Dalai Lama Foundation Study Circle Montreal

Video of the Week

Walking through the lobby of an office building in San Francisco I could hear a man screaming and shouting obscenities. He was so loud his voice penetrated the sounds of mid-day traffic and the double glass doors leading to the street.

Heading through those doors I saw a double amputee hunched over on one of those little rolling platforms auto mechanics sometimes use to scoot under cars. He was gesturing erratically at pedestrians as they approached and yelling profanities as they veered as far away from him as they could get while still staying on the sidewalk.

“I fought in Nam!" he yelled. "I lost my legs In Nam! Why can’t you help me?”

Trying to avoid him I hugged the building and tried to melt into the crowd, hoping he wouldn’t notice me. I don’t know if his volume actually rose or it was just my imagination but his words surrounded me. With every step they seemed louder.

"I lost my legs In Nam! Why can’t you help me?” he roared (with added expletives!)

Two more steps and I’d be at the corner and out of range. Then something shifted in me and, to my surprise. instead of making my escape I stopped, turned and walked back towards him. Crouching down I put a few bucks in his cup and asked him if he just wanted someone to stop and listen to him.

"Don’t you think I at least deserve that?" he shouted. "I went to Nam!" There was a pause as he caught his breath. "I was a kid. I came home with no legs! And they won’t even look me in the eye!" He paused again as he struggled to get the words out. "… I did it for them …"

Looking into his gnarled, dirt-stained, unshaven face I guessed he was just a few years younger than me. I imagined our shared experiences as black youngsters growing up in the fifties and sixties. Had he, like me, shivered with fear when Emmet Till was killed in Mississippi? Was he also anxious when Ruby Bridges was escorted into that schoolhouse in New Orleans. Had he cried when John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy were assassinated?

I was also aware of our differences highlighted by his ragged clothes and his paper cup for spare change.

I asked if he just wanted to be seen and heard after all he had come through. His voice dropped and he nodded and whispered, “Yes … yes."

With a calm steady gaze he looked me in the eyes as tears spilled over his wizened cheeks. He clasped my hands in his.

Spare change would help but simply being seen and heard can be what some of us long for most of all.

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I paid for my purchase and left to pick up some dry cleaning from the eco-friendly cleaners next door. I was walking back home when I saw the woman outside the health food store, presumably waiting for the cab.

I knew I wanted to make a trip to a craft store later that day and that I’d be driving. I asked her where she was going. She told me a place which was actually on the way to the craft store. So I said, "I’ve got a crazy idea. How about you cancel the cab and I’ll give you a ride? It will save you some money and besides, I only live a few minutes away." To my amazement she said okay without any hesitation or questions. (I don’t know if I would have been so trusting if a stranger made me the same offer!)

So I walked home, hung up my dry cleaning, got in my car and picked her up. Where she was going was so right on the way that I would have taken almost the same route to get where I was going. She thanked me, then I gave her a Smile card saying maybe she could do something kind for someone else. She said she would.

It was such a beautiful interaction.

But there’s more! So, I get to the craft store, pick up what I went for and then, as I’m waiting at the checkout, the woman behind me says that she has a coupon for 50% off any item in the store. She gave it to me because she had an extra one!

I was floored – and struck by the perfect timing of it all! I thanked her, let her go ahead of me in line, and gave her a Smile card. She said she would check out the website when she got home.

They say "what goes around comes around" and "as you sow, so shall you reap," but sometimes it is hard to see how that works as often there is a "manifestation delay." Each action creates a ripple that eventually comes back to us, but sometimes it is a lot later so we forget the connection.

It was just really fun for me to experience today how God (or "the universe" if one is uncomfortable with God) orchestrates the causes and effects in a discernable, linkable, manner where it was clear to me how in giving I’m also opening myself to receiving gifts, now or in the future. And I can learn so much from others as to how open they are to receiving in a way I might not have been if offered the same gift. So cool!

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Smile Cards: do an act of kindness and leave a card behind to keep the chain going.

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If you’d rather not receive these stories by email, you can remove yourself with two easy clicks.

Community