Tears in the Rain
“No-one has ever done anything like this for me, lady…”
I had a very sad experience on Wednesday night after Yoga. It was about 8.15 pm and I was in a hurry to get back home. Just as the class ended it started to rain heavily, and I was cursing for not having brought an umbrella. I decided to use my yoga-mat as an umbrella and held it over my head as I ran across the road.
Just near the temple entrance I noticed a man sitting in the dark, on the pavement with a torn plastic bag over some food he had in his lap. Obviously he was a beggar, with half a leg missing too! Someone must have given him the food but it started raining suddenly and the poor man was stranded.
Immediately I felt my heart getting really heavy and I just felt so miserable for this wretched soul. I didn’t know what to do. But I was aching from this sight.
Without much thinking I just went up to him and sat beside him and held the yoga mat over us both, so he could continue to eat. I said “kanna kanna” (eat eat!) and he just stared at me in disbelief. My back was getting drenched in the meantime. He just kept looking at me without eating and I could see he was trying to say something and then he started crying, staring right into my eyes.
I was feeling so bad for this man and did not know what else in the world to do and before I knew it I was crying too. I felt so terribly helpless and yet I think to this man, my being there was something to start crying about.
We were both crying like children. What a pathetic life this man was having to live.
Finally after about 10 minutes or so the rain ceased and I said to him to move in to the temple and he was still sobbing and not yet eating!
I said I have to go and he reached out and held my hand in both his hands and said “mata kawuruth mehema deyak karala ne nona” (no-one has ever done anything like this for me, lady) and boy was I weeping or what!
It was 9 pm when I finally got home after a cry in the car.
I feel so much that I wish I could help these poor sad people. I wish I had lots of money to give them. I wish, I wish, I wish !!!
Oh well, what to do…?
Zen Moments is grateful for permission to reproduce this moving account, which came from a personal email sent from Sri Lanka in 2001.The writer has requested to remain anonymous.
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You got me crying too just by reading your post. Occasionally I find an old man sitting on the pavement begging for money and a few people who would give in some coins. The thing is that there are also many people living a life of lies, begging for money when the truth is they have a family who can support them. Some people would manipulate children to beg on the street and collect the money from the children rather than giving the money to the children. It is sad because we would never know who is real and who is lying.
The issue is compassion. Our jaded minds mistrust most everyone. The compassion person even helps the untruthful beggar to enlighten him to compassion and moral visibility. We must always show compassion, even to the unjust, immoral and our enemies.
I love the story and it will make me stop next time to help one that I might have walked by.
What a touching story. Thank you for sharing it.