I was on a train from Ghent to Antwerp earlier this month, on my way to Amsterdam to catch a flight home the next day. And yes, I could have included at least one more city name in that sentence but I chose not to. I was relaxing to Miles Davis (Bitches Brew) after a long work week and reading a commentary on the Heart Sutra and was about halfway through the section on "form is emptiness, emptiness is form," when I was startled by the sudden appearance of the ticket collector. It took me a second to get my head back in the world around me and start fumbling through my overstuffed bag, but I knew right away something was wrong.
I had been sitting in Ghent St. Peter's station waiting for some time to pass before moving outside to the platform. It was warm for January, but it was still windy with intermittent bursts of rain. I had taken a moment after sitting down to move a few items from my bag into my luggage and had wedged my travel folio under my thigh to put it in last since it had my train ticked. Even though they only check tickets about 40% of the time, I like to have it close at hand precisely so I'm not fumbling around looking like the inept foreigner.
As I was replacing the last of my belongings, a man sat down at the end of the aisle. My eyes were on what I was doing, but I sensed in the periphery that the woman he sat beside was uncomfortable. She got up a moment later and the man turned to talk to me.
Now, I never start anonymous conversations in public places. For one thing, if I don't have something to say, I'm not likely to open my mouth just to fill the dead air. For another, entanglement. I actually don't mind talking to random people, but it seems like the sort of people who start random conversations tend not to be the sort of people to end them. And I guess I'm just one of those people who's very at home in their own thoughts and comfortable sitting in meditative silence.
The man's English was poor, I discovered after he learned my Dutch was even worse. (Poor menu translation is about the extent of my skills.) I could only catch about every other word out of his mouth, but it was obvious he was asking for money. It also quickly become apparent that he was grateful for even half of his words to be heard. He was asking for 50 cents.
It was remarkable, actually, because before I sat down I had been recalling an incident with two of my colleagues I had been working with in Belgium. It occurred when we were meeting in Boston last fall. We were standing outside on Newbury Street and a guy walked up and asked for spare change to make a phone call. My colleagues told him no at the same moment I was reaching into my pocket to give him the 50 cents I happened to have. It wasn't the act of giving the man the money that I was thinking about, or anything about my motivation in doing so. It was that my colleagues were surprised by my action, which I couldn't quite figure out because it's just something I've always done. I don't give to everybody all the time, but I do give to people. A little while later, another guy approaches us asking for money and that same colleague gave him what he had in his pocket.
As I was walking through the train station recalling that incident, I was wondering why he had done that. Did he feel guilty because I had done something for the first man when he had said no? Or did he think about how little it really is compared to our own lifestyles. I happen to be good friends with this co-worker, and I have a lot of personal respect for him. It wasn't that I doubted his sincerity or that it even mattered to me why he had done it; more I was considering how an act like that can motivate others to similar actions for good or bad reasons. I thought, if my action motivates someone else to act out of guilt, is that really such a good thing? I would rather them be comfortable acting according to their conscience than out of guilt that arises by comparing their conscience to mine.
I was inquiring into my own guiding principle. What would I say if my friend asked about my reasons for giving to the man? What about the practical question of when I give and when I don't? Because I don't give all the time; I can't give all the time. The answer I came up with was this: While I can't give to everybody, I also can't give to nobody. There is a moment when I the opportunity arises, and when I feel like I can give from the heart, I do. When I feel it, I do it. Never out of guilt, obligation or pity. Only when I can look them in the eyes, human to human, soul to soul, and wish them my heartfelt best.
Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.
So when the guy in Belgium asked me for fifty cents, which granted is all of sixty five cents US, I gave him all the change I was carrying, which -- since coinage in the EU includes one and two Euro denominations -- amounted to five or six Euros. He looked at it like he was confused, which is not unusual. Part of the way I give in these situations is I try to give an amount that will be meaningful to them. It doesn't make sense to expect matching donations from the rest of the crowd just so somebody can buy a sandwich. So I've seen that look before. But then, there in the main hall of the train station, he started to cry. He told me that he was homeless -- all his clothes were in the shopping bag by his feet -- and he was having a really hard time. Just a few minutes before he had asked a guy for fifty cents on the tram and the guy yelled at him and told him to get a job.
I'm looking at this guy and he can't get a job; I can feel it. He doesn't look bad as homeless guys go. It's something deeper. I can tell -- I've seen it before. He's one of the ones who just can't get it. Life, that is. I don't think most people realize this, but there are a lot of people who just can't figure it out. Everything they try ends up being wrong. Most of these people wind up in bad situations as a result. Some are fortunate to have had an upbringing that at least taught them how to navigate what seems to be a foreign world to them. The rest, well, they're left to their own devices.
Not every one of them ends up sleeping in a train station, and not everyone you see sleeping in a train station is one of them. I guess there's a sort of connection I feel to them. I can always spot them and I feel a tremendous compassion for them. Not the compassion of one looking down at something that moves them, but a real kinship and empathy. And who knows -- maybe they sense something in me too, because I'm often approached by them. Theses are those who try and just don't understand why things don't work out, but they don't sour or turn rotten. They just bear the collective hurt of invisible suffering. These are the ones Jesus talked about -- the pure in heart, the meek.
I once read about a man who was homeless by choice -- I think it was in Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. He lived in the purity of the present moment, wanting nothing that was not there. Not as an ascetic, but as someone who practiced true non-attachment to the world. He lived and worked at homeless shelters, soup kitchens, etc. I thought, this man has found a unique and sublime form of enlightenment. Some time later I had a dream that I whispered a secret to a homeless man on the street and he walked away enlightened. He went and told his community, and they told others, and it spread. Suddenly the homeless, the jobless, the forgotten, the disenfranchised of the world stood, awake in powerful consciousness. Suddenly they were the ones who understood what others could not grasp; suddenly they were oppressed no more, they suffered no more.
I sat and talked to this man until I had to make for the platform I shook his hand and told him good luck and I hoped things worked out better for him. I truly did. It was all I could do because I had no secret to share. i could only give my attention and my compassion, and then I was gone.
That stood in stark contrast to the panic I now felt, sitting on the train 18 hours before an international flight, realizing I had left my passport and bank cards along with my train ticked on the seat in the train station where I had been sitting on them, sorry that I had nothing more than some money and fifteen minutes to give a man who was in pain.
I was stunned. The realization of my predicament crashed against the rush of thoughts about what I would need to do to get back to the US, and all of that was stirred up by the slap in the face of seeing that I could be so stupid as to leave my passport in a train station. Simultaneously, the ticket conductor is telling me that I need to get back to Ghent NOW and giving me a look like I'm a complete idiot. And my phone rings.
There is a moment that sometimes comes in meditation, where the silence of the mind is so profound, you can only watch from outside of time and marvel that this is your nature.
Form is not other than emptiness, emptiness is not other than form.
Apparently that can happen outside of mediation under the right circumstances. I look at my phone and the caller id says +32: Belgium. Could it be?
I answer. It's the Ghent St. Peters police, am I Mr. Revolutionary and did I lose a wallet, a passport and two Visa cards in the train station? And was I still in the country? Yes and yes!
So he tells me to get off at Antwerp Central Station and he'll send it with the conductor on the next train. I just need to report to the police station in the Antwerp station and they'll give it to me when it arrives.
Unbelievable!
So everything is good. The ticket collector incredulously tells me not to worry about the ticket. I was supposed to catch a connecting train at Antwerp-Berchem, the stop before Central Station, so I don't know how I'm getting to Amsterdam tonight. I don't know if I'm getting to Amsterdam tonight -- I don't know if mine was the last train or not. After what just happened, I'm content to just let this unfold. What choice do I have? I cannot control any part of the situation; it's completely beyond my reach. In fact, I have no idea of the reality of what I think is the situation. For all I know the guy on the phone was a thug with friends in Antwerp who are going to jack the rest of my stuff. And with that thought, I knew my mind was going to be of no help, so I sat back and relaxed for the ride.
The train arrives in Berchem and passengers start filing off. A girl, who I had notice overhearing my situation earlier, stops and tells me I have to get off here and catch a connecting train to Central. The trains have been running late, so they're turning them around here to get back on schedule. I look out the window at the clock on the platform and realize that my connection to Amsterdam left fifteen minutes ago.
So I'm struck with a new realization: I was never in control of the situation to begin with. If everything had proceeded normally, and I had arrived at the station having missed my train due to delays, I would have been frustrated and stressed out. I can't quite get my mind around that, so there is a new level of allowing in this realization. I know that the situation is neither good nor bad; it is what my mind makes it.
Twenty minutes later, I walk into the police station in Antwerp Central Station and they tell me they've just received the call and the train with my belongings will arrive in about ten minutes. I wander around the station and find the ticket office where I ask if there's any way to get to Amsterdam tonight. There is. It leaves from Berchem, and the train to Berchem leaves in 13 minutes. I make a mental note and head back to the police office; it's a long shot but I'll see what happens.
But when I get back to the police station, they tell me that the train my wallet was on was turned around in Berchem due to delays -- that should not have surprised me. But they're going to drive down to Berchem and will bring it back. Now my mind has something useful to offer for the first time in an hour: I'm trying to get to Amsterdam and that train leaves from Berchem; if I can catch the train to Berchem in three minutes then I'll be on my way to Amsterdam. They do me one better: they'll drive me down to Berchem and see me off, passport in hand.
Five minutes later I'm riding through the diamond district in Antwerp, suddenly aware that the only reason I'm not surprised to see Hassids is the movie Snatch.
Which, for a moment, this feels remarkably like. Here I am in facing backward in the perp seat of a Belgian police van as a black Mercedes repeatedly tries to pass us on the narrow cobblestone streets. And it might--if we ever stopped say, for a stop sign or a turn. Through the side alleys I can see the lights of the city -- it's quite pretty. I wondered earlier if I might end up staying here for the night. Now the Mercedes is flashing its headlights in my eyes and it triggers the sense of illusion I've felt at other moments tonight. They could just as easily be taking me into custody as to the train station. But where would my mind even come up with an idea like that? More to the point, why could a preposterous thought like that create a real sense of fear? I am stuck again by how the illusion of reality that my mind is constantly working to keep up is strained to the ripping point. The order we try to find, the meaning we contrive in naming the good and the bad, neither of which exist for me in that moment, bumping along the streets of Antwerp.
Whatever is form is emptiness, whatever is emptiness is form.
We arrive at Berchem Station and, not more than twenty steps in we see the conductor with a large envelope an equal distance into the other end of the hall. We meet in the middle and an awkward moment of charged silence follows as one of the police officers opens the envelope and pulls out my folio, complete with passport, bank cards, train ticket and even the receipts I had accumulated in my week in Belgium. For the past hour, these things did not exist in my reality. Now, here they were in my hands, suddenly sprung into existence by a confluence of unlikely events.
The officers point me towards the main hall where the monitors have the schedule. I thank them a few more times than is comfortable and we part ways. My train to Amsterdam leaves in ten minutes; this whole affair cost me all of one hour and fifteen minutes. In two hours, I'll be in Amsterdam and the evening there will just be starting.
And the morale of the story? There is none. All of those things happened, and I was there, no more than an observing witness. Every moment there was just me and what was transpiring around me; everything that I depended on was outside of my experience, outside of my reality. My mind could make many meanings of this story in retrospect, and there are many stories I could tell, about the road to Emmaus, about rapid-response karma, about damn good luck. But it's not really about any of those things. It's about me, and about one moment in a train station that led into another and another in a constant unfolding.
But there's still part of my mind that finds it hard not call that good.
