Bodhisattvas in Love

The spring farmyard is an Indian tapestry,
“Bodhisattvas in Love.” Yesterday, I looked out the kitchen window to see all three adult peacocks fanning spectacular trains, shaking feathery castanets, and sending their “Hey! Hey!” mating song out across the prairie. Even last summer’s three baby boys were strutting, fanning stubby feathered tails like little turkeys, sans the trains they won’t grow until their third year.

I’m so fascinated by the peaflock that I sometimes get stuck in a crazy Twilight [ornith]Zone—I’ll suddenly discover that hours have passed, and I’ve been leaning on a shed wall, staring mutely, every muscle slack, drooling the whole time. It could be a brain anomaly, but I think it’s these birds…what IS it about these birds?

I don’t think it’s the Greek thing. Hera chopped off Argus’ many-eyed head and stuck it on a peacock tail. No, the decapitation image doesn’t do much for me, and the “thousand eyes watching” is right up there on the creepiness scale.

I don’t think it’s the Muslim thing, where the eyes of the peacock’s train represent the stars. I like the celestial symbolism, but I’m just not making the eye/star connection.

Peacocks represent immortality in the Christian tradition and are sometimes associated with the Phoenix. I like this one—a gorgeous bird AND fire—but I’m troubled by the vague association without explanation.

Maybe it's the Buddhist thing. Because peacocks can eat poisonous plants without harm, Buddhists say they represent the wisdom and immortality of the bodhisattvas, enlightened beings who skip Nirvana in order to stick around and help out unenlightened humans.

Yeah. I like this one. So I have 13 bodhisattvas releasing me daily, temporarily, from the heaviness of living—stress, worry (kids, the economy, the planet, how to make a greywater recycling setup out of fishline and a garden hose), the incessant tick-tick-ticking of my demon companion Time, the deep bruise of losing friends & family. Let go. Walking around the farmyard among the peafowl, I transcend all that in brief, illuminated moments of merely being. And drooling.