Thursday, May 17, 2018

WE ARE THE SAME

A brush with Enlightenment
Once upon an afternoon, an old woman wanting to wash her face was confronted by a tiny brown recluse spider sitting in the empty stainless steel bowl she kept there for mixing hot and cold tap water. Without a moments thought, she dumped it into the toilet and the spider swam. Suddenly, remembering all she knew of the poor innocent, she was flooded with regret. She didn't want to kill it and scooped it up into a glass to pour out the open window to the alley below. Hoping it survived, she couldn't stop thinking of it as she went about getting ready to travel to her weekly Zen sitting. She felt sad that her first reaction had been automatic. That evening she told her Sensei about the incident. He smiled warmly:
"You and the spider are the same."

Yes.
~*~



The following afternoon, while writing at her computer, she heard a scritching noise coming from the garbage pail in her kitchen. There was a very large (almost two inches) American cockroach in the bottom of the bag desperately trying to get out. She thought about yesterdays lesson, and knew she had no infestation (hadn't seen a roach in years and never left food out other than the garbage bag emptied twice a day). She knew that nearby neighbors had complained and that the exterminator was in the building yesterday, so she tied the bag loosely, dressed in street clothes and went down three flights and outside to a street garbage container with a slightly open lid where she untied the bag and gently deposited it within. In this case it would likely give the escapee another lease on life--for a while at least. She noticed that she felt slightly foolish and smiled.
~*~



 She hopes there will be no third event. Now she's back to writing about an ant colony infestation last year and it's utterly surprising amazing ending not yet arrived at in this old post:
http://mscomfortzone.blogspot.com/2017/05/plaque-of-ants.html 

 LINKs


https://www.ksre.k-state.edu/news/stories/2016/03/brown-recluse030316.html

http://pestkill.org/insect/roaches/water-bug-vs-cockroach/

2 comments:

grace Forrest~Maestas said...

i am there, or here, either,but with you, with Us, here, a
young rattlesnake.

Mo Crow said...

(((Michelle))) you are so gentle & kind!