I was completely amazed by the knowledge that this temple had been standing for nearly one thousand four hundred years. All I could think about were the people through out those 1400 years that had walked this very path, the hands that had touched the walls, the knees that had knelt before Buddha and here I was adding to this wonderful human history…I closed my eyes, crossed my legs, rested my hands palms up on my knees and listened to the monk chant to Buddha. I felt such gratitude…such humbleness…and pure and simple happiness. I sat there for a long time…I didn’t want to get up…I wanted to stay in that place, relish my internal peace but the monk stopped chanting and I took that as my cue to leave. I looked around the temple one last time making sure to ingrained it in my memory forever, making sure to never to forget what happiness feels like…
The temple that I visited yesterday was about a 45 minute subway ride and then a 10 minute taxi ride up a HUGE mountain. As the taxi driver was dropping me off I wondered to myself how I was going to get back down the mountain as there weren’t any taxi’s at the entrance to the temple nor were there any other tourist…I pushed the thought aside and told myself I would figure it out when I was leaving. Well about 2 hours later…there I was trying to figure out how I was going to get down the mountain. Like I mentioned before no one speaks English…so there I was trying to tell an old man I need a taxi to get the the subway…could he call a taxi? I became quite the spectacle…a westerner trying to explain I needed a taxi. A small group gathered and I was finally able to make myself understood…everyone laughed… an even greater spectacle…taxi’s didn’t just come up the mountain. The old man pulled out a stool and told me to sit. I smiled, sat down and told myself patience would be needed as I might be waiting for a long time. I was there for about 15 minutes “talking” with some other gentlemen as I tried to explain my predicament when the old man called me over to a car. He pushed me into the car said a few words to the woman that was driving, closed the door and waved goodbye. Before I knew it I was driving down the mountain headed to my train station. The old man had come through…he hitched me a ride with a kind woman who dropped me off and sped away heading home.
Kindness from strangers is truly a beautiful thing!
