I was remembering that in ancient India men hunted in pairs, one with a flute to attract the deer and the other with the bow and quiver of arrows. Five animals epitomize the nature of desire in one of each of the five senses. Sound for the deer, touch for the elephant, taste for the fish, smell for the scarab, and sight for the moth. The ultimate temptation from the particular sense organ of each animal raises an irresistible attraction that casts away all reason, often leading to the end of life for these creatures. To capture a male elephant, the king sends a domestic female into the wild, and the male follows her to the end of the world. Everyone knows how to catch the fish that grabs the fatal morsel dangling from the hook. The moth rushes, transfixed, into the flame. The scarab enters the sweet-smelling lotus blossom and often remains inside, bewitched, until the petals close at twilight. The deer seeks the mesmerizing tone of the flute and finds an arrow in his heart, losing a life for love of the sound. For us humans the desires aroused from all five senses are known to cause a downfall, or worse. However, we have the ability to discern, to avoid desires that tempt us, and to make a choice to follow the desire for liberation.

My voice was no flute, but I experimented to see if I could imitate one. My buck endured. When my improvised arpeggios began to squeak in the upper range, he cocked one ear forty-five degrees. Whoops. So as not to risk losing the enchanting gaze, I let my voice resume with the sound of OM. He relaxed into chewing on something, probably whatever he had been grazing on before I appeared. Munching and staring at me all the while. Then I suspected he was bored because he turned sideways, showed me his full body, lifted the white of his tail, dropped dark brown pellets from his bowels, and then bent to nibble on whatever he found tasty there.

We seemed to have found a certain soul to soul comfort between us. I was in gratitude for Amma’s Grace. So, while continuing to hum OM, I sat under a pitch pine to enjoy the view from St. Sauveur, looking out towards the Atlantic, gazing at the many little islands that surround the area. My buck went about his business, alternating between eating and keeping an eye on me.

I pondered the potential message. It was, after all, New Year’s Day. I’d never communed with a buck in the wild. I’d had close encounters with coyotes. One time while camping on the banks of New Mexico’s Chama River, a bird’s lone song had pierced the predawn silence calling me out of my sleeping bag, luring me to walk the half-mile to Christ in the Desert Monastery. I arrived just as the monks began their Gregorian chanting. Listening while sitting on the steps outside the Benedictine chapel, I was enchanted by the full moon’s reflection on the water and the casting of its light onto nature’s own cathedral of sheer rock on the opposite side of the river.

But what about the island buck? What did he represent for me? The legendary divine nectar known as Soma is associated with Mrigashira, the deer’s head constellation. My own Nakshatra (birth star) is Mrigashira. On the website medium.com I had noted that the Mrigashira constellation symbolizes a vivid imagination and the search for enlightenment and ultimate joy - "Imagine a beautiful deer wandering in a thick forest while pausing to look deeply into your eyes and then jumping out of sight." How perfectly my buck experience fit into medium.com’s rendering.

Some say Soma is the Divine nectar of immortality from the heavens that flows down on us like water from a mountain stream. For me the Divine nectar flows directly from our Holy Mother Amma who leads us on a warm and gentle, sometimes rough, often circuitous pathway, always upward, and ultimately into ecstatic devotion of the Divine and freedom from all sorrow. The sound of human voices coming from the ridge broke the spell of my pastoral experience and reminded the buck of his original leap. He disappeared as if he had arrived in the first place, out of a dream.

Savitri L. Bess - Port Hadlock, WA