The Art of Hearing Heartbeats

He took a bit more rice and continued: “I had no need to grieve for my parents. They were old and tired and ready to die. They had lived full lives. Dying caused them no anguish. They suffered no pain. I am convinced that at the moment their hearts stopped beating, they were happy. Is there a more beautiful death?”

“I have often wondered what was the source of her beauty, her radiance. It’s not the size of one’s nose, the color of one’s skin, the shape of one’s lips or eyes that make one beautiful or ugly. So what is it? Can you, as a woman, tell me?”

I shook my head.

“I will tell you: It’s love. Love makes us beautiful. Do you know a single person who loves and is loved, who is loved unconditionally and who, at the same time, is ugly? There’s no need to ponder the question. There is no such person.”

U May had told him: Fear blinds and deafens. Rage blinds and deafens. So, too, envy and suspicion. There was only one force stronger than fear.

“What are you afraid of?”

“I don’t know.”

“You would have no reason to worry. You are his daughter. Why do you doubt his love?”

“He left us.”

“Does one thing exclude the other?”

“Yes.”

“Why? Love has so many different faces that our imagination is not prepared to see them all.”

“Why does it have to be so difficult?”

“Because we see only what we already know. We project our own capacities—for good as well as evil—onto the other person. Then we acknowledge as love primarily those things that correspond to our own image thereof. We wish to be loved as we ourselves would love. Any other way makes us uncomfortable. We respond with doubt and suspicion. We misinterpret the signs. We do not understand the language. We accuse. We assert that the other person does not love us. But perhaps he merely loves us in some idiosyncratic way that we fail to recognize. I hope you will understand what I mean once I have finished my story.”

I closed my eyes and shuddered. The children’s voices seemed to pass through my ears into my body and to touch me where no word, no thought, and no person had ever done before.

Whence this magic? I could not understand a single word they sang. What was it that affected me so? How can a person be moved to tears by something she can neither see, understand, nor hold on to, a mere sound that vanishes almost the moment it comes into being?

Music, my father often said, was the only reason he could sometimes believe in a god or in any heavenly power.

Every evening before going to bed he would sit in the living room, eyes closed, listening to music on headphones. How else will my soul find rest for the night, he had said quietly.

I cannot remember a single concert or opera at which he did not weep. Tears poured down his face like water from a lake silently but forcefully spilling over its banks. He would smile the whole time.

“A person without eyes must be aware,” U May told him. “It sounds easier than it is. You must attend to every movement and every breath. As soon as I become careless or let my mind wander, my senses lead me astray. They play tricks on me like ill-mannered children looking for attention. Whenever I am impatient, for example, I want everything to happen more quickly. My movements become hasty. I spill the tea or the bowl of soup. I don’t hear properly what others say because I am already elsewhere in my thoughts. Or when rage clamors within me. I once got angry with a young monk, and shortly thereafter I stepped into the kitchen fire. I hadn’t heard it crackling; I hadn’t smelled it. Rage had muddled my senses. Eyes and ears are not the problem, Tin Win. It is rage that blinds and deafens us. Or fear. Envy, mistrust. The world contracts, gets all out of joint when you are angry or afraid. For us as well as for anyone who sees with their eyes. Only they don’t notice it. Be patient.”