Though I am the one who has lately been reading books about Buddhism, my sweet life-mate Leah has taken it upon herself to be the Buddha Police.
Let’s say I happen to lapse into my pre-Buddhist-scholar persona and make a nasty remark...something like: “He’s such a flaming idiot,” referring to the clueless individual my fellow Americans elected to be our Commander-In-Chief. My good-intentioned wife (who has read not one word of my Buddhism books) will lecture me about compassion.
Then this morning I made myself a cup of tea and as I drank it, Leah asked whether I was being mindful of the tea.
Sheesh!
Truth be-told, however, I do need (and appreciate) the occasional gentle reminder to practice what I read.
***
This past weekend I rode my bike to Seattle. I stopped in the Greenwood neighborhood and visited with a Tibetan shop owner who sells beautiful Himalayan folk art: brightly-painted prayer wheels, beads and jewelry, sweet-smelling Tibetan incense. After hearing the news of recent violent clashes in Tibet between Tibetan protesters and Chinese authorities, I’ve stopped at that Seattle shop a couple of times in the past week to chat with the owner, and to learn more about Tibetan culture.
My new friend has taught me two phrases: The greeting Tashi Delek (Tashi means auspicious, and Delek means fine, or well.) He also taught me the Sanskrit word Ahimsa (it means nonviolence.)
In the 18 years I was a newspaper photographer in Seattle, I felt I knew the city, the unique personalities of its various neighborhoods, how to make my way, almost without thinking, from one area of the city to another. These days it seems like Seattle reinvents and re-creates itself almost on a weekly basis. As I cycled 25 miles from the far North End to the City Center, I felt I had entered a foreign land. All the many new high-rise condos, the just-opened, upscale businesses, made me feel tiny indeed.
At the end of the day, I rode my bike onto the ferry and headed home. Sitting in the passenger area of the boat, I probably looked kind of alien: Me in my ultra-bright yellow cycling jacket, my sunglasses with orange lenses, my helmet and bike panniers on the seat beside me. I glanced over to see a sweet-faced child, standing near a mural-sized advertisement. I shot the image you see posted here (I only got one frame, then the child ran off, probably afraid of the weird bicycler-man.)
Looking at the photo on the screen on the back of my digital snapshot camera, I thought:
“That’s me: Small person in a big world.”
