I walked on & on into the rising heat of the Sun and the escalating HEAT of the still-frantic Highway 15. I was still feeling exhausted and despondent from this harsh & violent way, until I suddenly remembered that “The Light is IN the tunnel, not only at its End.” And then I started embodying that principle in real-time; by beaming each oncoming car the same selfless LOVE I would beam were it an aggressive person approaching to do me harm. And this choice of attitude truly did change everything – my smile broadened, my steps lightened, and my “dance” with the onrushing traffic became smooth and easy and at times even amusing. And it was with this same refreshed mentality that I came across the Tuong van Zen Meditation Center, where Saroj & Dibya welcomed me with open arms and brought me cool water and gave me encouraging words and even blessed me with a surprisingly crisp & sweet apple taken directly from the Center’s primary altar …

“The most wonderful people I have known have been those who gave themselves no concern about their own souls, but rather ever did their uttermost to mitigate the miseries of others … Indeed, real Goodness is to be found neither in the sermons of religious teachers and prophets, nor in the teachings of sociologists and popular leaders, nor in the ethical systems of philosophers … No, it is ordinary people who evince that Goodness. It is ordinary people who bear real Love in their hearts, who are naturally full of love and compassion for all other sentient beings. And yes, as well as this magnificent Good with a capital ‘G’, there is everyday human kindness with a larger ‘K’ – the Kindness of an old woman carrying a piece of bread to a prisoner, the Kindness of a soldier allowing a wounded enemy to drink from his water-flask, the Kindness of youth towards older age, the Kindness of a peasant hiding an old Jew in his loft, the Kindness of a prison guard who risks his own liberty to pass on letters written by a prisoner not to his wife or mother. This is the greater Kindness of one individual willingly sacrificing for another; something we could call senseless Kindness; a Kindness outside any system of social or religious goodness. And yet when we think about it, we realize that this private, senseless, incidental Kindness is in fact eternal. It is extended to everything sentient – to a man or a woman or a child, to an enemy or friend or a stranger or a workmate, to a dog or a cat or a cow or a pig or a raven or even a mouse or a butterfly. Even at the most terrible times – indeed, especially at these times of death & darkness, through all the times when people are tossed about like branches in the wind, filling ditches and gullies like stones in an avalanche – even then this senseless, soft, self-effacing Kindness remained scattered throughout life like sparkling atoms of glowing carbon.” ~ inspired by Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Vasily Grossman

Filed under: Peace Pilgrimage #02: Walking HOME (2019) by Scaughdt