Come back again
not to where I was
in consciousness
but to this world
for yet another life
not because I must
but because I choose
to celebrate life’s joy
and give what I can
see what’s going on
and help as possible
let an embryo grow
not ever confined
inside any womb
raise a new baby
not being stuck
or locked inside
in mind and spirit
with a beating heart
to give a helping hand
to everyone and all
sentient beings
everywhere
I wish and plan
to come back again
a possibility we create.
“Śūraṅgama mantra beginner’s blues” — all 554 lines
Come back beyond what ‘is’ and ‘is not’
“The true reality that does exist, and that is who we really are, lies beyond our attachment to a duality of self and other and a duality of existence and nonexistence.”
“In enlightenment, how could there be identity or a lack if it?”
“Neither the affirmation nor the denial of the statement ‘That is [me]’ is true.”
“Neither affirm nor deny… All your various interpretations of… awareness and… objects are nothing but delusion, and in the midst of delusion one cannot avoid thinking ‘That is’ and ‘That is not.’ Only from within the true, essential, wonderfully understanding, awakened [heart-]mind can one escape the error of trying to point to what ‘is’ and what ‘is not.'”
— The Śūraṅgama Sūtra, A New Translation, Buddhist Text Translation Society, pp. xliii and 70-71
Come back to be — an invitation from Heaven to Earth
