but i started to say baby the greyhound died. was it last year or the year before or more that she was hurt in harold park and couldn't walk and i stayed with her while her partner got the car. she was like a terrified deer hit by a car. but that time she healed, and i saw her maybe a week or two ago and she was walking slow and smooth. but i just heard she was put to sleep because she could no longer walk. so when i veered off thinking about the brutal culture and another condition, the cultivation of gentleness, i was thinking about how we need gentleness because what is given is received, and gentleness is what we need. even thinking about brutality feels ungentle and a violence to the gentle spirit. when we find hate outside it affects us and we have to turn our hearts gently around, back to the gentleness that sustains. i know i've had rage, and i've been a hungry ghost, and i've been impatient and harsh. we have all this chaos inside, reflected in the myriad mirrorings of the widening world. and yet somehow, miraculously, we have a deeper peace. that's the gentle one we need to cultivate, the one that too often gets let out and left outside, angry and bereft.