a buddhist perspective - abuddhistperspective

I'm looking out yet another window. This one is in my room in one of the two nun's dormitories at the Pure Land Learning College, in Toowoomba, Australia. Across the road is a church with an attached school. It's Sunday morning and young children are in the playground. Over a dozen of them are holding what might be a marquee cover. It is multicolored and about twenty yards long. I can't see how wide. There is a slight breeze with periodic gusts of wind.

The children are raising their arms and lowering them so the marquee cover is rising and falling, and billowing as it catches the wind. I can hear the children laughing as they play. A children's game I think and return to working on my computer.

I look up a few more times and then notice there's a pattern to the movement. It's more than just letting the cover catch the wind and playing with it. On more careful observation and trying not to jump to another hasty conclusion, I realize the children are all moving their arms in unison. There must be someone telling them when to raise or lower their arms and when to let the cover settle down on the ground and then make it rise again.

And I realize this is no mere game. This is a lesson in teamwork because the children all have to work together to get the cover to catch the wind and billow. It is a lesson in patience because they have to wait for the wind to calm down. It is a lesson in diligence because they have to keep practicing to learn how to work with the constantly changing wind.

So my initial hasty, dismissive conclusion about what was happening outside my window was all wrong.

I only realized what was really happening when my mind was quiet, when I wasn't making judgments, when I was carefully observing what was happening, and when I allowed the truth to come bubbling up from inside me.