I can’t read anything anymore—not a magazine article, let alone a book—so I went into the library and looked for one of the books I’d read when I was a child. It would be a matter of remembering it, rather than reading it.
I found a copy of the Buddhist scriptures.
I remembered my grandmother dying on my tenth birthday. I wanted to die, too—but instead of killing myself, I decided I would live, and try to help others. I would become a bodhisattva.
As I reread the scriptures, I saw how I had learned from them the words for what I already knew. But they’re only words for children now, like the one I used to be and am no longer.
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