Crossroads Wisdom

10 days over. Of observing, accepting, letting go. This morning after all the residents of A and B had made their way home and I finished saying goodbye to all the me's scattered through the forest paths leading all around the Centre, I went through the rain to the kitchen to fill cereal containers and jars of yeast for breakfast. I realised that I belonged here as much as I possibily could anywhere else. The safest place I have known so far, to have slept so soundly without even a lock on any door.

So many memories are infused into the new me: the little pink nose of the mole that did not hear my footfall through the torrential rain yesterday, the subtle fragrance of the trees at 4 am, the soft light of dusk that caressed the trees as we came out of the 6 pm sitting and the shared smile at a pre-mature ever-so earnest 'sadhu' chanted by that one faceless voice with endearing regularity. And finally the freedom to chuckle at this.

I learned so much from everyone just by being in the same room, or walking the same path: how to weed a rosebed when you are deep in thought, how to stand by the edge of the ravine in deep concentration after aditthana, how to check your carotid pulse when you have finished a sitting, how to wait and let someone else pass, how to watch what happens to the person ahead of you who ate that berry off that bush (and lived).

And we were driving on home...

Just as I was looking out in the distance and the car was waiting at the stop sign at the end of Egbert and Road 56, there was a bump. A car behind us had hit us. My ever-so-patient husband, fuming now, jumped out and walked over to get the information of the driver behind us. And a familiar face popped out from the car, one of our fellow students,a server with whom I had just washed lettuce. Her husband had picked her up at the same time mine had and they must have left a few minutes after we did. I knew her name, we had laughed together just moments ago, I had thanked her for her service during my stay.

As the men sat in the car through the pouring rain and exchanged information, I stood with her in the rain and waited for her to stop shaking. I look back now and see myself at crossroads. I had just stood there and watched the horses grazing, I had reassured my fellow traveller that it was okay and neither they nor we had been hurt. We stood together for a while and soon it was time to go our separate ways. One to Kingston, one to Markham.

I had also remembered the horrible crunch of my car from last June when I was hit at dawn, just minutes from school on a quiet Markham street. As I stood in the rain, I felt the sensation of that sound subside, the taste of that fear dissolve, I felt the 'panya' and relief that this was just a fender-bender. After months of physio, tests and early morning tossing and turning with pain, this was just a scratch. As they drove off and we did too, my husband looked at me quizzically. Since my accident, I had been jumpier especially as a passenger. I wasn't this morning. My side of the car had been hit, and he said I had barely flinched. Wierd.

I had lived my first real life 'anichcha' a mere 5 minutes out of the centre.

The Buddha does not wait for the grass to grow now does He?

And Dhamma works.