams, of addressing spells and charms, and binding armlets
Mental exercises, such as completing stanzas or verses on receiving a part of them; or supplying one, two or three lines when the remaining lines are given indiscriminately from different verses, so as to make the whole an entire verse with regard to its meaning; or arranging the words of a verse written irregularly by separating the vowels from the consonants, or leaving them out altogether; or putting into verse or prose sentences represented by signs or symbols. There are many other such exercises.
Composing poems
Knowledge of dictionaries and vocabularies
Knowledge of ways of changing and disguising the appearance of persons
Knowledge of the art of changing the appearance of things, such as making cotton to appear as silk, coarse and common things to appear as fine and good
Various ways of gambling
Art of obtaining possession of the property of others by means of muntras or incantations
Skill in youthful sports
Knowledge of the rules of society, and of how to pay respect and compliments to others
Knowledge of the art of war, of arms, of armies, etc.
Knowledge of gymnastics
Art of knowing the character of a man from his features
Knowledge of scanning or constructing verses
Arithmetical recreations
Making artificial flowers
Making figures and images in clay
Chris
