This is a symbolic poem summarising the path to enlightenment. It implicates the way of discovery (an inward journey) of the nature of their mission that many advanced Bodhisattvas (Initiates of the higher degrees) undertake.

Did you ever hear a mockingbird cry?
Did you ever see the sun burn, ravens in flight?
Did you ever walk on an endless plain, and a black road,
the hopes of yesterday vanished in a dream?
Whilst your hands grappled fruitlessly in the rain,
in the mud
in the hot dust.
It was a tear-drop that you searched for in vain, and had given up.
You saw little, thought little, found little,
except the blistered pain of the journey’s quest.
Even love is like an ever-changing mirage
that always entices you with an alluring embrace
of seeming utopias and visioned fertile lands;
but you must die in the ocean’s waves and in the hot sun
before it is found. Life never ends.

I fell down and died as I tore my nose and broke my bones.
An angel came and took me home
where I saw a manger and a star above,
and round about, an enormous multitude, the angels
of the dawn,
who in the countenance of shepherds, in chorus sang:

‘It is for you to be a prophet among men,
to show them the promised land,
and there to teach them to build the Holy City
with their own hands.’

There were others like me,
who were led to the summit of a heavenly mount.
Together we saw a vast expanding scenario
of past times and the new world that tomorrow brings,
a immense bustling cosmos of Life
pulsating with the interwoven dance
of multi-hued Light, of myriads of faces,
in grassy greens, forest acres,
cities, planetary regents, stellar spheres,
and the entire world’s peopled profile,
actively engaged in a bustling
mechanised turmoil and saddening enterprise
of war-like selfish activity,
leaving them weary and downcast,
with a dismayed quivering
of an uncertain expectancy of hope.

The sonorous chorus continued:

‘They’re your children,
Oh soldiers of the Light, nourish and nurture them,
lead them to the right,
over the treacherous pits and rugged grounds
where they’ve floundered in their plight.
You’ve experienced every clod on the path,
and stumbled often, but now know the journey well.
Oh maze masters, your seeds were planted aeons ago.
We nursed you and fondled you,
and as young trees you grew, strong, determined.
Now you bear the mark of Cain, the Eye of Horus;
for like Cain you slew your brother,
brother in Life, brother of Light.
Abel had to die, you had to gather experience in the earthly hell,
banished from the Presence (of ‘God’), life after life,
cycle after cycle.
Oh! Happy beings, you’ve paid your debts
and are now free in your Father’s land,
and have pity upon your brothers still in the realm of death.
You give them hope, give them love, and show them the way.
Oh Lords of Compassion, the thrice Initiated, and those
the fourth and fifth time around,
we shall lead you back to the plains.
Descend into Hades and gather your flocks,
for the time has come for which you have
consecrated your lives with a long-time vow.
Though they may try to blind you,
curse you,
despise you,
brand you,
and even crucify you, be fearless;
we shall guide you and give you sustenance,
for we are the Gods of the Light,
Gods of the Right, Gods of Might.
Oh eternal soldiers, lordly masters of the material world,
lead them to us through the gates of paradise,
the Elysian fields, where they will be given
a robe of glory and a crown of splendour.

From the ineffable point of Power
to the Throne of the great Lord, to His Domain,
and to the minds of men; from the Heart of Life
to the sphere of Light that encompasses all we are;
from the beginning to the ending of time and space
in which we grow and come to be, energy does flow
from the One to the other,
and propels each upon his appointed task,
as universal anointed spokes, or the lesser wheels,
the machinery of the great cycling Wheel of the Law revolving.
Oh! Enlightened beings we all serve the One,
the eternal Plan of our long-time Lover,
Who is in us as we are in those
who serve all men, their sisters and brothers,
or who embody all forms as their Mothers.
Everywhere the Love, the Light, the Might of our radiant Lover.
Glory, glory, glory be your task’s completion.”

It took me so long to realise that,
so many years in a haze, so many years in a daze.

A little child from paradise flew,
to wind and rain, gale and storm
that smashes and tears, cracks and bangs,
lacerates and shreds,
into the world of suffering, Māyā’s fair garden,
and therein the child grew.

Then there’s you my beloved,
you who gives to the leaves, to the sun,
you give Light, Life, to every breeze, every tree,
every being, with your Hands, your Body, your Heart.
The trees bend to your Love, and as a newborn child
I stood naked before you and your caress;
You, who later filled my heart with all I desired,
my eyes with sensual delight, my hands with gold
and all fancied treasures that glitter and gleam,
which I foolishly squandered in my greed and desire for more.
In my youthful haste for the regalia and apparel of all kings
I lost sight of your face and forgot your name.
Through negligent habits and a glutton’s bias
my body sickened and ached,
then a feverished plight made me hunger for health
and for the meaning of that which sustained all life.
But the sickness passed, so with a determined respite
I wandered at length on many a road,
an adventurous search with a vagabond’s host,
though I hardly knew why.
I fought and battled through many seditious wars,
through much vain hope and many ambitious dreams.
I fought Nature’s kingdoms, and all men around;
but all I gained through my fingers like watered sands ran,
until I stumbled on the mountainside of many years loss,
and I could fight no more.
So I wept for the meaning of that constant facade,
and in the deep recess of my mind a half remembered
inebriated memory of you
prompted my destitute, disillusioned self to cry out:

‘Oh, my beloved, where are you?
Yesterday you came, later, you were gone,
today I stand on a plain that is treeless, grassless,
brown earth, alone, nowhere to hide the ambiguous nakedness
of my floundering dreams.’

But no answer came,
so I became a recluse and sat, pondered,
and beat my withered chest
upon the fortress of the jagged rocks and haughty trees
that became my forlorn refuge.
I cared not for company or for human appetites;
glittering treasures or hoarded gold no longer held my fancy.
My constant companion was the mind,
its long time chatter and one time laughter
was a disconsolate home.
All thoughts were buried in this solitary house,
dark, damp, treacherous, with high, most formidable walls;
a house, where every Element:
Earth, Water, Fire, Air, and animal passion
was mortared in its frame, its stone and bars;
a house with lock and key;
and from it my mind could nowhere go.
It took much impassioned battling with concepts, ideals, ideas,
and illusioned inventories struggling
for assured salvation from this earth’s rough rock-filled hell
to realise that this house was of my own construction,
wrought through the folly of selfish longings,
enhanced past desires,
and it was in fact the cause of my troubled path.
While I was absorbed in such thought
my despair began to have no bounds.
There seemed no way out of that house.
(There was no place where the heart
could beat free and come to grow.)
Every day my fears grew darker, every day my body weaker.
I could not eat, and felt nothing
but the pain of my fruitless searching.

One day whilst wandering, a respite from contemplation,
I heard a cry of anguish,
a traveller had fallen to a rocky boulder,
and had some bones broken.
My heart leapt to help him,
there was no thought of other action.
Whilst his bones were mending I found he was journeying
the same weary road I had travelled.
Of my understandings he queried,
and many of his questions were answered.
(In a desire to save him anguished journeying.)
Then he left, though saddened at the parting,
but emanated a joyous obeisance for his awakening.
I too thanked him for the discovery
of new thoughts of service to humanity all around.
Still I remained in the solitude of my own anguished making
of contemplative house building, not sure of what was needed
in the direction my heart was taking.
New feelings with my mind were battling.
Not sure of the real solution,
past habits still empowered my everyday thinking.
A subtly veiled encompassing bitterness
still shrouded my perception.
(Deathlessness was my avowed quest,
though in reality I strived to die to this life’s meaning.)

It was then that you came to me in a form that I did not recognise,
and you told me that you could not come
until I had discovered the source of my plight
and was determined to find the solution
through an awakened compassionate understanding.
Only then I could be directly helped.
You spoke of beauty in the world of tomorrow
and today, in people, and the land they purvey.
But I retorted:

‘Leave me in my solitude, leave me here to die.
I have no need of beauty, of forms as sweet as thou.’

You answered:
‘Beauty is not a mockingbird, beauty is a tree,
beauty is a springtime sparrow
that takes naught from me and you.
How can you find your freedom
if nothing outside yourself you can see,
you’ve locked the doors of your abode
and little you’ve thought of him, of me,
or of any others, with whom in this world you must be.
If you can give yourself to beauty, let her share your heart with me,
find unmeasured good will and love for all your brothers,
strive towards understanding of the true path you have taken,
the compassionate part of the journeying,
the full act of love for your brethren,
the joy of complete acceptance of the cornucopia
that is Nature’s resplendence,
the ecstasy accrued from right meditation,
the good will emanated by giving,
the bliss of an enlightened standing,
the unparalleled Light of all Being,
the astounding visioned destiny of the final union of all lovers,
a Heavenly City unfolding, of marriage that is My undertaking,
the uplifting of all forms before Me,
the journey of Life’s Essence into all Power amazing,
the dawning of a new solar beginning,
a cosmos fully enlightened.
Give fully to all your brothers
what you’ve found and know they do need,
and your mind shall be tranquil and free,
a radiant all-embracive pervasion.
Look closely at their needs and the secrets of space will be seen,
this immense encompassing universe and its miraculous unfolding.
Listen closely to their thoughts, the direction they are taking
and learn the art of right thought projection,
the massed subjectification of all minds
to inner attunement and outer awakening,
then you will see the Mind of the Creator,
the very act of His Standing.
Seek out their Hearts and find what they are embracing,
rectify the imbalances and open the sources
to their compassionate understanding.
Then you shall know what their lives mean to Me,
of cosmic Blood, fully Life empowering.
In attunement to their needs your own Heart’s awakening,
and salvation will find its key.
Return with this understanding along the path you have taken
and with Me again you shall be.’

Then in a flash of timeless vision
I saw your brilliant, blinding, radiant apparel
and my heart exploded into ecstatic aspiration.

As I put this advice into operation
my vision became increasingly perceptive,
everything of the past I could see,
the how and why of all that happened to me.
Many other revelations I was given,
and with your most wondrous form
as my constant companion, I returned,
and on that journey my Heart gave to many
the understanding of how to be happy and free.

Now there is you, my beloved, you,
who have touched me with your Heart and affirmed your Love;
you, whom I have always felt, desired to hold and come to know.
But like the night dew that evaporates in the morning sun,
you eluded my touch till I grew to be strong
and learnt that naught could one hold or possess
except the image of that desire and the One true Light,
for all else changes and is destroyed.
I had sought you and found you
and in the eternities to come will know all about you.

There are smiles for blossoms,
for berries,
for the breeze;
the warm sun melts the vale of green into a crystal stream,
becoming like clouds drifting in a stupendous sky.
I thank you my Love, for the day.

What can one grasp of the One that forever is at play
with the world of sorrow and tears,
and come what may, destroys all forms and fears,
yet prompts the Life within the crumbling form
towards the one deep Void of everything always near?
What is there to grasp of a milliard phantasmagorical
ever-changing forms, of a milliard nameless names,
when there’s you my Beloved,
who creates the dawn that expires each night
and is born anew with the sun’s early Light;
you, who with a beckoning call, a soundless Sound,
can end my sleep for a dreamless world,
and lead me to the Heart of Life’s deep Well?
From there, everyone comes, and to it everyone goes,
while before it there is an empty shell
of the past that once was to us real,
and the world with its Heaven and Hell;
and That beyond it, no man can tell.

That Well contains all that Life unfolds,
and for its Waters all Life yearns.
It is this energy and energy alone,
the substance of Light, Love and Power, that causes us to be
and grow through countless years
of cyclic Breath, when time is not, but with space asleep,
in abstract Thought, in eternity, and That you give to me.

No need to pretend where my Heart lies, or where my path goes.
I will journey forever to That which illumines each day.

Oṁ Mani Vajrapāni Hūṁ!
Peace be unto you.

 

© Bodo Balsys