Thursday, 8 March 2018

I had a conversation with a deaf homeless man once.

He had a sign he carried with him that said "Selling American Flag stickers for $1, $3, or $5." I gave him five dollars, he shook my hand and he tried communicating with me for what seemed like 25 minutes.

He was putting on a play, acting as a tough guy one minute, then the next minute he was fake-crying, and he was tough again. He was pretending to be on his phone, yelling, telling me a story of how he survived on the streets, crying and then yelling/being tough again. He kept repeating the same thing over and over again.

Meanwhile, I had no idea what he was trying to communicate and I thought he was crazy, but I sympathized for him. After 25 minutes I realized I was listening to a wall. I immediately got up from my seat and as I did such, he began yelling and screaming/fighting again while I was walking away.

Was it a Zen experience? Probably, I had a gut feeling he was trying to show me something. Was he a deaf Zen Master? Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't. That's not the point.



Submitted March 09, 2018 at 03:29AM by zenlegend http://ift.tt/2p3YMXg

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