The Buddah's nipple

A Throwback Thursday post. Where I meditate on golden nipples. As one does.

The Buddha’s nipple

It is the second day of my writing meditation retreat and I have learned three important lessons. The first is that we can begin as many times as we need to. The second is that trying to write everything is trying to please everyone and actually saying nothing to anyone. Or something. The third is that I want a heated towel warmer.

Here at the buddhist retreat I have found a material good to covet. I can let go of this coveting. And I will. By buying one for myself.

I am walking the mountain path to the Great Stupa which is lined with reverse footprints. The frozen ground is clear and snow has filled the impressions that feet made on the earth in softer times. Out instructor intoned that this place is steeped in Dharama. Here it looks like someone might have stepped in Dharma.

I pause at a rough wooden bench for a moment of meditation. Feeling breath, labeling thoughts without judgment. This is what it sounds like:

My eyeballs are dry. Thinking. Thinking is a verb. Thinking. But here it is a noun. Thinking. So it is a gerund.

Thinking thinking thinking. Do verbs want to be nouns? People want nouns to be verbs. Like adulting or Fridaying. Ick. Wait, I shouldn’t be thinking ick. I shouldn’t be thinking shouldn’t. I shouldn’t be thinking. Thinking. My eyeballs are going to be gray raisins. Thinking thinking thinking. I’ll just add in a few extra thinkings to plan ahead for my next thoughts. But the point of this is not to plan ahead. Thinking. Wait? Is that one of the ones I already had banked? Thinking. One extra can’t hurt.

This morning our teacher told us that thoughts are famously compared to clouds. Famously? Is that her way of avoiding naming the source? I can use that in the future when I forget whose words I am using. Fourth thing learned. She continues: clouds are like thoughts. None ever stay in place for long. We must let them go. Today, she tells us, we are the sky, not the clouds.

The sky is cloudless when I arrive at the Stupa.

We have been invited to engage with the shrine however we wish. We can bow or not, we can see it as our teacher, or not. Most of all we can see it as a reflection of ourselves. Our highest and best selves.

I think of real estate listings that encourage buyers to tear down right sized houses on generous lots because the “highest and best use” is a four lot subdivision. These houses will be huge, overly ornate, with ceilings too high for people to feel like humans. 

This great Stupa would be the house of my nightmares. The floors are many colors of marble in a variety of patterns, the walls and ceilings are painted in garish colors. Niches are filled with art and flowers and requests for donation. And butterscotch candies which may have some meaning or may not.

Now I am thinking (thinking) about “may or may not.” Doesn’t “may” already have the “not” included in it? Have I been wasting two words for endless lifetimes? If there are endless lifetimes is there such a thing as wasting time? There may be. Or there may not.

After taking in his surroundings I inspect the enormous Buddha in front of me. He is golden. His eyes are cast down and softly open in the manner that I have been practicing for two days making eyeball raisins. And his nipple is out of place. People enter and exit with placid faces and fluid movements. I try not to catch anyone’s eye and gesture up at his nipple. They must notice it too? I take a seat on a cushion and straighten my back. Before I  settle and soften my gaze I peek up again. His nipple is way too high.

There are orange slips of paper and stubby pencils for us to leave notes for the Buddha. “In your next beginning may your nipple be aligned like your spine.” I write. I step into the sun, back on the path, trying not to step in any more Dharma on my way down.