May 29, 2020
Venerable Wuling in Awakening, Giving

Helping naturally and appropriately. 

Seeing a young girl struggle to extract a paper towel from its dispenser, I reached over to turn the awkwardly-placed dispenser knob. With that, the paper towel magically rolled out. Eagerly tearing off the towel, the girl turned and looked up at me.

Her smile was radiant. I also had a big happy smile as we shared our moment of hard-won success.

Helping her had been so natural. There had been no need to judge whether she was worthy of help. She was a little girl!

No need to decide if I should be the one to help. No one else noticed her predicament.

And deciding how to help wasn’t an issue because, thanks to personal experience, I knew how to extract the towel!

And so, I offered my help unconditionally and spontaneously. By experiencing a rare flash of clarity, I had gone straight from perception to action. Looking back over what had just happened, I mused that perhaps this could be considered a rare taste of how awakened beings help. Naturally and appropriately.

Article originally appeared on a buddhist perspective (http://www.abuddhistperspective.org/).
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