A Story of Bodhisattvas

Autumn to late summer of 2000 through 2001, I worked as a homeless shelter intern. It was an intense experience, often ugly, sometimes beautiful. Here's one of the beautiful pieces.

It's natural to befriend some of the homeless people who bunk down a while in the dorms. John S. was a kind man. He studied Buddhism and Christianity deeply, and saw it as his duty to walk the earth and teach others about both. He wasn't a crazed proselytizer; he spoke gently.

One day I was sitting in the front office "Indian style" on a chair. Then I released my right leg and let it dangle off the chair in front of me, keeping my left leg tucked beneath myself. John entered the room and noticed that I was sitting in the position of the bodhisattvas.

The evening before I was to leave the shelter, and that piece of the U.S., many of the shelter guests wished me well. John gave me a special blessing. He caught up with me sitting on the bench outside the shelter and told me he was sure he would die soon. He wanted to transmit to me the Buddhist knowledge that was passed to him. He gave me a picture of Green Tara, a great bodhisattva, and his copy of the Guide to Dakini Land. He taught me to chant to Tara every day and to visualize her in meditation, then to visualize myself as her. He said that then I would be elevated to a higher plane in the next incarnation. He'd been practicing himself, for years, and hoped it would be true.

He wished that he could drag me before his master to meet him, but it was too late, and so we agreed we would try to do that next lifetime around. I'd been looking rather abashedly at the ground throughout this, but then John asked me to look at him. I looked him straight in the eyes. Making a whooshing sound with his breath, he placed his hand on my forehead, and I felt--I swear I felt--a tremendous surge of chi enter through my third eye and spread everywhere.

Then my fellow interns started coming downstairs to take me out for a celebration. I hugged John goodbye.

I tried meditating on Tara, and chanting to her, I really did; but the lovely green enlightened woman gave me nightmares. I accept, humbly and gratefully, the knowledge transmitted directly through John's palm into my forehead, and I hope that someday I will activate it and understand.

I still have the book, though I haven't opened it.