The Crumpled Paper

I carry up the end of the line not wanting to walk ahead of the ajahns to do walking meditation on the beach on Vesak Day. We are all silent, I put my hand in my pocket and feel a crumpled piece of paper. I pull it out and want to throw it away, it is just a piece of paper I washed and dried with my pants …it can’t be that important.

I throw it towards a trash can, it bounces off the edge, I chuckle, it is begging me to read it, I guess. I pick it up and peeling it back carefully like a 3000yr old papyrus, I realize it is a dedication note for a shrine, I had rewritten to place on shrine after a weekend about a year ago.

The first line was to a friend who was having terrible time in a difficult relationship, and before I got to the second line, my phone vibrates and see a text from the same friend asking me to lunch. All things pass, he is now fine and removed from the pain he experienced, then. Many years ago, in everyday life, he gave me my first dhamma lesson about what is important(People vs Things). The second line is to my sister suffering from mental illness, and the third to my mother to give her strength with the pains of aging. I give it some thought about when these might pass. While the others walk silently along the shore, I lie down and sleep on the sand between sea grass humps, sometimes I can’t fight the exhaustion, a gift of this brain injury. Surprisingly, I woke up just as the group returned, joining them in the same place in line that I had before…. no one knew the difference.