Universal Compassion

2008/5/15 16:28:10

If you never felt anything before about the Bodhisattva's universal compassion — the compassion that feels others' suffering as one's own — then these past few days, with a catastrophe so distant yet felt as if experienced firsthand, should be enough to grant some understanding.

Originally, the side effects of chemotherapy were virtually nonexistent, and everything was proceeding exceptionally smoothly — this should have made this ID happy, but that feeling simply wasn't there. When you know with certainty that every second, someone is moaning beneath steel and concrete, hovering between life and death in the rubble, that nameless sorrow rises unbidden.

This ID too once had a period of ferocity. Hearing that Wei Dong had departed, I wonder whether that earlier massacre also constituted a distant reason. Whether it did or not — may you fare well in the next life.

May all those lives that have already crossed into the next find a good destination. And may those still in this life live longer and more brilliantly.