Individuality Conceals Truth
By Madhyama
Worldlings exerting individualities
Perceiving signs, marks or characteristics
The diverge multiplicity of cosmos
Deluded by illusions like dreams, magics, mirages ……
Superimposing self-identity
I, Me, You, we, They and so on
Grasping upon the five aggregates
Clinging upon the six sense faculties
And the six objects of perceptions
Conceiving greed and hatred as natural
Birth and death as natural outcome
Transmigrating in an incessant journey
From anguish to anguish
From death to birth
From birth to death ………
Becoming dust at the foots of a Tathāgata
Realizing Emptiness to become nobody
Becoming nobody yet becoming Somebody
Annihilating egotism or selfish self
Manifestation of Buddha-nature or Dharma-body
Discerning Emptiness of multiplicity
Fully self-awakened to
A journey without journeying
Realizing the ultimate Truth
Every human being intrinsically supreme
In knowledge, powers and bliss
Soteriology – human emancipation
Not comprehended by intellectualization
Not gauged by intellectualization
Not fathomed by ordinary human mind.
Auto-commentary by the writer
The first portion of the poem is a description of a saṃsāric or exoteric journey. The second portion is an elucidation of the Nirvāṇic or esoteric journey which is actually without any journey – journeying without journey. This truth can only be comprehended from the wisdom of ultimate truth.
Every worldling conceives that he is an individual who is finite in knowledge, powers and bliss. He conceives that he is travelling in a long journey to arrive eventually at a final destination called Nirvāṇa. Having actualizing Nirvāṇa, the enlightened one amazingly discovers that he is actually intrinsically infinite in knowledge, powers and bliss. Most captivatingly, he ascertains that his spiritual journey, in the ultimate sense, is without any journeying. Tri-temporal existence and multiplicity or the myriad things of the empirical world or cosmos are merely illusions constructed by the erroneous human conceptualization or imagination rooted in ignorance and false ontological commitment. This is quintessence of not only Buddhism but also of all other esoteric religions. |
