Milena Moser on compassion: good people

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It can’t be helped, my books come out either in February or November, which means I’m always traveling around Switzerland, which is actually so beautiful, at the worst time of year. And I can’t deny it, the gray skies darken me too. I resist it, try to keep the California sun in my heart, but the low blanket of fog weighs heavily on my soul.

So I wasn’t in the best of moods as I made my way through the wind and rain to the tram stop. A young woman was walking in front of me on the sidewalk, talking quite loudly on the phone and from time to time turning in the other direction so that I could not overtake her. She was wearing high-heeled boots, which didn’t help my mood. Since I broke my little toe, I could only wear comfortable shoes.

Every time a young woman inadvertently blocked my path, I noticed another detail that irritated me. Who was so tanned in winter? My hair was so black I had to dye it! Who would willingly wear such tight pants? First of all: couldn’t she stop talking on the phone? I like to think of myself as a generous and tolerant person. Live and let live – but not in the rain, not when I’m in a hurry!

Then she suddenly stopped. I almost tripped over her. She squatted down, holding the phone between her shoulder and ear. “Wait faster,” she said, picking something on the ground with sharp fingers. Her nails were, in keeping with her entire style, long, artfully painted and decorated. I snorted. But just when I was in prejudice and
I saw what a woman did when she was in danger of drowning in a grumpy mood: she carefully picked up a terrified earthworm from the sidewalk and carried it to the fence on the side of the road, where she carefully placed it on the ground. She then wiped her hands with a napkin and continued talking.

“Scary!” – said the woman, who was already standing under the roof of the bus stop in casual clothes suitable for the mountains. The woman from whom I expected such behavior. I pretended not to hear the comment and stood some distance away from her.

The earthworm rescuer was already out of sight, perhaps working in one of the nearby stores. I remembered a movie I once watched in which Tibetan construction workers carefully carried each worm out of the danger zone with their shovels, to the amazement and irritation of the European played by Brad Pitt. It was decades ago, but I remember how those scenes made me painfully aware of the limits of my own compassion.

How many earthworms have I already beaten to death without seeing them? And then I remembered the Buddhist embodiment of compassion, Avalokiteshvara, who shattered into a thousand pieces out of despair at the suffering in the world and his inability to alleviate it. And even with a thousand eyes and a thousand hands, he cannot see and end this suffering. But he does what he can. None of us can do more. According to some legends, at that moment he also turned into a woman. Who knows, maybe he’ll wear high-heeled boots and fake nails…

Source: Blick