“No-one has ever done anything like this for me, lady…”

I had a very sad experience on Wednesday night after Yoga. It was about 8.15 pm and I was in a hurry to get back home. Just as the class ended it started to rain heavily, and I was cursing for not having brought an umbrella. I decided to use my yoga-mat as an umbrella and held it over my head as I ran across the road.

Just near the temple entrance I noticed a man sitting in the dark, on the pavement with a torn plastic bag over some food he had in his lap. Obviously he was a beggar, with half a leg missing too! Someone must have given him the food but it started raining suddenly and the poor man was stranded.

Immediately I felt my heart getting really heavy and I just felt so miserable for this wretched soul. I didn’t know what to do. But I was aching from this sight.

Without much thinking I just went up to him and sat beside him and held the yoga mat over us both, so he could continue to eat. I said “kanna kanna” (eat eat!) and he just stared at me in disbelief. My back was getting drenched in the meantime. He just kept looking at me without eating and I could see he was trying to say something and then he started crying, staring right into my eyes.

I was feeling so bad for this man and did not know what else in the world to do and before I knew it I was crying too. I felt so terribly helpless and yet I think to this man, my being there was something to start crying about.

We were both crying like children. What a pathetic life this man was having to live.

Finally after about 10 minutes or so the rain ceased and I said to him to move in to the temple and he was still sobbing and not yet eating!

I said I have to go and he reached out and held my hand in both his hands and said “mata kawuruth mehema deyak karala ne nona” (no-one has ever done anything like this for me, lady) and boy was I weeping or what!

It was 9 pm when I finally got home after a cry in the car.

I feel so much that I wish I could help these poor sad people. I wish I had lots of money to give them. I wish, I wish, I wish !!!

Oh well, what to do…?

Zen Moments is grateful for permission to reproduce this moving account, which came from a personal email sent from Sri Lanka.
The writer has requested to remain anonymous.

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HH The Dalai Lama & Paul Ekman

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