Catvari

For many years, in the earliest days of my practice, I breathed and stretched in the dark alongside many beautiful and hard-working yogis at a studio where we had to sign our names on a piece of paper left at the door of our practice room, the rest of the studio not being open at that hour. Students, we were, of a different classroom, signing the attendance sheet, attesting to our presence. Bearing witness, silently, and in ink, to our commitment to ourselves, making our way into our place in the lineage and the world.

A pattern began to emerge, I noted, with respect to this sheet where we were to write our names. Often, the lines were numbered, and on these occasions, the line for student number four was always left blank. From time to time, I took that open spot, accommodating the rules of order. But, in time, I came to leave it blank as well in honor of the ritual of the yogis who respected that particularly numbered line.

In a little more time, it dawned on me that in the culture of some of my fellow yogis the number four had a shadow side. Like the number 13 here.

Thus, I learned. In Chinese, the number four shares its pronunciation with the word for death. And so, superstitions were harboured. Human nature has its fears.

Line number four was left alone. Death was given berth.

Later still, I came to learn there is more to the atmosphere of the number four in Chinese culture. The shadow has its light.

For example: The four moral criteria are benevolence, righteousness, courtesy, wisdom. The four inventions of Ancient China are paper making, printing, the compass, and gunpowder. And, finally, my four favorites, the four treasures of study: writing brush, ink stick, ink slab, paper.

What do we really have to fear when death is a threshold and life is a bridge and we are carried between the two and into the Infinite?