We’re off to New York City on Sunday for a week of unstructured visiting, walking, museum-going, eating, and all the other fine things to do in Manhattan. Next weekend, our friends the Wilsons will come down from Rochester, and we’ll get together with John Morgan for our annual Blumberg-Morgan-Wilson weekend. We’ve been doing these BMW weekends for more than 30 years, and this will be the first without Claudia Morgan, who died in March. Claudia spent the last 12 years or so of her life wheelchair-bound; she was a victim (and I use that word deliberately; it is a cruel disease) of MS. Being with her, we had a chance to see close-up the many indignities visited upon those whose independence is qualified—still dependent on the designers of wheelchairs and the environments in which those roll.

So it was especially wonderful to read Jamais Cascio’s long story about the Kenguru car; he sees the Kenguru, which was designed by the Hungarian rehabilitative services company Rehab Rt., as an example of Long Tail manufacturing.

I see the car as an example of the Buddhist ideal of compassion. Walking with Claudia through Central Park (she loved the Gates; she entered her sharp decline shortly after that event), we were conscious of how easy it is to look over the head of someone in a wheelchair, to mentally edit her out of the picture, to be blind to her autonomous presence, to her Buddha-nature. One of the women tending the Gates, with their long poles with the tennis balls at the ends, came up to our group and ignored everyone but Claudia; kneeling down in front of her, the woman immediately engaged Claudia in a long and animated conversation; she had worked on every Christo project since the Running Fence, and she was delighted by Claudia’s enthusiasm for the Gates. We learned later, from someone who knew her, that the woman’s father had recently died after a long battle with MS.

She knew. She knew that there was a person in there; someone other than someone in a wheelchair. That sensibility—the awareness, looking at another, of someone in there, someone who cannot be looked past, or over, or around, someone with whom one can share, must share, the common fate—that is the essence of compassion, and it is, I must believe, what informed the design of this cute little car.

Here is what I’ve heard.

The Fortunate One, on this occasion, was travelling with a large group of monks when he arrived at the town of Kesaputta. The people of the Kalama clan who lived there had heard reports of the Buddha. “He is the ascetic Gotama,” they told one another, “the one who went forth from the Sakyan clan to the homeless life. It is said that he is the Fortunate One, a Buddha, fully enlightened, seeing the way and following it, getting it at every turn and getting it all, the only one able to tame those ready to be tamed, the teacher of gods and men, all-knowing, perfected. He has directly experienced this world, with its gods, its deceivers, its ultimate sources of being, and he shares that experience with everyone. He teaches a truth that is good in the beginning, good in the middle, good at the end, with all the right words and right emphases; his life is spirited, perfectly complete and pure. It is good to see such a one coming our way.”

Then the Kalamas approached the Fortunate One. Some of them paid homage to him and sat reverently to one side. Others exchanged greetings with him, talked cordially with him, and then sat down to one side. Still others saluted him with palms joined, then sat down to one side. And there were some who remained silent, watching him carefully, sitting to one side.[1] Then one among them questioned him, in this manner:

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