One Simple Act

I'm not really a writer, I just play one on the internet. So yesterday, when I decided to write a post about my sangha brother Sam and his encounter with a local snake, I couldn't figure out how to begin. Alas, this morning's Rigpa Glimpse of the Day fed me the opening :

What is compassion? It is not simply a sense of sympathy or caring for the person suffering, not simply a warmth of heart toward the person before you, or a sharp clarity of recognition of their needs and pain, it is also a sustained and practical determination to do whatever is possible and necessary to help alleviate their suffering.

Sam spent a lot of time living on our retreat land in rural Arizona and had met up with a few snakes before. So when he found a baby snake in his room at the temple on Sunday night, he picked it up. Unfortunately, the snake didn't know Sam to be the kind-hearted, gentle guy we all know him to be, so he bit Sam twice on his finger.

Sam's a long-time practitioner and a pretty cool customer. He put the snake into a flower vase and called a couple of sangha members to help identify it using the internet. They decided the snake was a poisonous copperhead, but before heading for the ER Sam circumambulated the Enlightenment Stupa three times carrying the vase full o' snake, making prayers for its auspicious rebirth. Then he walked out to the woods and set it free.

Not only was the snake's life saved, but it received rare and extraordinary blessings. Because of seeing and circumambulating the stupa, the little snake will attain enlightenment in some future life. Just from that one simple act.

The thing is, training one's mind to perform a "simple" act like that takes time and dedication. It takes consistent effort to counterbalance our conditioning. In this world we are taught that humans are superior life forms, and that among animals snakes are way down at the bottom. We are taught that animals live happy lives, even though the briefest observation would reveal that their lives are full of suffering. We are bombarded with societal norms that tell us there's only this one life, here and now. We are encouraged to act as if our actions--whether positive or negative-- only produce immediate results, or none at all. We just don't think long-term. And we really don't think about the distant, future lives of poisonous little snakes.

But on Sunday night as a result of his dedicated practice, Sam did. As our Aussie sangha would say, "Good on ya, Sam."