Buddha's Shoulders

Invisible above all stars, the wheel
of day and night, which needs not thy belief.
Paradise Lost, 8.135-136

At the threshold of every room in a Buddhist temple is a doorsill half as high as a child's leg. To step on the sill is forbidden.

As a child, when I tried to prostrate before the statues, I would topple over onto the gold-threaded cushions. The statues of bodhisattvas and buddhas elaborately painted in brilliant colors towered all around me. Between the shifting shadows cast by wooden beams and the musty smell of incense, the statues' bright colors became murky, and the expressions meant to invoke awe and peace turned into scowls.

I have never been to the same temple twice. Every time we arrive at a new city, my parents take me to the local temple once. We go up and down the mountains in four hours and forget faith until the next city.

Now five-foot-seven, I step over the doorsill holding incense. The smoke floats back at me in a meandering trail. I wonder if the soot will stain my white clothes. I gently bow to the four cardinal directions: I tap the door knocker on the door of the Bodhis and Buddhas and let them know I'm here. I kneel on the gold cushions.

Anybody there? Anybody listening? I often doubt in the back of my mind while my eyes are closed and my torso rocks up and down between prostration and kneeling. I ask Wenshu Bodhi for good grades in school. I ask Kuanyin Bodhi for good health for my family. I ask Puxian Bodhi to guide my morals and allow me to fulfill my wishes. I am told that, when I have no particular needs, I ought to pray to my patron Bodhi, the thousand-handed Kuanyin, for her continued protection. I do.

Prostration is compact. Prostration makes me feel small. These days I do not bend fully. In my half-bend my forehead does not touch the grimy, sweat-oiled cushion but instead hovers half an inch above it, the space between evidence of not enough devotion.

My mother tells me the statues are specially carved and painted so that, no matter where you stand in the temple, the statues' eyes always seem to be gazing at you. What's more, my mother says, if you're prostrating, their gazes will look merciful, but if you're not prostrating or prostrating wrong, their gazes will be stern. I wonder who makes these statues people take for divinity and who repaints and repairs them when the paint fades and the wood rots. Are they then haunted with a sense of the un-sacred, like when my great-grandfather releases chickens to graze his field laden with fallen, rotting fruit he didn't have time to pick? Or perhaps the paint and wood has sacred magic too. I've never found out whether my mother's words are true. In my wrong prostrations I never dare to look up and see what the Buddha thinks of me.

As my incense burns, the ashes at the top wobble until, under its own weight, the thin stick of ashes cracks and crumbles like falling bricks, smashed on my hand. Briefly, as the segments begin to topple over, I see in the ashes a finger bending, a figure prostrating. I hiss and shake the hot sting off my hands, realizing that the incense has dangerously shortened. I quickly finish my prayers and hurry to the incense brazier, where everyone sticks what remains of their incense and lets it burn out. The brazier is always full, and the incense sticks protruding out of it look like petals on the lotus Kuanyin Bodhi rides. I find a safe spot to stick my incense without burning myself on the falling ash-fingers all around and delicately pin my incense there, a little crooked because I'm out of practice.

I imagine all the incense-petals of the incense-lotus burning out and falling down. They will huddle and form a gentle mound, like a mound of freshly harvested grains. I am told that, every night, the monks come and clean out the brazier, dumping all the holy ashes out. Out where? And how does the first suppliant of the day erect their incense upright on the cold metal of the brazier, with no ashes to stick it into? A wave of morning suppliants must let their incense fall over like eroded tombstones, then, for those who come later to have the ash-foundation to stick their incense into. Or perhaps the monks don't dump all of the brazier out but instead leave a light layer of the previous day's incense? Well then, how long will my holy ashes last in the brazier? Will my ashes, wanting in devotion, spring away from the brazier at the first chance like my forehead away from the gold-thread cushion? The first question too remains: where do my holy ashes go? Do the monks dump the ashes out in the river or scatter the ashes downhill? Visions or maybe premonitions of my soul as the holy ashes: my ashes, muddying the clear springwater, running it foul, and making it dull and inscrutable and sacred. My ashes, scattered by wind downhill like pollen; suppliants, unknowing, step it into the side of the mountain as they trek up to where I just left. My ashes, baked dry by the sun and then hungrily guzzling the rain over and over as the mountain engorges with the heavy fever of the other ashes falling too, itself a kind of misty monsoon rain.

If I may return to the doorsill: when I sat on one once as a very small child worn out by the heavy, damp temple air, my father gently reprimanded me and raised me up high so I could sit on his shoulders. My mother told me that we always step over the doorsill because it represents Buddha's forehead and shoulders, which we must not dirty with the soles of our shoes. My father carried me into the temple, bending like a brief static at the doorway so I wouldn't hit my head on the wooden doorframe. Up so high, I could almost come face to face with Buddha's statue. I stared long at Buddha's eyes, but I don't recall whether they were kind or harsh at a child perched as high as the sparrows nesting on temple beams.

Soon, it was my father's turn to pray. He set me down, and, suddenly, I was taller than my prostrating father. I could hear my father praying for his father and mother. I looked up again at Buddha, now so far away. I don't remember Buddha's gaze. In the musty darkness of the temple, I thought I saw Buddha's eyes closed in peace, maybe listening, maybe not.