There is mummy taking her son to school as she does each morning. She is one of the many I cross in my morning walk when schools open and dads and mummies take their children by the hand to the daily duty that is beginning to shape their lives. This mum goes on dragging after herself the bag with wheels that carries the heavy load of books and notebooks for the child’s school day. Formerly is was a handbag. Then it became a rucksack on their back. The latest is a square bag on wheels. Each time healthier for the body and its joints, and each time wealthier for the mind with the increase of printed knowledge. Mummy pulls at the box on wheels. A tennis racket handle sticks out from the top. There is something more than books inside. The child keeps kicking a football from side to side on the street. This is more amusing, of course, while mum willingly drags the books after her. Though mum is tall and the bag’s handle is short as it is made to a child’s measurement, and so she has to bend a little and stoop to reach the handle. But it doesn’t matter. All for the sake of the child.

Now the boy missed the ball. He has kicked it too strongly and it has come out of the street, is rolling in the middle of the road and any car can run over it and burst it. The child shouts, “Mummy, the ball!” and points at the danger. Mummy leaves the bag with the books on the street, plunges courageously between cars, signals desperately for them to stop, reaches the ball, catches it, misses it, grabs it, she is now closer to the other side of the street, gets on to it, reaches the zebra crossing, crosses back with the ball in her hands, gives it triumphantly to the child, kisses him, grabs again the bag’s handle, pulls it along, while the child starts again kicking the ball and so both together continue on their way to school.

I too continue on my way back home.

Poor little kid!

The sailor in his sailboat in the middle of the sea watches the remote horizon which lengthens his sight till the ends of the earth. Waves and foam and space and blue till the sea becomes the sky and the sky becomes the sea and everything is round, infinite, cosmic. The definitive meeting point of everything. The goal of life. The young sailor’s dream. When will I reach there?

Then he stares, he sharpens his look, focuses his eyes, and he sees. There on the far horizon, in the cosmic point, right over the meeting of heaven and earth there is a small sailboat like his own. He can make out its sail, follows its rocking on the waves, guesses the happiness of its sailor who has reached the final destiny. How lucky he is!

The happy sailor on the final destination is also looking towards our sailor from afar. He also sees him on the horizon where the sky meets the ocean, on the cosmic point, the final destiny. And he too thinks, how happy that sailor is to be there, to have arrived, to have fulfilled his dream.

We all believe that the point of the cosmic meeting is far away. Others have reached, not me. Others are saints, are good, are perfect, not me. Others are happy. Not me. I always remain at an infinite distance from the impossible ideal. I shall never reach.

My favourite among the Buddha’s stories.
- Master, you have ten thousand disciples. Hoy many of them have reached illumination?
- All of them, but they don’t know it.

Let’s realise it once and for all.

The master and the disciple are seated side by side on the seashore. The master speaks first:

- Do you hear the rumble of the waves? Of each wave. They all look equal but they are all different. As they rise, they grow, they advance, they break. And then they crumble, they withdraw, they listen to themselves, they gather strength to strike again. No two waves are equal. Learn to identify each note, to distinguish each shade, to let each wave be what it is, always true to itself, always spontaneous, obedient, punctual, unique. Learn the science of the waves. The art of the waves.

- I’m listening to the waves, master. I close my eyes and I sense their coming, their breaking, their returning, each one in its own way, in its own time, all equal and all different.

- The sea is the image of life, my son, as the waves are the image of persons. All similar and all different. Learn to know them, to respect them, to let them be what they are. Learn to live each moment, to discover each person, to value each life. Learn to know the ocean. Meditate on the waves which are patterns of life.

- I hear the waves, master, and I hear the persons.  

Good, my child. Now, do you hear also the silence between two waves?