Getting Blessed
Getting into Hanoi late on the train after visiting Sapa, I walked into a hotel down the street from the train station because I was going to leave again the next afternoon on the train for Dang Ha in Central Vietnam. The hotel workers were all sitting around a table in the foyer about to have their dinner of soup and rice and vegetables. They were accompanied by a Buddhist monk who spoke excellent English.
The next day the hotel management kindly allowed me to stay in my room for a nap while I waited for my 3:30 pm train when I heard a knock on my door. The monk joined me in my little room and said he wanted to talk to me. He was in Hanoi, he said, to work on his doctorate in education…his thesis was on an idea he had about how to work with the street kids in Saigon. What is your job he asked. I got goose bumps as I told him that my major was education and my last job was developing an alternative education program for Latino street kids in the US. Yes, he said, as if he knew it all along, and then asked if he could bless me. He took out his little brass buddah and as he screwed off the head showed me what was supposedly tiny pieces of Buddah relic. Then he put the Buddah image on top of my head as he blessed me. We talked some more, exchanged email and mail addresses and then he left.
My god, I thought, I was in my hotel room in Hanoi Vietnam with my door closed-alone with this man who I did not doubt for one second was a very good person.
Tags: Conversations, Hanoi, Monks, Touching Experiences, Viet Nam
Zoe