There are times my brain goes so far afield that it can't
hear me whistling when it's time to go home.
After thinking all day about work, reminiscing about people I've known, wondering
about people I've never met, then rethinking
about work - my mind begs for a little off-leash time. It convinces me that the elusive what's-for-dinner is hiding just over
the closest hill.
Fine, I say, but don't be gone long.
My mind fully
intends to come right back when it scampers away, but something fuzzy, dressed
in a celebrity-news-flash outfit, inevitably
pops up on a distant hill - and the chase is on. Soon I'm trying in vain to remember the
approximate direction it first bolted, and whistling madly to myself.
There are two sure-fire ways of coaxing my thoughts back
into my head: I can sleep (even the most
garden variety idea cannot resist an empty dream field), or I can write. Those thoughts that were so far away - sniffing out two-ingredient recipes - zoom back to criticize my story arcs
every single time.
In this week's class, Making
a Mala, I discovered a third way to bring them back.
A mala is a string
of 109 beads used for sending good vibes into the world. Kind of like prayer flags, but without the
frostbitten sherpas. It works great to
corral your thoughts by distracting them from that fuzzy whatever peeking over the next hill.
Here's how it works:
Grasp the mala without letting
your pointer finger get involved.
(Hindus call that your "ego finger" since it points out faults
in others.) Now touch each bead with
your thumb as you recite your favorite mantra.
Pull the bead over your middle finger to bring up the next bead. Repeat until you've sent out 109 bits of love.
Our teacher explained that while mala began in the Hindu tradition, there are several cultures that
use strings of beads for meditation. But
unlike some groups that repeat self-flagellating phrases pertaining to death
and sin, mala focuses on comforting
others.
No asking for a BMW convertible. (Just an example.)
I messed up while constructing my mala - it has an extra bead.
My mind was off chasing fuzzy playoff-season geese when the teacher gave
specifics, so I missed the part about 108 similar beads joined by a different guru bead just above the tassel. The guru
bead tells you that you've reached the end of the string - time to flip the mala and start over.
We learned that guru actually
means 'teacher,' but since I thought it meant 'super-smart expert,' my mind ran
to rifle through my memory bank for recent thoughts on experts. Tossing aside ancient information on Ben Bernanke
and Stephen Hawking, it finally sauntered back empty-handed in time to
misinform me that the mala needed 109
beads - plus the guru.
It's been wrong before.
In fact, the first thing I prayed for after tying super-tight tassel
knots on my defective mala was to
stop being so hard on my mind when it goofs up.
Also, to forgive my fingers - they messed up quite a few of the 110 knots I tied between beads.
My Catholic friend Anne was born the Middle Child of 13 kids. With six older siblings and six younger, she
has some real you-should-write-a-book
memories. My eyes still bug out when my mind wanders up to one of those stories.
Before that 13th child was grown, Anne's mother had burned
through several rosaries. The problem
wasn't broken strings - it was the constant rubbing that had worn the little
jewel thingies completely away. The
rosary gave her mind a safe place to hide in exchange for all that attention.
Anne's parents knelt by their bed and prayed for a child
every night - starting with their wedding night and ending with the trip to the
hospital for Mary's birth nine months later.
After the honeymoon phase, Anne's mother used that rosary for every
disaster from running low on peanut butter for each school morning's 20
sandwiches (the boys got two), to those awful things that can only happen when
a station wagon packed with that many people takes a 'vacation.'
Theresa smashes John's hand through the rag wringer at a gas
station in Nevada? Rosary time. Flat tire in the heart of Mormon
country? Bust out the beads. Anne's mother had either become a guru of focused concentration, or her
mind was so far gone that her fingers just took over as teeny co-pilots until Captain
Brain had revived herself enough to take the wheel.
Wow. Where do these analogies come from? I seems somebody's
mind has been rummaging through the Suspenseful Movie Plots cabinet again....
Anne's mother was off limits when the beads were out, so the
older kids became gurus at raising
little ones. I wonder if she ever went
off-script, sneaking in requests that her husband develop a passionate interest
in something else. Anything else.
Like a BMW convertible, perhaps.
Our teacher practices patience by taking her mala to the DMV when she renews her
driver's license, but I'm not ready for that step. Until I get better with mala rules, I'm afraid my guru
bead might teach the back of somebody's head a lesson approximately two hours
into the wait.
I need to be more like Heifi, surrendering totally to the calming effect of the
mala.
Lola trades her flat rabbit for the beads whenever she's super
stressed.
So far, my meditation consists of trying to lose track of
the bead numbers so I can be real surprised when the guru bead shows up. I'll
keep working on it because I love surprises so much, but I know I'm a hopeless
'counter.'
Maybe I should start small - with a prayer of gratitude for
numbers, then move on to being thankful for words, and eventually get around to
something more globally specific. When I
start with the global part, I imagine
the whole planet having clean water.
That leads to thoughts of world peace, which morphs into millions of
people smiling in the sun, followed by zillions of children caught up in bear
hugs - and my mind is off to the races once more.
My mala sessions
up to this point have involved an awful lot of whistling.
(Ever wish you could
lose your sweet tooth? No, you
don't. Come back next Friday for
"Mexican Sweets" and learn about International YUM.)
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