I just can’t get over what happened in Texas this past week. The senseless, horrific act of one sick individual that changed the lives of so many families forever. In an instant, caused inconceivable suffering to at least 20 families. Although I will never be able to fully understand this pain and suffering (I hope!)… I tried to really sit with it this morning and attempted to wrap my head around it all. In doing so, I was reminded of a story that I read about in one of the books over the past month. The story goes something like this…
There was a woman named Lisa who had lived at the time of the Buddha. Lisa’s son had died, and she was completely paralyzed by grief. Carrying her son’s dead body… she set off in search of the Buddha. After many days of searching, she finally found him and begged that he bring her boy back to life. The Buddha said that he would make a medicine that would revive her son. But this medicine required a special ingredient, poppy seeds that came from a home that hadn’t been touched by suffering. He sent Lisa to find some…
Lisa went from village to village… house to house… knocking on door after door. People felt so bad for her and wanted to help but the poppy seeds that they offered were useless because every single person that she met had suffered.
Lisa went to more villages and visited more homes… determined to find the family that hadn’t experienced suffering but she couldn’t find one. She was absolutely desperate when she reached her 1000th door. She knocked, and an elderly woman answered. Once again… she begged for poppy seeds. The woman had some, but when Lisa asked if she’d experienced suffering in her life… the woman looked up at her… her life had been filled with suffering.
Lisa wept uncontrollably. But she wasn’t crying for herself but for everyone she’d met. She understood at last what the Buddha had wanted her to see, that none of us escape suffering and none of us escape death. She had experienced what she needed to start to get past her grief. She felt compassion for others. Lisa began to grasp the universality of suffering and the preciousness of life due to it’s impermanence. She understood that her son had joined the vast pool of souls who had lived and died. She began to understand that in her suffering she was like all humans. As hard and devastating as it was to do… she accepted her son’s death and was freed from her pain.
I kept thinking about all the parents this morning while sitting on the floor of my room stretching. And then I thought about the story above… Lisa’s story. I had a very strange and almost out of body experience. I felt the ground under me… the cold, hard floor… and realized that there has been almost 100 years of suffering that has taken place at Terminal Island…on this exact floor. Almost 100 years of struggle that has been absorbed into the same floor that I am now sitting on. In that moment… I felt it all.
While none of us want to ever experience the level of suffering that the families of the 18 children and 2 teachers that lost their lives are feeling and will continue to feel… the more we understand the common thread that we all share through our unique suffering and begin to have genuine compassion for one another… the sooner we can begin to spread love and extinguish some of the hate that is consuming this country.
Please make a conscious effort to spread that love and go hug your kids.