There once lived a beautiful girl in a far away kingdom, in a small hamlet. Her skin whiter than Snow White, beauty more bewitching than sleeping beauty, her hair more voluminous than Rapunzel and a compassionate heart kinder than Cinderella.
Even though she had the elements of a fairy tale princess, her story wasn’t a happily ever after as a default romantic fairy tale.
She lived a good 64 years, until she died of an incurable illness.
She was a strong woman as I have ever known, a supportive wife, a caring mother and a faithful friend.
Anyone who came to her for help either financially or emotionally was never turned away from her doorstep. She was the kind of person who would rather give her last morsel of rice to a beggar and go to bed with an empty stomach.
She was well-versed with Buddhist scriptures, as well as Hindu texts. She was a very religious, humble woman. Often she would be found circumambulating a chorten, or early mornings burning incense and chanting her om Mani Padme hum.
I remember every night she used to burn special sage to feed any hungry ghost who she believed were wandering around, deprived of food. She was this compassionate or shin-jey.
When I think of her and my memories of her, she was truly a bodhisattva, who in timeless eons past must have had taken the Buddha vow. She roams again and again in samsara until all sentient beings are freed from cyclic sufferings of samsaric desire, aversion and ignorance.
When you loose someone it is the most devastating emotional stage you can be in. Even though we go through our sufferings namely by our attachments to the deceased, slowly but surely practicing the dharma of emptiness or shunyata, lifts the heaviness like a rainbow 🌈 after a dark storm.
Truly the silver lining of any loss is acceptance of impermanence or aniccia, like a lone autumn maple leaf gently floating down the brook without resistance. Acknowledging that we can’t control what will happen to us but we can control our reactivity: let go a little, embrace the wind of change and be a kinder human.
In a world where you can be anything, choose kindness. —Rumi
xx