By May full moon, the atmosphere pulses with the promise of monsoons. Branches of our mango tree hang low with fruit. Sometimes, we fill baskets full and distribute them to neighbors. It is also the celebration of the birth of Siddhartha, a wet and festive month, teaming with life. Though many of the rituals of Theravada Buddhism feels meaningless and empty to me, the magic of ritual comes alive at the temple on full moon days.
As I leave the world behind along with my Bata slippers at the entry, I find myself entering a portal, this timeless memory. In the midst of the scent of jasmines and plumeria mingling in the air, marigolds bursting with orange, petals glistening with dew, my father lights an entire box of incense sticks. He hands over a few sticks to me. I watch their tips glow orange and turn to a heap of feathery ash. My feet sink in powdery sand as the sweet scent of burning coconut oil wafts and the the evening is bathed in the amber glow of oil lamps.
I circle the Bo tree festooned in prayer flags, red, yellow, orange, blue... White clad women water its roots with their prayers and aspirations. My mother places a coin knotted in a white cloth in my palm to offer to the gods, for better grades, better life, and more riches. My fingers close around my mother’s longings tied in a knot.
In these moments, Siddhartha’s journey becomes a central theme. His life has seeped into mine through our collective membrane. Only in hindsight do I see the connections. He carries the weight of his disillusionment into the heart of the forest, a despair born of a materialistic and hedonistic culture, a depraved culture. It speaks volumes to me through the darkened hallways of time. I feel it nudging me inward. That same gloom inspires a holy loneliness in me. It is a loneliness that articulates the alienation I feel from the mainstream culture of my time, a ravenous insatiable creature. I feel that depression congeal, fester and ooze into my life, coloring it in melancholy.
Siddhartha finds the fullness of his heart under a Bo tree. I find the living planet conversing with me. Now, mine is in the ebb and flow of breath, a desert scattered with sage brush, bottle green juniper shrubs rising up to meet a cerulean sky, a snow capped mountainous horizon, wind caressing my hair like tender fingers and the sun kissing my head.
On hindsight, I understand Siddhartha’s gratitude towards a Bo tree for reflecting his sentience back, for re-membering him back to wholeness. It is in mother nature’s bosom, I am made whole and despair becomes the doorway to the Divine, a direct line from my heart to the ears of the Divine. I am not here to save nature. She is here for me, for us.
I stand under a crowd of juniper shrubs and gaze up at the unblemished sky. An eagle glides effortlessly like a paper airplane. I sense the presence of Divine company and my eyes swim in tears of gratitude.
