Friday, December 21, 2007

Two thoughts

Two unrelated items:

1. I read this today:

  • The Dalai Lama was teaching in front of a large audience when he received word that Mao Tse-tung had died. He paused and then started to weep. For most Tibetan people, nobody was more feared than Mao Tse-tung, yet the Dalai Lama's first reaction was to weep....
No Time to Lose: A Timely Guide to the Way of the Boddhisattva, Pema Chodron, p. 316

I am moved beyond words by such compassion. It is that compassion that attracted me to Christianity in the first place. It is that which attracts me to Buddhism today.

2. For meditators, an interesting observation.

I've pointed out before Jon Kabat-Zinn's observation that even when the mind is depressed, the part of the mind that observes is not, itself depressed. That insight has provided me with a lot of help during the past months and years. A further elaboration of it: the part which observes my mind thinking as a 45-year-old male mind is similarly free from the construct of 45-year-oldness and the construct of maleness.

Who am I? indeed.