As part of our Memoir as Buddhist Practice workshop, we ask participants to bring in three photos of important times of their lives, and to write about them after a guided meditation about a memoir structure that focuses on scene, summary, and musing.

One of the workshop participants from our 2009 workshop recently sent this to me. I remembered her sharing it in the workshop. This offering, like so many of the others, touched me deeply.

Bliss

It took 26 years for the pony I yearned for at 10 to find me.

My first pony ride when I was 10 sparked something. It was just a little dark pony at a carnival walking a circle, around and around. But when I got off, I wanted nothing more than another pony ride.

The real pony was so much more than the merry-go-round horses, which is all I had known until then. I will always wonder why pony passion was ignited in me that day.  From that moment forward, I was obsessed; begging for more pony rides, drawing them again and again, trying to convince my parents that our back yard was large enough for a pony of my own.

I’d almost forgotten about that childhood dream of a pony of my own. But I resumed riding as an adult, on an irregular basis, and the passion rekindled.

In this photo, the photographer has captured a moment of pure happiness. My mare is responding to my patting her neck, really more of a caress and she is expanding into my hand, as if she is touching me back and asking me not to stop. I love the expression on her face here, the three quarter angle that accentuates her fortunate face and kind, expressive eye. The photograph enables me to recall and re-feel a moment of pure bliss from a most happy phase of my life.

Almost everything was about to change.