Botanists call this tree Elaeocarpus ganitrus.

It grows on the slopes of the Himalayas, between 300 and 1,800 metres above sea level, requiring specific ranges of soil moisture and temperature. When the fruit ripens, the outer layer is blue-purple. Inside is a hard seed — its surface marked by longitudinal ridges, the grooves between them forming a pattern. The number of ridges varies from one to twenty-one. Botanists call this characteristic the “face count,” and use it for classification and pricing. Fewer faces means greater rarity. One face is extremely rare. Five faces is the most common.

That is the botanical description.

The Hindu description is this: Shiva wept for the suffering of all living beings for one thousand years. His tears fell to the ground and became this tree. Each ridge on the seed is a line on his face from weeping. In Sanskrit, the seed is called Rudraksha — Rudra being another name for Shiva, aksha meaning eye. Shiva’s eye.

Two descriptions. One seed.

The phoenix eye bodhi is a different plant, a different story.

Its surface carries a natural oval marking — the shape of an eye, with something resembling white, pupil, and corner. It is not carved. It is the trace of a vascular bundle formed during the seed’s growth. Every eye is a different shape, because every seed grew differently.

Buddhism calls this marking the Buddha’s eye. Collectors call it the phoenix eye. Botanists call it the hilum.

Three names for the same thing. None of them wrong.

The counting function of prayer beads is the same in Hinduism and Buddhism: 108 beads, one full circuit, one complete unit of practice. Why 108 — there are many explanations. 108 forms of suffering. 108 deities. The sun’s diameter is 108 times that of the earth. No single explanation is authoritative. All of them circulate.

The number is not the point. The point is the motion of the hand. Each bead brings attention back to the fingers, back to the breath, back to this particular second. This motion has been repeated on the slopes of the Himalayas for thousands of years, with different seeds, different languages, different names for the same gods. No one has recorded the total count.