good friday

We all had ghastly dreams last night, it's disturbing. I wonder if there's a connection to the history of this day and its associations. But today is beautiful, filled with light and clear blue skies.

Did Jesus really overcome the world? Did that mean that he saw beyond form to the light emanating within everything, as so many Bodhisattvas have done as well? I was reading Sky Dancer, about the Lady Yeshe Tsogyel, a semi-mythological Dakini. At the age of 211 she spoke to her followers about her coming death. Do not be disconsolate, she said:

Since life is a conditioned state, it is transitory;
Since the objective world is light-form, it is insubstantial;
Since the path is delusive, it has no validity;
Since samsara is Emptiness, it is unreal;
Since the mind is its conflicting thoughts, it had no foundation;
I have seen nothing whatsoever that is ultimately real. (p. 151)

Joy sneaks in.

The kids rigged up some kind of swing in their play the other day. All week it's hung in the mandorla made by the trunk of the peach tree overlapping the apricot. Apricot petals rain down around it.

I am thoroughly devoted to Jesus, to Yeshe Tsogyel and the multitudes of Buddhist wisdom beings as well. It occurs to me that if I followed Jesus' Gospel impeccably, I would be an amazing Buddhist, and if I were to perfectly adopt Buddhist views, I would make an astounding Christian. But I'm glad no one's making me choose between the faces of the divine who perhaps can be defined no further than what was, is and will be. It's OK if I'm written off by many. But frankly, most people are simply too generous to do it.