When I was around three, I was one lovely Michigan morning walking down the sidewalk near my home with my dog Sandy, while very much under the notion that life, and the world as a whole, was a pretty good thing. But then Sandy trotted out into the street where two men were on their hands and knees near a tar machine doing road repair work.
Sandy, just a little mutt dog that I loved a lot, made the mistake of going up to one of the men to sniff his foot for a moment. And that’s when it happened for me. Because of this crime by my dog, the man yelled at me in a most harsh manner, “Get your goddamn dog out of here kid before I spray it with tar!”
Fortunately Sandy departed from the guy the moment I called her, and so she wasn’t harmed. But I remember very well to this day thinking, “How could God be so mean as to place me in a world that’s like this? I thought this was a nice place.”
That experience really shook me to my core. And yet, that’s nothing compared to what happens to some people when they’re little. For example, I recall several years ago a little blurb in the news about how in Israel a father and his 5-year-old son were walking along when, suddenly, they were caught in a withering cross-fire of bullets between Palestinians and Israeli military personnel shooting machineguns at each other!
They were both killed.
I couldn’t help but wonder when I read that if that little kid at that time at least had some clue as to the kinds of hateful forces there were in the world. Or whether he was up until that moment under the basic notion that love was all about, and that even though there may have been some inkling that there were some real problems in the world, they could never be so bad that people actually made and used powerful weapons to kill each other with; that no way could there really be that level of hate for one another!
Because he lived where he lived, I suspect that he probably did in fact have a pretty solid clue about what the world had in it when this happened, though it must have been utterly terrifying just the same.
But here’s the thing. I’ve never understood how it is that with all of the various discussions that go on in the world about so many mundane and not so mundane things, why is it that one never hears a word about that utterly stupendously shattering and shocking moment of truth when full-blown hate makes itself known to an individual that it really does exist in life?
One may say that they remember where they lived when the Beatles came to America, or what they were doing when they got the news that princess Di was killed … or when the space shuttle Challenger blew up … or when some guy with a stick hit a ball that broke someone’s long-standing record. And yet for reasons I can’t understand, people never seem to regard as significant that mind-boggling moment when that single event occurred in their life (which had to have shacken them to the core of their being) that said: “Hey little kid; you’re in a world that has unvarnished hate in it – so you had better watch out!”
I once entertained the idea of collecting anecdotes from people from all walks of life to make a compilation for a book titled something like: “Buddha Moments: A collection of stories regarding ‘Life’s big sucker-punch awakening to the awareness of hatred’”
To read such accounts from famous, infamous and others would, I’ve always thought, be very interesting. People on death row might have particularly interesting things to say on the subject. (E.g., “Up until the moment dear old mom decided to use me for a toilet plunger, I loved life and people, … .”)
Alas, I am too lazy for such a great project. Thus I’ll pass on the money and make due with whatever any of you may care to share regarding this most important of all events – your own Buddha Moment.
Thanks All!! 
