Added: Don’t cry

 

I became a buddhist a long time ago.
My gram was a buddhist in her soul. 
She taught me so much about life, behaviour, feelings and how to deal with it all.
My childhood was difficult, with a mother who physically and psychologically abused me.
One of her favorite sayings was: "I wish you were never born."
I was sent to a children's home, and when I came back she was pregnant.
She loved my 7 year younger sister to bits.
I didn't understand it, but lived with the knowledge that my gram loved me to bits.

Later, at a birthdaygathering, my sister told me she finally had her bloodtype.
So we knew for sure she wasn't from my father. We were silent about it. It was enough for me to know.
And up to her to discover it or not.

The way I was treated later in life suggested they both knew.
After my father died I was pushed away, all my fathers things thrown away. Even his ashes.

Through it all I had a strange kind of inner peace.
The same feel as my gram had.

I recognised it in buddhism, and when I got more and more knowledge and read more and more advanced teachings, I already knew. My gram taught it all.


Today Thich Nhat Hanh died.

I know some of his teachings. 
Always considered him a clever publicist and translator of the old wisdom to the western way of understanding. People said I should go to France,  but I never had the money.
I also wasn't so much attracted by Zen.
And I thought that all the media attention he was seeking was kind of clashing with a buddhist way of life.

And, to be honest, people adored him so very much that I thought I'd better go my own way, instead of being drawn into a movement and adjust. Once again adjust in my life.

So I went my own way, but with an open mind.
Once in a while our paths crossed, so to say.
I got a book, was asked what he intended to say, got inspiration, kind of tested myself on his lectures, and reflected on what he said and accomplished.
And it enriched me, made me humble, and I sensed it was good.

So when I heard he was very ill, it touched me.
He had been speaking out all his life and now his body wouldn't enable him to speak.
What was going on in his mind?
Teaching mindfulness is one thing, practicing it another, and being forced to it....?

While the world ran away with the concept and threw it in everywhere,
to get attention and to make money,
- mindful swimming, mindfulness therapy, mindfulness whatever,-
the man who brought the concept to them was forced to live in himself.

It made me meditative in a way.
More silent.

So when he passed all the chantes, rituals, etc etc
kind of zipped with my feelings and I was happy that internet enabled me to take part.

I wrote this poem right after I heard he died,
the photo was a coincidence... if there is ever a coincidence in life.

You can find it  >>>  here <<<

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