Sadhu Tooth

I caught the train with my friend Nicole the other morning and updated her about the teeth. The extra time involved, the crazy torquing of the left side of my face, and my bewilderment at the fact that my ortho has still ignored the one molar on the upper left side of my jaw. This tooth has had no bracket, no wire, no attention at all since this process has started. From day one my doctor has always said that he will get to that tooth later. It is pure rogue.

"It's your Sadhu tooth," she said, laughing. When I asked what a Sadhu was, she said that they are wandering mystics in India who wear saffron colored robes and have chosen to live a life apart from regular society to pursue their own spiritual practice. I read on Wikipedia that the root of the word "Sadhu" comes from the root sadh which means to "make straight" or "reach one's goal." (I got a chill when I read that--could it be any more appropriate?) Sadhus focus their attention solely on the fourth and final Hindu goal of life which called moksha, meaning liberation from samsara, or the eternal cycle of birth, death and rebirth.

I have said many times that I go through a monthly cycle. First, my teeth get tightened and I am left feeling exhausted, ugly and diminished for at least a week. Then I feel the teeth move and settle into their new place. Then my strength and power and invincibility return to me in my final week and then those feelings dissolve once the teeth get tightened again. It is my own dental samsara of sorts. I suppose when my Sadhu tooth is finally bracketed and wired, and reigned in to return to the fold, as the final piece of this process it will signal the achievement of orthodontic moksha and then I will experience true liberation.

Is it possible that enlightenment can be reached via braces?