Buddhism

When I was 8 years old I was going on an errand with my father and we went downtown and as we were passing a seedy part of the city he saw a homeless guy laying out on the ground. He stopped the car, told me to stay in the car and he went over and gave first aid to the guy who was a wino who had passed out and was bleeding from the head. He eventually got the guy patched up and called an ambulance.

Fifteen years latter I was in Grand Central Station in New York and noticed a guy who had passed out and was on the ground, I froze.

I thought a lot about my reactions and meditated on rewiring my reflexes.

Over a 16 year period in Thailand I was on hand to witness about a dozen serious accidents where the Thais were standing around watching. In two of the cases the head had serious gashes. One was a motorcycle that had hit a truck going the other way at 60 MPH. The Thais thought that the lump in the road was a corpse. I saw his diaphragm move and told my assistant to drive and I carefully picked him up with a broken arm and leg (we were in the country side and there would be no ambulance) and got in the back seat. He regained consciousness about a block from the hospital and was in shock and wanted us to drop him off by the side of the road. Three or four of the accidents probably resulted in saving the guys life.


You said that you reacted with anger and fear. I am guessing that you acted with less anger and less fear than a year ago. I am guessing that next year there will be less.
It wasn't me, I was just doing what my father had taught me when I was 8. Sometimes we just need a little practice to change the wiring.