Sangha of Auspicious Companions

A Tray of Bread in the Cretan Heat

In the summer of 1978, a young hitchhiker sat stranded on a stone wall in a remote Cretan village, hours into the relentless sun with no ride in sight. Then a woman walked toward him carrying a tray covered with a white cloth — and what she revealed beneath it stopped him cold: fresh bread, tomatoes, olives, a bottle of orange juice. She offered it without ceremony, waved off his stammered thanks, and walked back the way she had come. No explanation, no exchange, no name. Nearly five decades later, he still carries that meal. “She anchored in me the importance of doing unto others as you would have them do to yourself,” he writes — not as a religious conviction, but as something lived into. The world, he notes, feels very troubled now. But he takes comfort knowing it is filled with selfless gestures from people like her — and so, quietly, might we.

Be The Change

Practice the art of offering without waiting to be asked.