Hi all,
I have a little compassion story I want to share. Some of you may not know, but Treeleaf has a little sister sangha in Spanish called Grupo Zen Ryokan. There I do the best I can to teach people what little I know about our practice. We sit zazen, we gather every Sunday in the city and on line and the group is growing a little every week.
Yesterday a sangha member, Bere (she is a nurse), called me to tell me there was this gentleman who was suffering of mobility problems. His name is Bernardo. Diabetes took his health and a leg and is confined to a wheelchair. The problem is that he is very poor and had to rescue a wheelchair from the garbage and tried to repair it.
The chair was in really bad conditions. Instead of seat it had a plain wood board. Instead of feet rests, it had some rope and same for the back. The chair was killing his back and kidneys.
Being a nurse, Bere knows how bad it gets for patients when a chair is in this bad shape. So we both started to gather resources to get Bernardo a new chair.
After sending my donation (as much as I could) I wrote a post on my blog and asked the sangha and readers for a little donation. Also posted on Twitter and Facebook.
A few minutes later Bere’s phone went crazy with all the money transfers alerts!
In just 2 hours we got the money to get a new chair. Not only that, but we got a little extra to get a better one!
We stopped taking donations and Bere went to buy the new chair. By the afternoon Bernardo was rolling on his brand new and comfortable wheelchair.
He and his family were in tears and couldn’t speak at all. They were just smiling and crying. Bere and me were too.
Here is Don Bernardo (Don means something like Venerable Elder) with his new wheels.
And here he says: “Greetings to everyone who helped me and gave me this chair. Thank you. With all my heart thank you”.
I wanted to share this because to me this is proof that Kanzeon is real. A thousand arms, a thousand beings helping each other without questions, without asking for anything in return.
Gassho,
Kyonin
Sat/LAH