(To view the October 2018 newsletter where this was first published click here.)
Today, when I was at Home Depot, I came around a corner and looked up to see a smiling person bringing their hands together with a gesture of prayer, and bowing to me. As a reflex, I automatically put my hands together and bowed to her and returned her smile. This is one of a string of similar recent incidents around town with people who I have never met before and they always cheer me up. I once read that as a child in Thailand, the first thing you are taught, when going to a temple, is to make gassho, that gesture of bringing the hands together in prayer. The gassho is a sort of universal gesture of respect and appreciation that Buddhists use throughout the world, so I thought I might talk a little about what it means.
The gassho is one of what in Sanskrit are called Continue reading →