The Buddha In Me Meets The Buddha In You…
Nam myoho renge kyo…Nam myoho renge kyo…nam myoho …as this voice grew fainter and louder in equal intervals I felt the laws of acoustics and I felt the wind, which otherwise I would have missed to feel if not for the chanting. There was a force in the voice. It rooted things up, it bound things up, it made you heavy, it made you fly, it anchored you, and it untangled your chains ,bizarrely simultaneously…renge kyo…Nam myoho…
Life had begun to enumerate her profound meanings often accompanied with delightful bounty. Things back then were just perfect, scarily perfect. I had adopted a baby girl. That was my dream and she lived like a princess. All she had to do is ask, and she would get it. There was dearth of nothing. So much so that even the best cynic would fail in his purpose of identifying a flaw. We had forgotten to cry, we learnt the new ways of laughing. There was joy unlimited.
As it was perfect it was scary. They say when things are going all perfect you really are going the wrong way. Soon it would end, I knew it. My child would be alone and they would chain me in their prison forever. I had committed a sin and I agree the law is above all.
She never came to meet me when I was in prison. Till today I consoled myself that she is still a little kid and perhaps they sent her back to the orphanage or she might have got new parents who aren’t imprisoned…But what if she herself is imprisoned in the open society owing to her mother’s crime? It was not easy, I was locked to death and the sooner I died the sooner they would release me, albeit the colder me…I agree I had done horrible things in my life but then I loved my child so much, that was nothing fake…
One night I came to know that she was doing well at the orphanage but now she was not an inmate, she was a teacher there…oh! how I taught her the ABCs and how she dressed up like Cinderella! But I had killed Cinderella’s dad…
My corner of the prison was quite spacious and they allowed you to walk around. One fine morning after 19 long years they decided to shift me to another cellar, a harsher and a meaner one…this perhaps was the sign that justice was being delivered. I maintained throughout that I deserved it.
I killed her father….my husband…
The floor was grey in colour, similar to that of freshly mixed cement except for the fresh colour nothing else was even remotely close to fresh. The walls were black with pieces of life that lived their painted on them; there were some hieroglyphics but all divulged pain and suffering. They didn’t give you pen or paper, you were the paper and your fate would scribble on you. There was one window with steel mesh and cast rods. I found an interesting pun there, windows and pains, mesh and mess. I giggled to(at) myself.
She taught children poetry and music I was told. I always knew she could sing well. She had finished her piano lessons that night and I told to him how beautiful our daughter was…I trusted him, not his intentions
Just the first morning in the wet cement room (I had assigned this new name to my new work place, for some amusement) I heard some faint but soothing voices, sounded like some mantra. I had no energy to jump and look outside the window…just then as if some realization had passed through me I began to cry loudly…The louder I cried, the louder the chanting got and soon my cries amalgamated into chanting and I fell asleep.
He had adopted her to sell her not to love her…I stabbed him to death…
The chanting grew louder and fainter and with the rhythm my day would pass. I could identify some voices; some new voices, some old, some familiar voices. I needed not to know if it was some monastery or some school, some hippy club or even a mental asylum. I needed not to know if they were mantras at all in the first place .Nam myoho renge kyo…with every word a new realization came through the window, it said “forgive him” and I forgave him. I silently apologized to her and hoped that she forgave me too.
forgive….Nam myoho renge kyo…
It was 35 years and she had come to see me for the very first time…
I saw her, she saw me, she stood there and continued to see me; I was sleeping on the floor, for a long time…
“What the hell, why is she not moving? “She asked the guard!
The guard was baffled, I was there, but I wasn’t there.
Over the years the walls had painted themselves white and the cellar had enough light of its own that it needed no more windows…a light of awareness had spread around that made me so light I could pass through anything and then my body meant nothing, it served its purpose and I was free. All she could see was the happiest corpse ever,yet she was unaware of it…
Nam myoho renge kyo… she heard it from the window and collapsed on the floor. All these years her Daimoku group chanting was happening outside this prison and she never came to see her mother? She thought she would forgive her mother today but she realized how she was herself a victim. She wept incessantly at my dead body holding my dead hand. I held her tight too…she begged for forgiveness
forgave…Nam myoho renge kyo…
Dear, the Buddha in me has just met the Buddha in you, what more could I ask for? I couldn’t speak this out to her, but I knew I conveyed it to her and I think she heard it
. Nam myoho renge kyo..nam myoho….
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