Meghna and I were driving back from the store. For lack of anything better to say, I asked her "So, what do you think you were in your past life? A teacher, a scientist, or a musician?" She pondered for a minute and answered "I think I was a Buddhist monk".
That was quite unexpected, since she has never really talked about Buddhism or monks before. "What makes you say that?" I asked. "I like Buddhism's emphasis on the middle path between extremes...", she responded, sounding rather wise for a twelve year old. We turned up the hill towards our home. As we drove up our street, we saw three people standing outside the house five doors down from us - an Asian couple, and....a shaven headed female buddhist monk in maroon robes!
Female Tibetan Buddhist Monk Ani Choying Drolma, UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador to Nepal
The Ling Shen Ching Tze Buddhist temple is about 1-2 miles from our home, so there is a mundane explanation for the female monk's appearance in our neighborhood. Having said that, I'd never seen monks from that temple in the vicinty of our home in the 6+ years we have lived here, until this day. Needless to say, both Meghna and I were rather tickled by this coincidence, or synchronicity as Carl Jung calls it.
Lama Shenpen Hookham has this to say about concidences "It seems to happen more and more as one embarks on a spiritual path. I have noticed it throughout my life but especially since I seriously embarked on the path to Awakening. It happens at University where someone hands you the exact book you need, significant meetings of people on street corners where the chances of that happening are so remote it does make the hairs on the back of your neck tingle."
Post Script: The title of this post is adapted from the famous Zen koan "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!" that, when contemplated upon, is supposed to result in deeper insight for the student
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