Dear Diary....

I keep journals, not "Dear Diary" type journals, I just have journals, everywhere. They are in my bags, beside my bed, in the car, beside the computer and whenever I see or hear something that interests me, or intrigues me, or that I need to find out more information about I write it down. But poems and quotes are my favourites. I find that I just come across some that are so profound that I have to write them in a journal to think about them, meditate on them, so to speak. These quotes take me on some interesting journeys and have at times shown amazing and immediate rewards.
One that has been showing itself in my life repeatedly is the one written on the print that I made above. It says;'I have learnt Patience from the Impatient, Kindness from the Unkind and Tolerance from the Intolerant'. Now the funny thing is ( by funny, I mean Karma, Universe teaching us type funny) that within a week of me coming across this quote and writing it into my favourite journal, the really neatly written one with the stripes in the colour of Autumn, I found that I had a situation where it was called for, where this quote would provide me with an epiphany.
Now I need to quickly take you back to a week before all of this unfolded. Mr de facto Sweetmango and I were sitting at home having a lovely cup of coffee and chatting about life when the discussion turned to what we each wanted from life at the moment and I stated that I really wanted my learning with regards to Buddhism to go up another level, I felt that I had plateaued and that I was ready for some higher learning but that I wasn't sure where I was going to get this knowledge from....and so unfolds the story from this point.

I belong to an online art forum, this forum is mainly full of lovely positive people, artists whose very souls are as colourful and full of beauty as the paintings they create. One day during a discussion on a post that was just bound to create a very diverse range of responses, you know how it is with ART, all you have to do is post a picture and write one sentence beside it..."Is this Art" and Boom, the forum explodes with opinions, for, against, don't know, don't care, however the majority of these opinions, no matter how differing in their views were always polite, respectful, tolerant. Then it started, one person wrote a comment that appeared to, to some extent, underhandedly direct a not quite so nice comment towards another person on the forum. Me being me I couldn't stand by without defending this person, she is a lovely lady, a lot older than the young woman who made the comment, and she has been having a rather rough time health wise of late. So, as we all know now, I live by the words "I will not be the silent majority", so in I jumped with both feet, I was polite, I was respectful but most importantly I used facts to back up what I was saying. All good I thought, then out of left field, completely unannounced came THE ATTACK directed at me. This was from a "young" man, and I mean "young" in so many ways, it was NASTY, VICIOUS, CRUEL and OFFENSIVE, but most of all it was PETTY! Well, I tell you it was late at night, I was tired and my first re-action???...Not a very Buddhist one I am afraid to admit. I wanted to crawl into my computer and hit him over the head with my favourite journal, the really neatly written one with the stripes in the colour of Autumn and follow it up with a verbal rampage the likes of which he has never seen, lecture him on RESPECT and COMMON COURTESY. Ugh, I seethed, I cursed and ranted at the computer screen, I turned to Mr de facto Sweetmango and said, " I don't want to be like this, I don't want these comments to get to me, I want to face this the way Buddhism has shown me, how do I get past this, what would the Dalai Lama do" Mr de facto Sweetmango looked me in the eye, pain etched on his face, compassion and empathy flowed from him, it was palpable, I looked at him expectantly and he quietly reached out, touched my shoulder and said, "I have no idea". Ugh!!! I turned away from the screen and resisted the urge to let my fingers fly over the keyboard, parrying, thrusting, attacking and defending. Instead, I lay my head down on my folded arms, which were placed onto the smooth coolness of our large computer desk. I breathed. I breathed. I lifted my head slowly, looked about me, I felt completely forlorn and abandoned, I was alone with this struggle to gain the knowledge that I so desperately yearned, I looked around me through headache throbbing, bleary eyes until they came to rest upon my favourite journal, the really neatly written one with the stripes in the colour of Autumn. I picked it up, somewhat despondently, leafed through it as I am prone to do during times of melancholy and what did I find?...I found THIS quote, this very quote this whole post is about. Ok, I thought and hope flickered in my eyes, this, this has something to do with the answer I am searching for, the perfect reply to place on the art forum in reply to this little upstart. But what? How? My head flopped back down onto my arms, once more I assumed the position of utter defeat and despair. Then it slowly started to come to me, I have a Buddhist website, written by a Buddhist nun that I regularly visit when I have a problem I am trying to sort out. She has posts written under various headings that allow you to go straight to the "root of the problem". So off I went to her site, and looked under MINDFULNESS and there was an entry entitled; Maintaining the Calm, Clear Mind. Here she related a story about Buddha and a group of monks and nuns that he encountered on his travels, the "moral", for want of a word, of the story was this...
"The Buddha pointed out to the monastics that as long as they did not hear anything disagreeable or unpleasant (said to them or about them), most of them were quiet and well behaved. But when they heard something objectionable (said to them or about them), such words became a test as to whether they were truly calm and polite"...
and then they penny dropped for me. Those two sentences and the quote that I had written down came together, they blended, they sang the song of understanding and knowledge that I had longed for, I had my answer, I understood, I knew now why this young man had written those things, I knew the reason we had crossed paths and most importantly I knew what I was now going to write in reply to his post on the forum. I poised myself over the keyboard, ready to type the message, the message from my heart in reply to his attack...I wrote..."Thank-you". I hit send, and I smiled, because I really, really meant it.
Thank you, thank for my lesson today. Thank you for teaching me kindness, patience and tolerance. Thank you for making me this day, a better person. I turned off the computer, I felt light in my heart, I smiled all the way to the bedroom, every now and again a giggle even escaped because it is very hard to bottle up pure joy, it has a habit of bubbling over like a bottle of fizzy drink that has been shaken a couple of times before opening. Thank you...what power those two words have, both in the act of giving and receiving.
The next day when I logged into the Art Forum, I kid you not, 3 funny ( by funny, I mean Karma, Universe teaching us type funny) things happened. First there was another post from this young man, it simply said..."Sorry"....then I noticed two messages in my inbox, both of them, and I kid you not, both of them had the title "Thank You", and were both a message of thanks from two forum members, one thanking me for standing up for her (the very lovely older (read: more experienced in life) lady ) and a different young man (same age as the first young man) who wished to just thank me in general for always having kind things to say about others and in particular, to him.
So there you go, it all started with me asking the universe for more lessons in Buddhism and the universe, as it always seems to do, providing me with the lessons I requested. Another quote I have written in my favourite journal, the really neatly written one with the stripes in the colour of Autumn, is one that says
"When we raise our eyes to the sky and say God, teach me to be patient (or...insert here whatever you are asking for), God does not look down and say, "Oh it's patience you are after, well hold out your hands, here's some". No no no, he looks down with fondness and says, "So it is patience you require, well my child then I will provide you with the opportunities you need in order for you to learn patience."
And that pretty much sums it up in a nut shell...

The buddhist nun that I spoke of is the Venerable Wuling and her website is called
A Buddhist Perspective.