Teachers

In the story "Teachers" by Francesca Hampton, from her book Buddha on a Midnight Sea - Short Stories we get the story of Sherab, who is a cook in a monastery. One day a crazy westerner shows up, he's probably got Schizophrenia, paranoid type, and the cook tries to befriend him. At one point the cook does the Chenzerig sadhana for the fellow, while he's sleeping.

I take interest in that sadhana because it was one I was considering. If I get ordained, I don't know if I want to take that sadhana or not. It was the first connection I felt towards the archetypal Buddhas. My darling partner bought me a tanka of it, the detail is above in the photo.

Sometimes I stair at it, as a kind of short practice, and I've tried to memorize the color patterns to the heads above, looking in the ten directions so they see all suffering.

I prefer the name Avalokita, which is an abbreviation.

Now this is Buddhist fiction, it goes to the very heart of it. I liked this story a lot.