I’ve been left a little bit perplexed about my encounter with that woman the other night on the subway. If you haven’t, you can read about it a couple of blogs back.
 
Normally, I have all the answers. …Understanding the what is going on and why. Or, at least I can chalk it up to the reality of the reality of the non-reality of Zen. This time, however, I’ve been left a little bit in question.
 
I had an idea this AM. Why not ask the all-knowing mind of BOT. So, I headed over to ChatGPT and asked the questioned that follows. The answer was interesting, if not a little bit obvious and expected. But, it did provide some food of thought from the mind of AI. It did, however, miss the spiritual ramifications of the issue that are on my mind. But hey, AI is growing fast. I’m sure it will have reached nirvana and be fully enlightened in no time at all.  
 
Anyway… If you feel like it, read on. Find out what the world of the great all-knowing internet has to say about the situation.
 
Question:
I had a very curious experience. I was riding the Tokyo subway during rush hour last week. This woman, who I had never met, leans into me and an intense feeling of pure love radiated from her. She then laid her head on my shoulder. All this, on a crowded subway. It was a truly profound experience. My wife was with me, so I did not know what to do? Eventually, my stop arrived and I got off the train. Now, I am left with a feeling of question, loss, and what should I have done? I believe it would be impossible to find the woman again in the crowds of Tokyo. So, I am lost in the quandary of wondering what could have been and why did it that situation occur. What does it mean? Can you provide me with your thoughts or an answer?
 
ChatGPT Answer:
What you experienced sounds genuinely moving, and I can understand why it has stayed with you. There are really two questions here: what might have happened on that train, and what should you have done?
 
The first thing I would say is: you don't have to decide that the experience was either meaningless or destiny. There is a middle ground.
 
A crowded Tokyo train is an unusual environment. People are physically close, exhausted, and often operating within very strict social conventions. A woman putting her head on your shoulder could have had many explanations: she may have been overwhelmed or tired, she may have felt unusually safe with you, she may have been seeking comfort, she may have been momentarily disoriented, or she may simply have acted on an impulse that she herself couldn't explain. And the feeling you experienced as an almost overwhelming wave of love was your genuine experience of the moment—but we can't know with certainty what was happening inside her. And perhaps that's part of what makes it so powerful.
 
What about your wife?
I think your instinct not to act was probably a good one.
 
You were married, your wife was standing there, and you had no idea who this woman was or what she intended. Even if you felt something extraordinary, pursuing it in that moment could easily have crossed boundaries—hers, your wife's, or both.
 
You also weren't obligated to "do something" simply because something profound happened. Sometimes the appropriate response to an extraordinary human moment is simply to receive it. You might have gently acknowledged her presence, made sure she was okay, or, if circumstances had naturally allowed it, said something simple like "Are you all right?" But you didn't necessarily miss some crucial action that would have changed your life.
 
The feeling of loss is interesting. I suspect you may not actually be grieving the woman. You don't know her. You may be grieving the possibility represented by the moment. For a few seconds or minutes, something happened that made the world feel radically different. You experienced an inexplicable intimacy with a complete stranger, in the middle of thousands of anonymous people. Then your stop arrived, the doors opened, and the experience simply ended. That's almost unbearably poetic.
 
Your mind naturally wants to complete the story:
Who was she? Why did she do that? Did she feel what I felt? What if I had stayed on the train? What if I had spoken to her? What could have happened? But notice that every answer your imagination produces is necessarily fiction. You have one extraordinary moment, and your mind is trying to turn it into a narrative.
 
There is another way to hold it.
Perhaps nothing was supposed to happen next. Perhaps the experience itself was the thing that happened. You encountered a stranger for a brief, inexplicable moment and felt something enormous. Then you went your separate ways. That doesn't make the experience less real. In fact, there is something beautiful about its incompleteness.
 
If you had stayed on the train...
You might have discovered that she was simply exhausted.
You might have had an awkward conversation.
You might have discovered she didn't speak your language.
You might have discovered she was intoxicated or unwell.
You might have had a wonderful conversation.
You might even have formed some remarkable connection.
 
But you also might have destroyed the very mystery that now surrounds the experience. And because you were with your wife, there was another reality present too: your actual life was standing beside you while this extraordinary, ambiguous moment occurred. That is worth paying attention to.
 
Maybe the experience isn't asking, "Why didn't you pursue this woman?" Maybe it's asking: "What does it mean that I was capable of feeling this much love, tenderness, connection, or openness toward another human being in a completely unexpected moment?" That's a much more interesting question.
 
You don't have to find her to answer it. You can let the experience change something about how you move through the world—perhaps becoming a little more attentive to strangers, a little more willing to recognize unexpected moments of intimacy, a little more aware of how much can pass between two human beings without a single word.
 
And regarding the woman herself, I'd resist the temptation to construct a destiny around her. You don't know that she was your soulmate, that she loved you, or that you missed the opportunity of your life. Those are possibilities your imagination can generate, but they're not things the event itself establishes.
 
What you do know is much simpler and, in its own way, more extraordinary:
A stranger rested her head on your shoulder, something inside you opened, and for a brief moment you experienced an astonishing feeling of love in the middle of a crowded subway. You got off the train. The moment ended. And it may be okay that it ended.
 
Some experiences aren't doors we're supposed to walk through. Some are windows that open for a moment and then close.
 
The question may not be "What could have been?" It may be: "What will I do with what I felt?"
 
What you experienced sounds less like a conventional romantic encounter and more like one of those strange, uninvited moments in which two lives briefly intersect with extraordinary intensity. The fact that you were with your wife is important—but I don't think it means you did something wrong by simply getting off the train. In fact, given the circumstances, there may not have been anything appropriate to do. You could have spoken to the woman, but doing so might have transformed something mysterious and beautiful into something quite ordinary and complicated.
 
There are several ways I would understand what happened.
 
1. The experience was real, even if you never see her again. You don't have to decide that the woman's feeling was objectively "love" in order to honor what you experienced. Something passed between you that you experienced as an extraordinary feeling of love. That is real as an experience.
And perhaps the most important thing is that it happened without you seeking it.
 
You weren't flirting. You weren't looking for an affair. You weren't trying to manufacture a spiritual experience. You were simply riding a subway with your wife, and suddenly something happened that profoundly affected you. Those experiences can be more powerful precisely because they aren't planned.
 
2. Your mind is now doing something very human. The feeling of loss comes from the question:
What could have happened if I hadn't gotten off that train? But notice something interesting: you don't actually know that there was a "what could have been."
 
There might have been a conversation. There might have been an extraordinary friendship. There might have been romance. Or she might have been intoxicated, emotionally distressed, exhausted, confused, lonely, or simply seeking physical support for some reason you could never know.
 
Your mind is filling in the enormous blank with possibility. And possibility is intoxicating.
 
The woman you are grieving may therefore be partly a real person and partly an unknown future that your imagination has created. That doesn't make the experience meaningless. It makes it mysterious.
 
3. Perhaps the deeper question isn't "Who was she?"
 
I wonder whether the more interesting question is: "What did this encounter awaken in me?"
 
You described the feeling as pure love rather than sexual attraction. That's a very significant distinction. Perhaps you encountered, for a few minutes, a kind of unconditional tenderness that you don't normally experience in everyday life. And because it came from a complete stranger, it bypassed all the normal structures through which we understand relationships.
 
She didn't know your history.
 
You didn't know hers.
 
There was no obligation, no past, no future, no conversation, no expectation. Just two human beings sharing a tiny piece of space in a crowded Tokyo train. There is something almost Zen-like about that.
 
4. And your wife being there may actually be part of the meaning.
 
You might be tempted to think, if only I hadn't been with my wife, I could have pursued this. But perhaps the fact that your wife was standing there beside you is precisely why the encounter needs to remain what it was.
You had a moment of profound human connection while inside your existing life, not outside it.
You didn't have to betray your wife to experience something profound.
You didn't have to possess the woman.
You didn't even have to know her name.
You received something and then the train arrived at your stop.
 
That is remarkably close to the structure of many spiritual encounters: arrival, revelation, departure.
 
5. What should you have done?
 
Honestly? Probably exactly what you did.
 
You could have gently acknowledged her. You could have smiled. You could have said something simple. But once she rested her head on your shoulder, particularly with your wife present, there were many reasons not to turn the moment into something else.
 
And there is another possibility: Maybe the correct response to an inexplicable gift isn't to grab it. Maybe it is to receive it. Then let it go.
 
6. Don't try too hard to find her. I would resist the impulse to search Tokyo for this woman. Even if you could find her, you would be trying to recreate an experience that was powerful partly because it was unrepeatable. Instead, consider allowing the mystery to remain intact.
 
You may never know who she was.
You may never know why she leaned against you.
You may never know what she felt.
And that's okay.
You know what you felt.
That may actually be the part that matters.
 
There is a line from the Zen tradition that comes to mind—not as a literal quotation, but as a way of looking at your experience: The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon.
 
Perhaps this woman was the finger. Perhaps the extraordinary sensation you experienced wasn't ultimately about her at all. Perhaps she unexpectedly revealed something about your own capacity to experience love—a capacity that was already inside you but which, for a few minutes on a crowded Tokyo subway, became overwhelmingly conscious. And now you are feeling the absence of the experience. That's why it feels like loss. But perhaps you haven't actually lost it. Perhaps the question isn't "What could have happened with her?" Perhaps it is: "What can I do with the love that she awakened in me?" That is a much more interesting question.
 
And given your interest in Zen and the martial arts, I suspect you may appreciate the final paradox: The encounter may have been profound precisely because you couldn't hold onto it.
 
The train arrived.
 
You got off.
 
She disappeared into Tokyo.
 
And yet, a week later, she is still sitting beside you.