Scents and sensibility

So yesterday, Jack and I and about 24,998 other people (or 29,037 others according to the Toronto Star) braved the cold, hard driving rain to see the Dalai Lama at the Skydome and it was good. It made me think about karma and compassion and the inherent nature of humankind and stuff.

The message was simple, easily digested. As the Toronto Star put it, it was essentially "love thy neighbour, love thy enemy." Nothing astounding, nothing Earth-shaking. Nothing you haven't heard before. But really, really hard to put into practice.

So, there we were, sitting way up in the stands and I was feeling all peaceful and zen, if a little soggy and disturbed by the gruesome effect the rainy weather had on my hair. His Holiness had just taken the stage after some Tibetan good luck dances and chants and a warm introduction by Justin Trudeau (who despite his slight lisp and penchant for sibilant Ss, displayed all the charisma of his late father, Pierre Trudeau, former Canadian Prime Minister, but less of his arrogance and significantly more hair) and he was looking like a very tiny, very animated, very lovable little monkey down there on stage, half swallowed by the white wingback chair he was sitting in. I was smelling vague wafts of incense and shampoo and snuggling close to the Handsome Guy, paying rapt attention , when the seat next to me was suddenly and abruptly occupied by someone who smelled VERY BAD. Like onion chip dip gone very, very wrong.

I don't know that I'd call her an enemy exactly. I mean, she did nothing truly reprehensible or threatening...just a lot of loud chatter and elbow jostling and belching of offensive odours and such... she seemed like a pleasant enough person aside from that. She was just seriously annoying. I ended up spending a lot of the energy I should have been devoting to listening to the itty bitty little Tibetan Nobel Peace Prize winner trying to feel compassion for my neighbour.

And it was HARD, people.

Every time I managed to convince myself that she wasn't so bad, that she was in fact a friend I just hadn't made yet.... every time I managed to suppress the urge to beg Jack into switching seats with me... every time I found myself entranced and embraced by the Dalai Lama's undeniable aura of goodness and warmth, she would emit another invisible cloud of stink and start chattering (LOUDLY) to her partner.

And then I'd be off on some mental tangent thinking about how much easier compassion would be to practice if some people would just pay attention to good hygiene, how I'm never going to achieve peace of mind at this rate if I can't tolerate a little bad onion chip dip smell and ruminating about whether the Dalai Lama is ever disturbed by such things. Probably not. I understand he makes his home in India since his unfortunate exile from Tibet and India is, I have heard, a most fragrant nation. I'm sure His Holiness has been confronted by many smells whilst residing there, both pleasant and otherwise, and has dealt with them with grace and ease and not let any olfactory incidents affect his ability to practice compassion. Unlike me, the Dalai Lama is capable of extending love and friendship to the uber-stinky.

But in the end, I came away with a few little nuggets of wisdom and a warm feeling of community and contentment glowing in the pit of my belly, glad I let Jack (who is much more knowledgable on the subject of Buddhism than I) talk me into attending. But, it would seem, it wasn't necessarily a feeling shared by many other attendees. Seated on the floor of the skywalk on the way out of the dome was an obviously needy panhandler, begging for change. And he was being studiously, pointedly ignored by all the lecture attendees. Astonishing. As Jack observed later, you'd think it would be a good gig. You'd think that that location, sitting outside the venue where the esteemed Dalai Lama had just lectured for hours on the importance of compassion and "warm heartedness", would be a SURE THING. But no.

I'm proud to say that Jack didn't ignore him, not for a second, and plopped some loonies (one dollar coins) into his cup and we both eagerly wished him well. O, I love that man of mine! He's a keeper, fer sure. And he smells really good too.

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