Imagination
I went to a fast food outlet to get my dinner.
Approaching the stall, I saw an acquaintance of mine bending down to place some food on the ground. A dog was waiting two feet away, wagging its tail. The food was meant for him. The lady placed the food on the ground and walked away and the dog commenced eating it.
Then I saw it.
The dog had a wound on its back, the size of a saucer. The entire top skin and the layer of muscle had been torn away. If you know what I mean, the constitution of a dog, is of bones, muscles covering them and on top, just below the coat, they have a sort of a leather covering about an inch thick. Where the dog was concerned, the coat and the one inch thick covering were not there.
The wound was red and it would have been causing the dog a lot of pain. Having eaten the food, he went away. I imagined he dragged himself away, full of pain.
I felt very bad for the animal. I constantly thought of the suffering he would be going through. The pain would be awful, unbearable. It was a stray and therefore would not have had the services of a vet and obviously would not have had medicine to put on it. Gangrene would set in and he would get all sorts of infections. He would obviously get fever. It would increase and there would be no one to see to him in his last moments.
The dog would die.
What will he be thinking when he dies?
He will be sad and suffer untold agonies before he dies.
I myself died a couple of times the next few days.
I tried various methods to forget the dog and its suffering, to no avail.
I tried reading, meeting people, meditating and consulted Lokuhamuduruwo to seek advice on how to handle the situation.
Nothing worked.
I always came back to the dog.
I was lengthening my existence in sansara by untold millennia with the sankharas I was accumulating in the process. I was badly affected. My mind was completely involved in the problem.
I missed by Guruji who was overseas at this time. He would have been able to tell me how to get out of it.
I thought I never would.
I went to the fast food outlet again about a week after.
The same dog was sauntering along happily.
His wound had healed fully.