Namasté, all,

I know that there is a taboo against using the left hand in spiritual activities because of Indian cultural practice, i.e. use of the left as the "washroom hand," and thus never touching other people or sacred items with that hand.

But I'd like to know if there is a specific spiritual or magical significance to avoiding the left hand - which is, in my case, my dominant hand, and the only one with coordination, apparently.

While I would never go to temple and do everything with the "wrong" side, I'm getting awfully tired of dropping, dribbling, and dripping things on my floor during my home pūjās. Last week, my hand shook at just the wrong time, and there went a special sweet, tumbling right off of the offering-plate! After more than a year of practice, I'm still clumsy, and it's annoying.

Obviously, I don't live in India, and we don't have the same practices and hand associations here in the West. I'm thinking that if I could understand other reasons behind the tradition, it might be less frustrating to deal with clumsy moments? Maybe?

Feel free to invent an amusing story or fascinating myth, if no references immediately come to mind. My motivation technically doesn't need to be based in fact.

Indraneela
===

Oṁ Indrāya Namaḥ.
Oṁ Namaḥ Śivāya.