Buddha Is My Co-Pilot

Some people have an out-of-body experience when they have reached death's edge. Sometimes, however, we begin "seeing the light" when things are just...odd.

I imagine myself in a tiny remote control plane, hovering several feet above, steadying with a quickly-beating front propeller. Next to me in the pilot seat is my companion, the Buddha himself with a notepad. ("Hello Buddha!") The Buddha humbly nods and points beneath us. Below, we observe this week's events:

It begun with our clogged second-floor toliet. This toilet is used by most of our five housemates. Our housemate on bathroom duty this month makes a note on our house whiteboard to the effect, "Second floor toliet broken. Will fix it when I return."

The next day the toliet is leaking water from its pipe. After traveling by shuttle, bus, foot, and possibly buggy, back home, I stumble into the door and I make a bee-line toward the bathroom. My housemate, lounging on the living room couch, informs me that our leak had turned into a leak problem that had absorbed our front hallway ceiling like the Blob. I'm not old enough to remember the actual Blob but I'm pretty sure that this must be identical because it is discolored and it is spreading.

Being the sensible law student that I am, I pull out my cell phone and call our landlord. It turns out that he answers on the first ring. This means that he was expecting a call from someone else and he didn't check the caller ID upon answering. Just my luck. I mention that the kitchen sink leak we called about six weeks ago was well, still leaking. More important, however, was the second-floor leak greeting us on the first-floor. He assured me that he would make a few calls.

I finally make it to the bathroom which is the moment when I receive a phone call. Indeed it is our favorite noisy morning plumber. He's unable to come today but he would love to see us tomorrow morning. Why not? Chicken Little, the sky is falling. So we set a date for tomorrow morning.

Tomorrow arrives. When I was not fully awake our favorite noisy plumber calls and informs me that he won't be there that morning but the next. When I am coming downstairs, I hear crumbling--dropping--splat! (Uh-oh.) I side-step the plaster on the floor doing my best to ignore the hole in our ceiling created by the leak. For now, I make a mental note how nice it is to have a ceiling.

The next two days are a blur. One day I return home to learn that our storage-area water heater began to leak, flooding part of the basement, and that we were waterless. Our landlord sent his friend to repair this leak. Unfortunately his friend knew as much about water heaters as I do (in addition to being a non-repairman, he is a taxi-cab driver). After randomly flipping switches while on the phone with our landlord, he fixes the problem: no water, no leak. Upon hearing this story, in our dimmed kitchen, I stared longingly at the filtered water bottles donated to us from a neighboring group house. One with water...

It was humbling to brush my teeth using a water-filled "Simply" orange juice container in my pantsuit the following morning. Less humbling was the non-flushing toilet in my bathroom. Porter-Johns in a vegan house is a cruel, cruel joke.

The final development came when our favorite noisy morning plumber came at 7am that morning to replace our water heater. Even though I ushered him and his poor assistant into the house, I passed the baton to another brave housemate. Later that afternoon I learned that the plumber upset several housemates when he called his assistant, "nigger," and then, after noticing my housemates' disbelief, spent the remainder of his time convincing them (two white housemates) that Raymond didn't mind. (Of course, a pet-name?) Worse yet, a fed-up housemate called our landlord to witness the house damage from the two leaks reasoning that he should witness the extent of it. The good news is that he did arrive, even though he arrived much later than promised. The bad news was he brought the non-repairman who is apparently an assessor, too. My only explanation for this? Venus is in retrograde.

Other parts of my life were only a little less wacky. At law school I encountered this riddle: if the student government once elected a black president, how can the school not be progressive & diverse? Funny enough that is a riddle I think that I have heard this riddle somewhere before, yet me or my fellow progressive friends of color cannot remember the answer.

Also in the backdrop is meditative madness. Thursday evening I was speaking to a friend about how to wisely prevent or prepare for a potential weekend conflict. This may be an opportunity to participate in my first human shield, making this week's Dharma score pretty high.

Hovering above, Buddha turns toward me: Richael, do you see clearly? Do you see the true nature of this week's events?

Balancing the plane, I reply: Yes, Buddha. I've seen so much these past weeks--the highs and lows. It is what it is and I accept it as so. I feel both discomfort and amusement, suffering and joy, deep pain and deep connection.

Buddha: With a smile?

Me: All with a smile. Perhaps an even bigger one if you can help me land smoothly :)