It feels to me as if the Dalai
Lama left a weapon of mass destruction in Idaho when he visited
this September.
I’m not a Buddhist, but I have
admired the teachings and tolerance of the Dalai Lama for years. So
I couldn’t miss the chance to visit the prayer wheel that he
blessed at the Sawtooth Botanical Garden in Ketchum. The
centerpiece of the newly created Garden of Infinite Compassion is
an exquisite prayer wheel carved by Tibetan artisans in India.
I followed the instructions posted in the garden and
walked clockwise around the wheel, sending compassionate thoughts
to the people of the world as I circled the ornate spinning
cylinder. As is customary in my spiritual experience, I felt
uncertain that any higher power or universal force had received my
transmissions.
But, by the time I had driven back home to
Salmon, a few hours later, I had developed a nasty case of shingles
on my right eyeball. Message received.
When you wish, be
careful about wishing for compassion. Keep in mind that compassion
comes more easily to those who know suffering or affliction. The
pain in my eye made me instantly aware that my grandfather’s
recitation of his ailments from A to Z was not because he desired
to annoy people, but because he honestly couldn’t think about
much else.
The prescriptions I picked up for the shingles
outbreak sparked a new compassion for the thousands of people
struggling to afford a trip to the doctor. Despite an above-average
insurance plan, my two measly bottles set me back a cool hundred
bucks. I swallowed the bitter medicine, knowing that for some
people, paying for medicine would mean pleading with landlords or
skimping at the grocery store.
Weeks after the blisters
had healed and my eye had cleared, I still felt the aftershocks of
the prayer wheel. I was in a courtroom reporting on a case when I
locked eyes with a baby-faced jailbird. He looked so young, I could
easily imagine him as a first-grader; his county-issued black and
white striped suit resembled nothing more than a clever Halloween
costume. When they called the boy’s name, I realized the
woman sitting behind me was his mother. She was shaking. The judge
rebuked the boy for a long line of alcohol-related crimes and
sentenced him to a hard-core hospital for in-patient
rehabilitation.
“You’ll kill somebody or yourself
if you don’t straighten up,” the judge lectured sternly.
I was as surprised as anyone to see the starry pattern my
tears were making on my note pad. I feigned an allergic reaction to
the cologne of the man seated next to me as I tried in vain to
erase the heartbreak of the boy’s mother from my mind. This
cracked shell of defense I’d been left with was starting to
become a problem indeed. And it sounds like it may even get worse.
In Ethics for the New Millennium, the
Dalai Lama writes, “…When we enhance our sensitivity toward
others’ suffering through deliberately opening ourselves up
to it, it is believed that we can gradually extend out compassion
to the point where the individual feels so moved by even the
subtlest suffering that they come to have an overwhelming sense of
responsibility toward those others.”
For these reasons, I
maintain that the peaceful Buddhist leader left his own weapons of
mass destruction in Idaho — the prayer wheel and the Garden
of Infinite Compassion. During the course of one gorgeous autumn
afternoon, a barrier between my fellow man and me was destroyed, or
at the very least severely damaged. Part of me hopes the damage is
permanent. The other part knows to be careful what I wish for.
Gina Knudson is a contributor to Writers on the
Range, a service of High Country News in Paonia,
Colorado (hcn.org). She lives and writes in Salmon,
Idaho.
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