LUKA--AND THE BUDDHA

(Please note the new book posted in the right hand margin, and the earlier entry I wrote to let you know what it was all about.  I'm eager to get word out...)

I woke up coughing from the dust in my throat.  I had been riding in a motorcycle race--more properly, I thought, a motor vehicle race, since there were also cars involved--over rough, mountainous territory.  My machine was soundless and I rode it with incredible, increasing speed over narrow rocky paths along the crests of mountains and through desert-like arroyos.  I was aware that I was in competition, even though no other vehicles were anywhere in sight.  At one point, I sped past a solitary walker, the graceful figure of a woman dressed all in white, proceeding leisurely along the path.  I was concerned that my speeding bike would leave her in a trail of dust...

Little Luka and his Mom returned yesterday after the holidays to their home in Los Angeles.  Much though we already miss them, the serenity is a welcome change from the little one's boundless energy.  He is starting to walk now, taking a few unsteady steps at a time and shrieking with joy at this new achievement.  The rest of the time he's on his hand and knees, moving speedily from one danger spot to the next.  His curiosity is as boundless as his energy, and his understanding of the world around him grows in giant steps as he explores it.  The dimensions of his character, too, are constantly expanding as he deploys a crafty sense of humor and learns the manipulative power of a timely smile.  He readily puts on the charm--and just as easily bursts into a fit of rage or misery.  It's a miracle to watch.

Incidentally, for my Buddhist readers, one of Luka's favorite words--and he has only a very few of them as yet, and most of these barely understandable--is "buddha."  I'm not sure what he thinks it means, but the word is frequently on his lips.  I have been careful not to try to "teach" him anything about my own convictions, but I confess that I do take him out every day to visit the Buddha fountain in our garden...

... and encourage him to "rub the Buddha's nose."  He insists--and he is quite successful, these days, with his insistence--on picking up one of the small white rocks we have laid in front of the Buddha in his fountain, and holding it in his hand before, equally insistently, returning it whence it came.  To my eagerly interpretive mind, it feels like a baby's gift of honoring acknowledgement.  But that's probably fanciful.