“The body of merit of those bodhisattvas who give a gift without being attached is not easy to measure.”

Once I was on Staten Island, getting ready to run the NYC Marathon on a cold November morning. I was sitting on a street curb, surrounded by thousands of other runners and, despite having dressed warmly to wait for the start, was shivering uncontrollably from mild hypothermia. Suddenly I felt something warm and heavy draped across my shoulders. I looked up to see that a man had draped a blanket over me. He gestured to me to keep it & melted back into the crowd.

I don’t remember what the blanket looked like – I had to ditch it at the start – but the look in his eyes of pure compassion and the way I felt when I realized what he had done is still here.

I never saw him again.