I will put this forth as an idea, and whether is based in reality or not... you can debate. After my brain injury, when I had no voice for a long time and remained in silence… fatigued, resting at home. I remember laying on my heated floor looking up at the rafters, and now thinking about it still miss that heated floor(that’s another story). Within six months, I was going to work every other day to let my brain rest. A few years later, I met friend who invited me to meditate and then enjoy dinner with him at his house. My first time meditating I wanted peace, so desperately, that I sat for an hour, which shocked him and me. It was not but a few years earlier another friend suggested I meditate, and I made the lame excuse of my brain injury would not let me. That started me on pursing meditation, slow at first with him, and later at temple. Funny, I have inspired that other friend to go do a Vipassana, turning the cards on him.
My partner has had a hard life, abandoned by his parents at birth, when they separated and moved far away leaving him with an old village couple unrelated to him. Raised by these kind souls, he was very close to his “grandmother,” he told me. It was very hard for him, since they were poor rice farmers and had thus no money. In elementary school, World Vision helped to feed him, and he gave donations to them twice this year, with his meager salary, even though he is Buddhist. He is eating less, just to honor those in the world that have no food. At one point in his early years he had to ordain for a year, just to have enough food to eat. Not treated well by the abbot of the temple in his village, he was treated more like a slave. His grandmother died about a year before we met. It rocked his world when the only person he really could count on growing up was gone. He got very ill, and almost died. He “cried” out in pain and perhaps, I “heard” him across the world. When we met it was out of extraordinary circumstances (yet another story). We established enough of a bond during our first month, that it launched our relationship.
Two things seem to me to be at work here, since the chance of us meeting was so rare, as neither of us were looking for a relationship. One is the primal need or the cry of another human being “heard” when one quiets down. The second one, is I am beginning to feel that his grandmother sent me to him. When we met I went to his village and met his grandfather who was still alive, who liked to sit and watch me. I remember sitting with the grandfather and his friends enjoying some home made rice wine on mats outdoors under the stars. We saw a huge shooting star that night, and have night photos of us looking up. This year will celebrate our 12th anniversary, and now it’s the longest relationship of all my siblings. My partner's Master's graduation ceremony is in April, with a famous Thai princess handing him his diploma.
I give to Buddhist Global Relief to help feed people and Bhikkhu Bodhi has heart-breaking, 3 part story of his early years as a hungry monk in Sri Lanka HERE.
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