Sitting bones heavy
Brother, baby, brother – breath
Karmic beaded path
With a loosely coiled mala in hand, I recite the mantra, “Om Namah Shivaya.” Rudraksha and glass beads alternate along the beaded path… forming a meditative conveyor belt moving through my thumb and index finger. I mindfully transition from bumpy wooden beads to round crystals. There’s 108 beads. Each one is matched with a breath and recitation of the sacred mantra. Repeating the mantra quiets my mind but the engine still hums. I sit tonight recalling many things.
Each rudraksha bead bears five main crevices and many bumps that form a resemblance to the human brain. My heart sinks lower and lower toward my stomach every time I contemplate this analogy. I think about my brother lying alone in a hospital bed tonight praying that he doesn’t have a blood clot in his brain. John’s death still throbs in his heart. And now, an unexplainable throbbing in his head. Our hearts hurt. Our minds heavy. He lies in Louisiana while I sit in Florida. We are both blanketed by indifferent, dark skies tonight.
A stick of nag champa burns…smoky swirls snake off a glowing red tip. Cool air enters from the cracked bedroom window. The corner of my eyes catch the rhythmic flicker of a candle. The air is sweetened from the ashen incense and vanilla amber scented candle.
The wooden beads bring thoughts of my brothers, Bryan and John.
The crystal beads cradle the recent memory of holding a newborn child. My heels click and echoe down the hospital hallway. I observe pre-occupied people in scrubs, dimly lit rooms with drawn curtains and droning television sets. I had been down this hallway before… finding the hospital rooms for my grandmother who died of renal failure… then my brother who lost his life to liver cancer.
My hands warm from cupping the nonfat chai tea latte from Starbucks. I hear the sweet murmurings of a newborn mother and child cooing at one another. My eyes water as the warmth travels steadily from my hands to my heart. I stand waiting outside the doorway until my friend calls for me to enter.
In the room, an empty wooden crib stands perpendicular to a bent hospital bed. Both are empty. The mother and her duckling sit swaying in a nearby rocking chair. For ten months, they rested in one body. Now they are two souls connecting innocently and openly before my eyes.
I hold her and notice how developed her finger nails are. She grips my finger with surprising strength. Her purity cleanses me. Her potential is so clear. Her consciousness untainted; she trusts with her entire being. Swathed in my arms was a two day old soul and the closest thing to God I had ever held.
A few feet away is the empty hospital bed. In the back of my head sits memories of doing breathing exercises with John. I remember the call and response fashion to conducting shavasana.
“Begin with your toes,” I softly instructed. “Trace the breath to your knees…up your thighs to your hips. Follow the side ribs out to your arms to the tip of your fingers.”
At this point John would clench his fists open and close.
“Now travel back up the arms to the sternum. Breathe up and out through the crown of your head.”
I remember reading a recent chapter from Mitch Albom’s new book, “have a little faith,” where he visits his rabbi in the hospital and asks for the secret to happiness. The rabbi is about to answer when his attention is diverted to an infant crying in the hallway. The baby’s squeal reshapes his response.
“When a baby comes into the world, its hands are clenched right? Why?”
After a pregnant pause, the Reb continues.
“Because a baby, not knowing any better, wants to grab everything to say, ‘the whole world is mine.’ But when an old person dies, how does he do so? With his hands open. Why? Because he has learned the lesson. We can take nothing with us.”
I speak to Bryan today, I ask if he could clench his fists open and close. He said yes. We do breathing exercises over the phone. Breathe in… clench. Breathe out… open.
Open and close. Rough and clear. Bead to bead, I travel along many breaths and thoughts… brother to baby to brother… hospital bed to hospital bed… breathe to breathe… all backed by the mantra… tracing my karma as my fingers pace along the beaded path.
Just as I begin to weep, I remember how I was once a dying infant. I am so sick with high fevers at Nong Khai refugee camp that my hair falls out and my mother can barely hold me as my body is scorching. My father grows desperate and begins to hear the call of death. He bribes Thai guards into granting him a fake ID card. One fateful night, he leaves the camp and visits the abbot of a nearby temple. The head monk hands him an herbal remedy. This is how I am still sitting tonight.
We have all been there… cradled in the arms of the universe… able to trust completely with every fiber of our being… confidently clenching life. It is our beginning and ending point. Such is the karmic beaded path.
