Fri, 11 Dec 2009
Been Sick
If you've been wondering where I've been, I came down with a cold last weekend and it hasn't left me with the energy to do much. Being sick is educational. It teaches you a lot about yourself, esecially if you know homeopathy. In homeopathy you are always looking for the distinguishing symptom, and I often have a hard time finding it. I may have found the right remedy tonight, I'll know tomorrow. But the cold is almost over, anyway. Here's a touching story about a Buddhist on death row.
Kenny has been making beautiful origami peace cranes. He taught himself how to make them from a book in the prison library. In the beginning, he had to tear each sheet of paper because he was not allowed any cutting tools. Now he is allowed a rotary paper cutter. Over the years he has made origami masterpieces; given them away to nursing homes and sold them to support himself so that he is less of a burden to his family etc.
As part of his practice to prepare for death Kenny has begun accumulating Amitabha mantras. We came up with the idea that he could accumulate mantras, one mantra per fold of paper to keep track of his accumulations.
Each crane is comprised of 392 sheets of paper and each sheet is folded 10 times. So each crane has 3,920 OM AMI DEWA HRI folded into it. I asked him to make one for me to put on my shrine at home. The last time we met he told me a box was waiting at the front gate containing 6 cranes he made while accumulating mantras. One for me, one for Bradley, One for Tenzin (in retreat), one for Lama Kathy, one for Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche and he asked if it was OK to give one to His Holiness Karmapa.
