S925 Silver Buddha Mind Open Ring

Buddha heart and Dao heart are not a ready-made pair. Dao heart comes out of the Book of Documents, in the Counsels of the Great Yu: the human heart is precarious, the Dao heart is subtle. The heart of a person is hard to fathom and the heart of the Way is hard to see; it is an old Confucian saying that the Daoists later took over. Buddha heart is a Buddhist term: this very mind is Buddha, and outside the mind there is no other Buddha. The two words come from different places, and putting them together is a pairing made by later people rather than an original couplet. One is translated out of Sanskrit and the other comes out of the old books, and forced into a pair they are not quite even in register.

This ring cuts one of them on each face: lotus petals on the Buddha-heart side, cloud scrolls on the Dao-heart side. Eight petals, three scrolls, and no characters on either. Characters would be vulgar; the patterns leave the space open, and the wearer knows which face is turned out. Buddha heart out or Dao heart out is your own choice. The petal tips point up and the cloud heads point down, opposite directions, so that the two do not fight each other when the ring is on. Both faces are cut shallow, so turning the ring round does not dig into the fingers.

It comes in men's and women's versions, and the difference is the width of the face. The men's is two millimetres wider. It is the same pattern, but the wide face can be cut open while the narrow one has to be drawn in, and drawing in loses the turns. So the women's version keeps only the outline and no detail: at a distance it is a band of rise and fall, and only close up does it turn into lotus petals. The inside of the face is curved to fit the base of the finger rather than press against bone. The sizes are the same in both, and only the width of the face changes, so take your usual size.

The open band adjusts, and that is what makes it useful as a gift. It fits any finger, so there is no need to ask for a size first. The price is the same as before: silver fatigues, and repeated bending will break it. Once it is on, leave it alone. Fingers are slimmer in winter and fuller in summer, so keep a little allowance and do not bend it down against the skin. The two ends at the gap are left slightly thick, since that is where the force goes when the band is bent; thin there and it cracks first. The gap itself is not wide, so the ring goes on sideways over the knuckle.

One on one hand is enough. People ask whether they can wear a pair, and the answer is yes, but the two faces will rub against each other, and after a year the edges of the lotus petals will be rounded off. If you want a pair, separate them by a finger, or wear one on the index finger and one on the ring finger. As the silver darkens, the recesses of the lotus petals go black first, and the black lines draw the petals out more clearly than when the ring was new. Tarnish inside a pattern is a good thing; on a plain face it is not. It depends which face you wear outward.