Dzi

My grandfather has friends in all sorts of places, and one of them is apparently a Buddhist monk. This of course intrigues me because while I believe the truly devoted of any religion deserve great respect for their faith,  my grandfather has never been a terribly religious man himself and is even typically opposed to organized religion of any sort. So him having a very strictly religious friend caught me a little off guard. This Buddhist fellow, despite all of my grandfather's cynicism gave my grandfather a Dzi bead.

If you're unaware Dzi beads are somewhat of a mystical thing, said to be hugely positive in nature. Lucky I suppose you could say if you really wanted to water it down into layman's terms. Real ones are rare and hard to find, and these days greed has hiked their prices to $500+ dollars a piece. However, you aren't supposed to sell them. I guess because they're considered Dharma objects? Or something along those lines. I could go into more detail but this blog is about a stranger's kindness, not the gift itself.

Anyway, so this man gives my grandfather such a bead, then when he hears about my health troubles, he gives my grandfather another one to pass on to me. I was very humbled by this. What a truly selfless guy. I'll probably never meet him because he lives in Chicago and spends most of his time in China, but according to my grandfather I cannot give him anything in return for the gift anyway except of course gratitude -- which he has.

Just figured I would share this because many people these days are very selfish and do nothing unless it will directly benefit them somehow. But there are still good people out there, you just have to look a little harder sometimes. When you do nice things, it inspires others to do nice things, which will inspire others to do nice things... people just need more inspiration, I think.