Monday, June 21, 2010

Dukkha in the Shopping Line

Yesterday I saw a woman in the queue at the Co-Op with a football-sized hump over her right shoulder blade. There were two little girls in front of her with their mothers: one African and one white, European if not English. The African girl stood dutifully at her mother's side and didn't look up. The European girl stood a little apart from her mother and stared and stared and stared at the hump; but not cruelly -- she just looked fascinated, as if she were trying to understand what was under the woman's dress and what it meant; how it changed her life; why she wasn't the same as other people the little girl had seen.

I thought: a similar encounter is what set Buddha on the path. Imagine if we had a Polish female Buddha born in Semilong.

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