when i was still a child in primary school, i thought that all one needed to do to make someone unconscious was to tap them on the head with a stone. it seemed quite simple. then they would quietly fall down to the ground, as they did in the comic books & cartoons. one day i was with my parents when we visited a country house with a big sprawling garden, complete with a small pond, goldfish, frogs & lily pads. the frogs were hard to catch & i was not so skillful. i got the idea to toss a stone at a frog, hoping to hit it on the head so it would be quiet & i could pick it up. but it did not go well. i was shocked at the harm i caused. i too suffer damage: the sick secret awareness that i had badly hurt an innocent being, perhaps fatally. i slunk away, ashamed, bearing a hidden burden of guilt & self-blame, & i never told anyone about this, ever, until now. i did not intend harm, yet harm was given by my own hand. there was no ill will or anger, just misguided curiosity, misjudgement & ignorance. Shiva tells me that i'm innocent of intent to harm, yet this kind of innocence carries a cost. from such innocence i can well understand that the doctor who performed the hysterectomy on this body meant no harm when he mistakenly sewed my intestine to the abdominal wall. he meant no harm when i almost died twenty-five years later from intestinal obstructions due to adhesions from his lapse. yet there is no blame, no call for guilt over a misaction. equally, the frog's situation is not my karma, even though i caused damage. thus, neither do i blame the doctor for his mistake. life has enough room in it for this kind of forgiveness. we human beings are like children who are seeking a way through mystery too vast to comprehend with ease. our clumsy efforts at braille cannot touch the heart of wind, cannot trace the aurora's sweeping path across the sky. we are but witnesses who gasp in amazement like the eager cosmic children we really are. we were placed here to play innocently & to learn a new arc of training that has only barely begun to make itself known. this grand cosmic dance does not end; it evolves ceaselessly onward.
THIS HAPPENED 