Encore:
Practice period came, and nine weeks later, it went; ending yesterday after evening sitting. No fanfare, no recognition that anything happened. Story of my life.

The highlight of the nine week period was the bike thief.

At the end of December, I bought a new Cannondale mountain bike. I had a feeling about what I was getting into, knowing that my new bike would be primo targetum for bike thieves, but the reality didn't hit me until the end of the first week of practice period when someone tried to unsuccesfully steal it at around six in the morning, during morning sitting.

If you lock up your bike at 5:15 in the morning, as far as a bike thief is concerned, it's been there all night. It's still dark, and there is not a lot of people around. After that, I started triple locking my bike - two kryptonites and a cable. I figured that would be enough to discourage any bike thief, even at six in the morning.

The only thing I didn't lock was my underseat bag. I thought about it but decided it was worthless to me, until I got out of morning sitting one morning and found the contents of it emptied. The thief took an inner tube, a depleted patch kit, and a set of tire levers - notably not a tragedy. This was either second or third week of practice period in early February.

I thought, "fuckin' A, people will steal anything". But the more I thought about it, the less it bothered me. My feelings of feeling violated bothered me more because it was so minor and there are bigger fish to throw rocks at. So I left a note in the otherwise empty underseat bag. It read:

You took everything in the bag, but you left the bag
Now I think you have nothing to keep the stuff you took
Please take the bag and accept it as a gift

I'm not sure what my intention was. A part of me thought that the thief would never get the note. Part of me wanted to express that I wasn't going to be bothered, that I wasn't going to show fear to this thief. Part of me meant it and expected to find the bag gone one morning.

About a week later, I just happened to have locked my bike near a window of the meditation hall where I was sitting for evening session. During sitting, I heard something outside and waited for a telltale sound indicating that someone was trying to steal my bike (since there are more people around in the evening, I only double locked it). But no wrenching sound of metal on metal came through the window, and short of that, I wasn't going to disrupt sitting.

When I returned to my bike after sitting, the first thing I noticed was that the straps of the underseat bag were undone, but the bag was still there. I checked the bag, and on the reverse side of the note that I had left, the thief wrote:

...thanx but...
no thanx
I didn't have much to give you ...
but I hope for you to be blessed further...smart rider to use a kryptonite
I may be a thief
sometimes I give :)

In the bag, he left a nice monkey wrench with a short handle (definitely useful), a different set of tire levers, and a complete patch kit!

That's a good story in itself, don't you think? Too bad, I didn't get the closure I wanted.

After that, I didn't remove the bag to avoid it being stolen. Instead I left a follow up note, thanking him for letting me know that he wasn't black and white, but grey as we all are. Stealing the contents of the bag was black and white, it was bad. There's not much argument in favor of what he did being "good". But then his gesture made him grey. I couldn't judge him by this one bad act that he did. He wasn't a bad person. People do what they do, who knows why they do it?

I don't know his motivation for stealing the contents of the bag or trying to steal my bike (I think it was the same person because of his mention of the kryptonite in his note). I don't know his motivation for not taking the bag and leaving that stuff for me in the bag. I just know that he did one thing, and then he did another, and that's good enough for me, I'm OK with it.

We do things that harm other people when we don't see the other person as human. But once we see the other person as human, we no longer wish to harm them. I went out on a limb to see him as human, and in return, he saw me as human.

Along with my note, I left a Powerbar and a Twix. But stupid me, one morning I left sitting but didn't notice that the note and the Powerbar and Twix were gone until after I had stopped off at Safeway. So I don't know if he got the note at Zen Center that morning, or if someone completely random stole the candy when I locked my bike outside of the Safeway.

Damn. I was kicking myself for not paying attention. Part of me thinks I would have noticed the empty bag at Zen Center, but I really don't know, I'm really not as attentive as I think. Anyway, practice period is over and my bike will no longer be there from 5:15 to 6:40 every morning, or from 5:30 to 6:45 in the evening. Am I any richer for viewing a bike thief as human? Let's hope so.