The Buddha by the Parkway

Like most working stiffs, I commute to work every day. My route takes me along the Don Valley Parkway, that clogged artery that feeds the rhythmic thumping of Toronto's urban heartbeat. Southbound morning traffic hardly moves at all: one great, peevish snake sluggishly coils and compacts from the Lakeshore all the way up to Newmarket. Northbound is better, but not much. From about the Don Mills exit it's stop & go until the traffic spews onto the 401 east and west.

Betwen Don Mills and York Mills, where the traffic first starts to slow to a crawl on the northbound journey, there is a grassy, litter-strewn section of the median strip that widens into an elongated tear-drop shape. From the middle of it, giant light standards and hyrdo towers loom over the lines of cars, and - for a few minutes every day - me, and my quiet desperation.

Thankfully, that desperation is modulated by quiet contemplation of the Buddha by the Parkway. I don't know if anyone else can see him sitting there, but I sure can. Every mindless moment of every meaningless journey flows inexorably under his steady, even, inward gaze. He just sits there, cross-legged, head slightly bowed, taking it all in without judgment, without pity, without pain and without worry.

The Buddha by the Parkway isn't really there. All that's really there is a crumbling concrete form sprouting out of the median strip that looks like a Buddha might sit nicely on it. But the longer I look at his absence, the more present he seems to be. I feel more present in turn... see, drive, think, move, sit, think, be. Me.

I've thought about buying a two-foot backyard Buddha from a garden centre, and setting him on that pediment in the middle of the highway for everyone else to see. But that would be making a public statement about something I can barely even understand in myself.

And anyway, a representation isn't the real thing. So the Buddha by the Parkway wouldn't be there even if it was... but the Buddha that isn't there, is! And I, for one, am grateful.