The Buddha’s Last Instruction by Mary Oliver from House of Light (Beacon Press)
"Make of yourself a light"
said the Buddha,
before he died.
I think of this every morning
as the east begins
to tear off its many clouds
of darkness, to send up the first
signal-a white fan
streaked with pink and violet,
even green.
An old man, he lay down
between two sala trees,
and he might have said anything,
knowing it was his final hour.
The light burns upward,
it thickens and settles over the fields.
Around him, the villagers gathered
and stretched forward to listen.
Even before the sun itself
hangs, disattached, in the blue air,
I am touched everywhere
by its ocean of yellow waves.
No doubt he thought of everything
that had happened in his difficult life.
And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire-
clearly I'm not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value.
Slowly, beneath the branches,
he raised his head.
He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.
said the Buddha,
before he died.
I think of this every morning
as the east begins
to tear off its many clouds
of darkness, to send up the first
signal-a white fan
streaked with pink and violet,
even green.
An old man, he lay down
between two sala trees,
and he might have said anything,
knowing it was his final hour.
The light burns upward,
it thickens and settles over the fields.
Around him, the villagers gathered
and stretched forward to listen.
Even before the sun itself
hangs, disattached, in the blue air,
I am touched everywhere
by its ocean of yellow waves.
No doubt he thought of everything
that had happened in his difficult life.
And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire-
clearly I'm not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value.
Slowly, beneath the branches,
he raised his head.
He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.
Too bad Buddha's last words didn't come with step by step instructions. I've been wondering these past several days how I make myself a light when I'm feeling well smoored.
This feeling is due to some personal situations that are vying for my attention, demanding an investment of chunks of time and energy around which I have to find ways to work. This fragmentation doesn't bother me nearly as much when I have time each day to write. Putting pen to paper (or fingertips to keyboard) is like weaving a slender thread that holds all the pieces together. I need that time to sit down and work things out on the page, get lost in a character's story, or wrestle with a poem.
Those moments allow me to hold everything else together so that even if the rest of my life is loosely bound, it's still anchored. Without that tethering activity, I feel like it takes a tremendous amount of energy to hold onto the stuff of my life with both hands. Yet I also realize that same holding on is what keeps me from making myself a light.
And there's the rub.
Almost every creation myth begins with an element of chaos so maybe it's time to let go, to let my life shatter so I can begin the process of picking up the pieces and see what emerges from the rubble.
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