Buddha
It came from a run-down garden shop selling hundreds of statues in a vacant field beside a ramshackle frame house now long since razed to make room for upscale condominiums. It was humbly crafted of poured concrete, covered with a slip of pale gray plaster to resemble a miniature version of the great Buddha at Kamakura: legs folded, eyes closed, its hands a mudra of peaceful meditation. We placed it at our front doorway under a potted camellia that soon passed away but the Buddha endured, seated atop the hidden house key secured for our children. Over the years we have shaded him with flowering maple, lobelia, bonsai pine, placed a series of offerings in his quiet cupped hands-- a smooth black river pebble from Mexico, a shard of obsidian from Yosemite, a crystal from our new age daughter, a bleached coral from the Great Barrier reef, in June a single perfect crimson rose, in fall a tiny orange gourd, at Christmas a sprig of holly. Now forty years later he has come with us to our retirement home where he resides in the front garden under a rock wall studded with black beach pebbles he once held, surrounded by local grasses and manzanitas. His plaster coat has long since washed away by wind and rain. He now rests, unadorned, himself, his cupped hands empty, open to receive. When I have passed to stardust, air, and earth, he will remain, gradually losing his own distinctive form, becoming once again pure mass, so passersby will not even see that he abides A true Buddha, at peace. Lynn Sargent De Jonghe, 2019, 2021 |