The Man and the Monk-cycle I first heard about the trike from mutual friends in Floating Doctors. I had been using my neighbor's tricycle while she was in Asia. It made my movement around the island a lot easier and covering more ground I didn't have to lump all the day's chores into one long walking meditation. From the reports i learned that the designer, engineer, build crew leader, tricycle visionary was getting a lot of enjoyment from the project that was to be his gift to me. His gift to me because, "I wanted to do something nice for you." The MAN: John has been here for awhile and is well known on this island. you either know him as a friend, a business man, a good man, or the guy in the "motorized scooter chair thing". John was injured when he had 17 years and was left paralyzed from the shoulders down. The details and subsequent challenges of his injury come out when asked but they are only background to his life now. People who are paralyzed face challenges every day of their lives so John decided to take his to an island off the coast of a "developing" nation. He has met his challenges head on with blend of scholarly sarcasm and a dry, clever wit. He's the bravest guy I know. THE MONK-CYCLE: John's toolbox is his brain and he assembled a crew to build the M-C and he designed the ideal trike for me on a collection of cardboard box pieces and napkins with soy sauce on them. i enjoyed listening to the enthusiasm for the project in his voice as he explained tire size and gearing and even had me come to his warehouse to check a googled picture of a Vajrayana monk to make sure of the colors so they could paint the trike. Some minor delays due to availability of parts and availability of pit crew. I went to the warehouse to get the M-C and I enjoyed that feeling of anticipation that comes on birthdays and Christmas mornings. It was a beauty with color coordinated by google and Julio Iglesias, Johns scooter chair thing chief mechanic and assembly by Pepi and his crew. I was humbled by the effort and know it was neither an easy or inexpensive project but the fun was just starting or not starting yet depending on how you look at it. I didn't make it out of the driveway before there was a snap and the pedals moved but the M-C didn't. Sheared a pin on the rear axle so a stronger one was inserted and off I went on the maiden voyage which led to another snapping, spinning, no movement bike walk back home.A friend saw me and explained how to use a trike and then offered assistance when he heard mechanical failure. A bigger pin inserted and off I went again until a bigger snap and I broke the axle. So Pepi, a craftsman who could weld a fart to a cloud, went to work fixing the axle only to have me break it again a few days later. Bigger axle from the mainland, more welding and I was ready for days of buzzing around the island, with a basket on the back and my face in the wind. Problem was the M-C was hard to get rolling and you couldn't turn because the front wheel would start scrubbing. Six of us stood there as I went on about free wheeling and trike axles when the collective light bulb went off and in a five minute adjustment I was off and riding. I wanted to get a bike here two years ago but every time I was going to get one I dislocated my hip, had surgery and started rehab all over again. Friends were worried about the idea of me on two wheels with any kind of speed and using my neighbor's trike was the perfect fit for the clumsy monk. it was then that John decided to build the Monk-Cycle, to do something nice for me. "A gift consists not in what is done or given, but in the intention of the giver or doer." Lucius Annaeus Seneca The next day I went out to Palmar Tent Lodge on Red Frog Beach and tripped on a step getting up to my tent and broke my left wrist and will have a cast for six weeks. Go figure...

It's been awhile

The Ngöbe family and the bag of cats

I was riding into town by the futbol pitch and saw a Ngöbe family
group heading the same way in front of me. I watched a young boy chasing a skinny cat across the street and grabbing it by the hind legs, he dropped the limp cat into a bag he was holding. As I passed I was filled with a osense of there is something wrong here so I wheeled the Monk-cycle around and went back to the group of two women and four children to ask what was going on. I noticed the other boy also carrying a bag that was moving with life inside it and the silhouette of a round head pulsing against the restraint of the small bag. There was weight to the bag from the way the boy carried it and there looked like what could be rocks or some kind of ballast at the bottom. Communication was poor with my poor Spanish and their blank looks as the young girls and two boys just giggled as the two bags vibrated.
My mind quickly fixed on a scenario of the group on their way into town for whatever purpose with a stop and drop at the ferry landing and the end of the cats in the bag.
What to do? Try to understand the situation and reason for the sparing of the cats? Call the Policia and Sgt. Sanchez? Buy the bags of cats? Follow them to see the final chapter of this story or ride on to the obligations that awaited me in town?
I rode on.
I have thought about this incident many times since that moment and wondered how it fit into my practice, how it influenced my practice. If the situation did end at the ferry landing did I fail to benefit and preserve life or did I turn my back on the life in those bags and miss a moment of goodness?
This practice of mine is far from perfect as I am far from perfect and I have to use everything that approaches me as teaching. I learned that I can't do everything and I can't know everything to be as it appears to be or is it anything else as the Zen axe says.
Life is delicate and not always with a happy ending and there will be another moment, another bag of cats in my life and I hope that I will understand and do that which is right effort and compassionate.
I am grateful for that bag of cats and may any benefit arising from this effort serve to alleviate the suffering of all beings: those near and far, above and below, seen and unseen; beings with 2 legs and 4 legs, wings and fins, born and yet to be born. May all beings be happy, may all beings be peaceful, may all beings realize their Buddha Nature...