Mami’s Mustard Seed

The glass pendant I received holds a mustard seed floating in blue liquid. I would imagine that this delicate ornament was meant to be secured by a slender gold chain that would hang from my neck. However, because I am not into any kinds of chains, do not support the market for gold, and do not believe at all in the bogus value of this metal, I fasten the pendant from my garments with a humble safety pin bought from an establishment like Walgreens or the long-gone Love Store. I have been wearing the aforementioned piece of jewelry as an amulet and have thought very little as to its spiritual symbolism as it might relate to Buddhism, that is, until now. To me, this was simply a gift from my dear friend Mami, from Manhattan’s Washington Heights, before her departure from this earthly plane. Mami, took life with a grain of Caribbean sea salt, as well as with the precautions that living in the Heights entailed in the 1990s, the tumultuous period when we met in the Big Apple. Even today, I can picture Mami, resting in her fabulous bed boasting a headboard of, quasi life-size, white lacquered palm trees. I also want to picture her handing me the mustard seed ornament from her throne and place of comfort. As it happened, Mami had several health conditions that required considerable rest: a heart transplant, a kidney transplant and a bypass. Yet, do not get me wrong, she would surprise us from time to time, get in her Saturday best and head to one of the clubs in vogue in Upper Manhattan. But the mustard seed?

I grew up Catholic and hence listening to priests and lay people alike refer to the Parable of the Mustard Seed. Matthew’s Gospel discusses how latent within this minute subject is a shrub that can eventually develop into a large tree, that can serve as a home to many birds. The kingdom of God is similar to this, explains this canonical text, to which the message seems to be that the teachings, wisdom, or dharma can arise from the most seemingly insignificant item, and take roots, deepen and expand (Matthew, 13:31-32 New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition). For years, I used this Christian “koan” to find meaning in the gift from Mami, while visualizing the abundance that she might have wished for me in my new place of residence in New York City. I would need this auspiciousness until I, like the mustard see in the Gospel of Matthew, could grow roots in my adoptive home and go somewhat intact through the hardships migrating usually entails. Mami was familiar with this, given her journey from the Dominican Republic onto the US East Coast; her medical trials adding challenges to the experience of relocating, but not precluding her ability to laugh. She once told me how she thought she might be gay, not due to her sexual preference, but because she went to a gay bar where she had so much fun with the patrons that she felt one with them. Was the mustard seed she gave me a way of expressing her understanding of the longing imbued in most migration, hers and mine, and also a push telling me not to give up enjoying life? Was this her metta, lovingkindness, to me in the shape an Afro-Caribbean amulet? “May you be spared from unnecessary suffering, may you be kind to yourself, may you do good to others, may you stay put in this country no matter how much you get beat up by xenophobia.”

My second spiritual encounter with a text dealing with a mustard seed occurs in my elderhood, as I familiarize myself with Buddhist teachings, the dharma, or the equivalent to the Christian Gospels. The story of Kisa Gotami is one that illuminates so much for me, since the woman in question finds herself in the stream of grief that sooner or later, each one of us will have to step into, yet she seems oblivious to the relationality in it. Kisa Gotami lost her only child and whatever social status she was able to achieve in her community as a result of birthing a boy. Her plight for medicine, she learns will not bring her offspring back, and ends up with the Buddha prompting her to go from house to house in town to fetch tiny grains of mustard seeds from an abode where no one has ever died.[1] The dharma here is meant to reveal itself out of the impossible task of begging for some puny mustard seeds. In Kisa Gotami’s case the dana becomes the dharma, the gift she is meant to collect to bring her son back to life and that in turn becomes the teaching. In the Buddhist parable the tree where Matthew’s Gospel foresees birds nesting, is meant to turn inwards and develop into Kisa Gotami’s consciousness. She is called to heal as she gains awareness with and through others that she is not alone in her experience of pain, loss, grieving and dying. Mami’s pendant has outlived my relocation from Manhattan to the South Bronx, while tucked away safely in a milk glass trinket box. It has equally outlived Mami’s death and that of many more in my circle. It could be that her message, similarly to that of the Buddha to Kisa Gotami was not intended to be a quick fix. I will never know why Mami gifted me this, but I am learning that what she went through is part of life: illness, aging, dying, and also about celebrating between pang and pang. Mami may be now sending me from house to house, not in search of a tiny mustard seed, but carrying the one she trusted me with and which teachings have been unfolding with the slow pace of wisdom. ¡Aṣẹ!

[1]. “Kisa Gotami and the Mustad Seed,” Turning Wheel Buddhist Temple: Zen Buddhism in the East Midlands, accessed October 25, 2025, https://www.turningwheel.org.uk/buddhist_stories/kisa-gotami-and-the-mustard-seed/