
I’m sitting in Izy Coffee, aimlessly tapping on a small rectangular screen.
I’ve just read the words of some unknown Buddhist human being:
One’s compassion should be like that felt for the suffering of a mother who has no hands and so is powerless to help her only son who has fallen into a river. Because she cannot help him, she becomes more and more upset, and feels more and more love for her child. The bodhisattva needs to feel such limitless compassion for all sentient beings amidst all their different sufferings. The bodhisattva’s motivation is a deep and heartfelt wish for beings to be free from suffering.
[Bodhisattva: a person who is able to reach nirvana but delays doing so through compassion for suffering beings]
[Nirvana: a transcendent state in which there is no suffering, desire nor sense of self]
A life of compassion rings true within me. And how about right now, with the people before me?
1. A muscular man, arms crossed, talking to the barista
2. Two young women in animated conversation
3. A middle-aged man, also talking to the barista, nodding vigorously with a little smile
4. A woman of perhaps 60, slumped sideways on her chair, intent on her phone
There’s nothing visible of angst, of the sorrows of life. But I wonder … Does something dark lurk beneath the animated words of the two women? Not consciously felt in the moment. Perhaps only drifting up to consciousness in the minutes before sleep.
I sense that every Izy customer is carrying something heavy … be it woes of health, relationship, money or just basic self-esteem.
May I have the eyes to see
What lies beneath
And to hold in my heart
The pain


























