Rinpoche on a Branch

I told Sogyal Rinpoche the mouse was face up, its eyes wide. Its hair still ruffled from running away from me. I scared him to death, like the mouse from Autumn 2000.

"Shimmy, you may be asking yourself this question: 'If I take in the sufferings and pain of others, won't I risk harming myself?'"

"Mouse fear is a holy secret. Oceans of unadulterated bewilderment. The mouse is always already squealing," I said.

Rinpoche was poised on a bare branch of the Mayakovsky Tree. I shook an itch from my left leg and stretched. He leaned forward. The branch rustled. I licked my belly.

"As you breathe in, you take in the suffering of this mouse and others. And as you breathe out, you give the mouse happiness and peace."

Sometimes it hurts when I breathe and everything tastes like Enacard.

He said, "At every moment in our lives, Shimmy, we need compassion, but what more urgent moment could there be than when a mouse's dead, delicious orbuncular eyes are staring up at us, and his hair is still ruffled in fear from our great predatory bulk?"

"The dead mouse was a mammal of the people. He was placed in a black-paper-edged petri dish with double sided tape. Then he was swooped in a tidal wave and transported to a totally barren jungle island. This mouse was the story of a little girl who loved her rain boots. A dead mouse is the first place, not the last, you should investigate when disordered energy presents itself."