Mid-winter message

The doorbell chimed, and I reached for the remote control to open the garage roller door. I was expecting my weekly grocery delivery, courtesy of Uber or Doordash.

Throughout the years that I’ve been having these deliveries, the same driver has never appeared twice. The majority are men, South Asian, occasionally Chinese, many of them university students with excellent English. Others, with little, are perhaps afraid to speak it.

Today, someone different, a man in his late twenties, Tibetan is my guess. His facial lines and posture remind me of the Dalai Lama.

Maybe I imagine it, but as he walks towards me, arms festooned with bags, each foot is placed with care on the concrete floor of the garage. At the threshold of the house, he slides off his shoes. When all the groceries have been brought in, he turns towards me, hands raised with palms touching, and bows. 

Too taken aback to respond likewise, I say ‘Thank you so much’, and he is gone.

But the familiar Buddhist gesture of gratitude and connection stays with me throughout the day.

I often think of that army of drivers and delivery workers who keep our economy and our lives functioning. We buy all we can online, from a hard-to-source lithium battery to clothes and household appliances. My recent experience with plumbers and builders, added to aged care workers and delivery drivers, made me realise how being on the road is part and parcel of so many jobs these days. I am deeply grateful to these people and can’t imagine how we’d manage without their services.

When Ken and I came to live in Hamilton 13 years ago, people of colour were rare in the streets. Over the years, this has changed, and the suburb has become much more diverse. There is still a plethora of authentic multicultural restaurants and cafes – Thai, Korean, Turkish, Indian, and more – but now there are refugees, families visiting from other suburbs, and international students working part time in our shops.

That brings me back to gassho, a Japanese word for the Buddhist ritual that surprised me that day when my grocery delivery was complete.

For travellers in any Buddhist country, it is as commonplace as ‘thank you’ in an English-speaking one.

While gassho can mean many things – hello, goodbye, thank you – it also expresses deep honour and respect. When the right hand meets the left, it is symbolic of bringing together opposites – you and me, light and dark, life and death, ignorance and wisdom. Body and mind.

But it is also an expression of our feelings of gratitude and our connection with each other. Through gassho, we understand that opposites are really one – such as the one asking for support, and the one giving it.

In these times of polarities and divisions, hatreds and cruelties, gassho is more important than ever. Though Ken’s and my need for support contributes to jobs for others, I feel the great weight of the debtor. Without that help, our lives would hardly hold together.

I am privileged to receive the support of so many. I am blessed to have received gassho – not in Llasa or Kyoto or Bangkok – but in our austere garage. Perhaps the person who shared that age-old ritual will be the one to come to my home a second time, laden with grocery bags. As he takes his leave, I will be prepared. I will think quickly, raise my hands with palms touching, and bow my head.

This mandala is courtesy of Ged Merino at https://www.kularts-sf.org/mandala-gallery