Laughing Baby Buddhas & Flying Pigs — Quirky as a Sacred Kind of Dignity

This is an episode of the Love Liberation Series (LLS), and it’s all about two objects I absolutely adore. 

I share the funny, unexpected ways they came into my life (or maybe how they found me), what they’ve come to mean over time — and end with a short and sweet ritual contemplation. 

It’s a lighthearted glimpse into symbolic meaning, spiritual practice, and self-expression.

Love Liberation Series (LLS) is my way of celebrating what I love — no holding back. It’s a joyful rebellion against toning down, hiding, or apologizing for what lights us up. Want the full backstory? Listen to Episode 6!

📖 Ritual Accompaniment For This Episode

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🙋🏽‍♀️ Questions? Requests for Future Episodes? DM me on Instagram @deliciousdignity or email me at podcast@dilshadmehta.com

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Transcript

Dilshad: 0:00

Welcome to the Delicious Dignity Podcast. Let's settle in securely and ever so nicely into the brilliance of our own dignity. I just want to remind you, in case you missed it or forgot, that LLS stands for Love Liberation Series. This is a series within LLS. Delicious Dignity Podcast, where every few episodes or so, I will liberate and will explode the love I have inside of me for someone, something, someplace, or some event. We're really working with the belief here that the point of life is to enjoy it. And so this series, if nothing else, is to inspire you and encourage you to let yourself love what you love. And the end result of that is that eventually you can ground and study yourself in your own delicious type of dignity, your own heaven on earth. So let yourself light up from the inside out and let's go to the episode. Okay, so if you're wondering if I'm actually going to talk to you today about flying pigs and laughing baby Buddhas, yes, I am. Yes, I am literally going to talk to you about those two things. It is not a metaphor. It's very literal. I'm going to talk to you about flying pigs and laughing baby Buddhas. And I'll start with the flying pig. So I think about four years ago, maybe. Yeah, maybe three or four years ago, I had gotten myself this beautiful apartment in Seattle. It had two floors. So the ground floor was the kitchen and the living room, and the top floor was the bedroom and bathroom. And it was just a gorgeous place. I called it my castle because it felt like a castle. The windows were from the ground level to the top, right to the top of the ceiling of the second level. And it was just a gorgeous, beautiful place for me to rest, relax and create. And I absolutely loved the space. And one of the things that I love to do to decorate my space would be to go to HomeGoods. Just because HomeGoods carries a lot of the style of decor that I love. But that particular day, so one day I went to HomeGoods and I was just looking for something functional. I think I was looking for cookware for my kitchen because I was setting up my kitchen in a very particular way. And I think I was looking for cookware organizers or something like this. And so I went to HomeGoods. And so I went with the mindset of just a very functional thing that I wanted to get. And I walk into Whole Foods and I do this whole, not Whole Foods, HomeGoods. Have I been saying Whole Foods? No, no, HomeGoods. I meant HomeGoods. So I walked into HomeGoods and I took this little turn about the store trying to find what it was that I was looking for. By the way, HomeGoods in the United States is basically sort of like a decor, furniture, semi-functional sort of store that you go for your basic houseware needs. So that's what HomeGoods is. I did my little turn about HomeGoods And I couldn't find what it was that I was looking for. And I just remembered being a little confused and a little overwhelmed because I'm not someone who likes shopping and I do not like going into stores. So I was about to leave when I thought to myself, let me take another turn one more time. So I take another turn, this time in the opposite way that I took. So the first time I took the turn, it went from right to left all around the store. And so the second time I took a turn, it went from left to right. And as I was taking a turn about the store, I don't know if you've ever had this feeling where the clouds part and you hear the angels singing or you hear this song, I saw the sign and it opened up my eyes. I saw the sign. I don't know if you've ever had that moment where just everything is absolute perfection and you feel like you literally got a sign from God. That's what it felt like. It felt like the clouds had parted and there was a spotlight on this one item in the decor section. which is not what I was going for. And this item was a bright white flying pig. And I just fell in love with it. I cannot explain to you why or how it happened. I imagine this is the same feeling someone would have when they met their soulmate. This is how it felt to meet this flying pig. And I picked it up. I almost cuddled with it. And I was like, what are you doing, Dilshad? You know, the rational part of my mind kicked in. I was like, Dilshad, what are you doing? Are you nuts? Like, what is this flying pig? You're so irrational. You came here for some organizers for your kitchen. Let's focus on that. You know, stop having squirrel brain and focusing on these random things. And so I put it back down and I kept going to the store trying to focus on what it is I came to the store to get. And I remember doing the full turn around the store and almost leaving the store, but I physically could not leave the store. And I was like, Dilshad, no way are you going to buy this stupid flying pig. No way. No way. You're not going to do it. And so it was like half of me kept going towards the pig and the other half of me kept trying to go out of the store. At the end of the day, I feel like I'm a very practical woman sometimes. And so I just could not rationalize paying I'm pretty sure it was $30. It was anywhere between $20 to $30. And I just thought to myself, this is an absolute useless item. This has no place in my house. My house is this Persian Moroccan themed home. And now I'm just going to introduce a flying pig to sit on my coffee table for no reason. And it's bright white. And it just didn't make any sense. All the sense in the world seemed to have left my brain. I just kept gravitating towards this pig. And I was like, you know what? Fine, Doshadi. You stupefy even yourself. And I said, fine. I picked up the pig and I bought it more out of frustration than of desire because I was just so stunned by this decision, by this sudden joy I got for an item that's, quote unquote, completely useless. Served no purpose. Anyway, I brought it back home. It sat on my coffee table and every single day since then, it's either sat at my coffee table or at my work table. And it's interesting because I don't know if you've had this experience. Sometimes I know before I know why I know. And that's intuition for sure. But it's also a way of kind of self-manifesting, like you're manifesting yourself, but backwards. So you throw out something into the... area in front of you and then you walk into it over time, little by little. That's kind of what it was like for me to get this flying pig that made no sense. And then I sort of walked into it little by little over time. And I realized that for me, this fat, chubby, big butt pig with wings represented everything. I find cute and lovely in this world. You know, this cute, these chubby cheeks, this big pot belly, these wings and this curly tail on its butt. It's just the cutest thing. It's the cutest thing. And for me, every time I would walk past it, I would smile this big grin. And it took me a while to realize that this is almost like one of my mascots, mascots. I don't know how you pronounce it, but it's my spirit animal. One of them anyway. Because what it represents to me is that phrase. Do you know that phrase? This will happen when pigs fly, or I'll do this when pigs fly. Meaning that I will never do this thing, or this will never happen because pigs don't fly. But here I am with a pig that has wings. And to me, that represented my work and the intention that I had for my work, which is I wanted it to be a place of miracles. I wanted it. I think spirituality is nothing... except for the scientific study of miracles. And I wanted my work to be something that produced them like it was normal. The miracle of healing, the miracle of changing your mind, becoming a new person, becoming a more empowered person. I wanted that energy of when pigs fly in my work. I wanted that energy of limitations and blocks and old belief systems to just be busted open. I wanted this energy of freedom, silliness, openness, and full of life feeling. Because that's ultimately what I am aligned to as a person, as a being, as in my work is I'm aligned to life with a capital L-I-F-E. I wanted this feeling of what feels impossible is suddenly possible and not just possible, but also normal. And I love that feeling. I don't know if you've had such an experience in your life, but I'll give you a funny story about this experience is I used to really detest mushrooms. I did not like mushrooms for the longest time in my life. And I never even thought about liking them or trying to like them. But one day, I think I was around 26 or 27 years old, I woke up in the morning and I had this intense craving for mushrooms. I could barely put on my pants. I didn't even shower. And I ran to the grocery store. I saw this mushroom aisle. I had no idea how to even cook mushrooms or what to do with them. But I just bought the white mushrooms, yellow mushrooms, good God, no, the white mushrooms. I got almost a pound of them. And within two hours, I made this most delicious Thai coconut curry soup. And it was a mushroom curry soup. And I ate every last bite of it. And since then, I have loved mushrooms. I'm still particular about what type of mushrooms I like, but I love mushrooms. That feeling of what was impossible is now possible. Sudden changes in who you are and big miracles and small miracles. All of those things are represented by this flying pig that I didn't even know why I was drawn to at the time. But now it's one of my most favorite things. And every time I look at it, it just gives me this huge hit and reminder of all the things I love, all the things I believe in. And also, it serves to remind me of who I am. Sometimes we don't remember who we are. And that's an interesting concept that I want to talk about in a separate podcast episode. what this beautiful object is to me. And that's why I wanted to liberate the love I had inside for this flying pig and give it some airtime. By the way, if you want to see what I'm talking about, all the pictures will be posted to my Instagram, but it will also be posted to the ritual guide. So you just have to click on the link in the description and it will show you all the pictures of everything I'm talking about today. Now, the second thing I wanted to talk to you about is laughing baby Buddhas. I cannot explain to you how much I love laughing baby Buddhas. First of all, they're always again chubby. They've got these big pot bellies, kind of similar to what I've got going on too. They are laughing. They're full of joy. They're always in these funny positions. And they have these really cute expressions on their face. And they have this cheeky little smile sometimes. And I love that because here is the Buddha figure, this really intense meditative Buddha figure that's supposed to be serious. But it's not. Instead, you have these laughing baby Buddhas that are just so freaking cute. It reminds me of this story I heard. I don't know where I heard it, but somebody was talking about what they said about the Buddha achieving enlightenment and what happened at that moment. And At the moment that he achieved enlightenment, his first instinct was to laugh. And one of the stories from my culture, which is the Zoroastrian religion and Zoroastrian culture, is that when our prophet Zoroaster was born, the way they knew he was a different child from all the other normal children was that he came out laughing instead of crying. And for some reason, this just reminds me of, those baby Buddhas remind me of these two stories, it's like they're a magnet to me. Somehow I will enter a store and there will just be a laughing baby Buddha that I'm looking at, or somehow it will come into my field in some way or the other. One of the first times I found a baby Buddha that I actually loved and took back home was in this bookshop that I lived near in Mountain View. I think it's called the East West Bookshop, if I remember correctly. Mountain View, California. And I walked into the bookshop and similar to the flying pig, it was right there, this bright white little baby Buddha that was lying on its back and kind of holding its belly and laughing. And I just thought it was the most beautiful, cute little thing in the world. And so I immediately took it home. And then over the years, there's just been laughing baby Buddha collections. And one of the best things to happen to me from that establishment I said I worked at in the middle of 2024, If you don't know what I'm referring to, I talk about this establishment in episode four. And one of the most amazing things to come out of this establishment was that one day they just suddenly had a whole collection of the most cutest, most amazing, most perfect laughing baby Buddhas. And let me tell you, I bought almost every single one of them. I've never seen them be that cute. And I bought, I think I bought 12, 12 of them over the time I worked there. And they are some of my most cutest, cherished possessions. I have some on the coffee table. I have some at the entrance of my house. I have some at my work table. I've posted all these pictures on my ritual guide if you would like to benefit from their cuteness too. It's one of those things that every time I look at it, it gives me this hit, this kind of juice that I need to keep on keeping on. And it fills me up. It fills my cup. And so, yeah. Also, I have to confess, sometimes I go over to these baby Buddhas and I rub their belly or I pinch their cheeks. It's so cute. That was me liberating the love I had for these two most precious things that I have in my life right now. And now I want to get to this little ritual, as you might have guessed, a little journaling ritual for you. And before I go into it, I just want to say that if you want to go deeper into this sort of love as your spirituality or joy as your spirituality or just like heart-based living as your ethos in life, then I also suggest that you listen to episode six, which was the inaugural episode where we first open up to heart energy. So I highly recommend you listen to that if you haven't already and go through the ritual. But anyway, let's do a little journaling exercise for this episode. Now, what I really, really, really, please, please invite you to do is to just work with my method of madness, okay? I'm going to ask you really quick questions. And you just want to jot down two or three words that come to your mind with each question. So I'm going to ask you about maybe 10 questions really quickly, 10 questions and maybe 30 seconds. And you just jot down really quickly two or three words that answers that question. Don't think, just write. There's a method to my madness here. I promise you, you can do this exercise a bunch of times and each time it'll give you more and more depth. But for the first time, I just want you to trust the process, okay? Trust me on this one, because it might feel like you're being asked the same question over multiple times. But again, there's a method to my madness, okay? Just remember that practice and experience is your teacher. And this is just the method that leads you into your experience, okay? So here's the ritual. Let's call it the quirky couture ritual, if you want to call it that, or quirky as sacred ritual, okay? So let's start. I'm going to ask the questions very quickly. Just jot down two or three words. If nothing comes to you, sort of push for an answer and go to the next one. Okay, here we go. First question. What is the quirky thing you love? What's the weird behavior that you do when no one is watching? What is strange about you? What is your silliest quality? Where are you the most eccentric? When are you the most offbeat? When can you get a little bit absurd? What's your crazy? What do other people find peculiar about you? When you look at yourself, what do you find a little bit odd about you? And that's the end of the questions. I want you to look at all your answers that you wrote down and just imagine putting all those answers together, just the answers together and look at them. Just look at all the answers together. If you really tuned into those answers, don't those answers make you feel more connected to spirit, to God, to yourself than anything else that anybody else could tell you? These answers are the start to you getting sort of a glimpse, a sort of a step one of or maybe a step two or three into creating your own spirituality that resonates with you and your own connection to yourself, your own self-development practice, your own self-care practice. If you made up a self-care practice that connects to these answers that you jotted down, that will be truer and more effective for you than anything else that you read in a book. Because what you think of as your quirks are actually the things that make you a sacred being. And I would even say a divine being. So that's what I mean by quirky as sacred ritual. And you can do these exercises multiple times. Any of the rituals in the Love Liberation series, you can do them multiple times. And like I said before, keep a journal so you can see how your answers evolve. And it kind of becomes like your, yeah, Imagine all the holy texts of the world, everything from the Quran to the Bible to, in my case, the Gathas or whatever. This is your holy text. And as we go through the Love Liberation series or even this podcast, you will have your own holy textbook. And I think that that is a beautiful thing. Okay, my lovelies, until next time, may you let your quirks... Your oddities, your eccentricities bring color to your dignity. Much love to you. Bye.