"...when we finally know we are dying, and all other sentient beings are dying with us, we start to have a burning, almost heartbreaking sense of the fragility and preciousness of each moment and each being, and from this can grow a deep, clear, limitless compassion for all beings.
Sogyal Rinpoche
The Vulture and the child
The haunting photo of a vulture stalking an emaciated Sudanese girl who'd collapsed on her way to a feeding station won photographer Kevin Carter a Pulitzer Prize in 1994. Carter became notorious for sticking to the journalistic principle of being an observer and not getting involved -- he left after taking his photo and neither he, nor the New York Times, which first published the photo on 26 March 1993, knew what happened to her. Few months after receiving his Pulitzer, Carter would be dead of carbon-monoxide poisoning in Johannesburg, he committed suicide at 33. His red pickup truck was parked near a small river where he used to play as a child, a green garden hose attached to the vehicle's exhaust funneled the fumes inside.
"I'm really, really sorry," he explained in a note left on the passenger seat beneath a knapsack. "The pain of life overrides the joy to the point that joy does not exist."
Very sad picture, very sad story ... but there is always hope ...
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