Vaya con Gaia en Paz, Amor y Alegri’a Bodhisattva Blessing
we have come to this world to be this…
we have come to this world to see this…
we have come to this world to become this…
we have come to this world to hear this…
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we have come to this world to see this:
all our relations living as one
we have come to this world to hear this:
all our relations breathing as one
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all our relations living as one
dancing our prayer as we turn around the sun
all our relations breathing as one
flowing in beauty to the cosmic moon hum
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we have come to this world to be this:
beloved community serving in joy
we have come to the world to become this:
one tree of interbeing rooted in earth, sheltered by heaven…
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once upon a time long, long ago there was a king whose luxurious lifestyle threatened his kingdom… despite his excesses, each year, following ancient custom, he made offerings to a tree known for its healing power, asking for the tree’s protection…
the buddha, as the consciousness of that tree, thought: “This king’s selfishness threatens the realm. I must save him and his kingdom.”
that night the tree bodhisattva appeared like a burning bush in the king’s bedchamber and said, “Great king, due to your selfish ways, your kingdom will fall into ruin. Go among your people and learn the truth.”
shaken, the king donned ordinary clothes and left the capital city eventually coming across a man whose forest home was fenced by thorny branches… when the man pierced his foot on the thorns, he blamed the king since the man had lived in the city, but he’d fled to the forest because of thieves and tax collectors, that is, because of the king’s mismanagement of the city… in pain, he cursed the king: “May he be pierced in some fray as I’ve been pierced today.”
hearing this, the king wanted to turn back and set things right but the tree bodhisattva inspired the king to continue onward…
next, he saw a woman fall under a load of firewood. without money, she couldn’t provide the dowry for her daughters and without husbands, her daughters weren’t safe gathering firewood in the forest so the woman had to do it herself… blaming the king for her poverty, she cursed him as well…
the king then went on to encounter a plowman, a dairyman, a cow grieving the loss of her calf, and a frog being eaten by a crow… each one blamed the king for their misery and cursed him and the king—having learned his lesson—finally returned home… from then on, he ruled wisely and the kingdom prospered…
we know today that forests form a worldwide web of compassionate intercommunication with older trees guiding nutrients to younger kin, younger ones do the same for aging tree relatives… trees shelter so many lives with squirrels, bugs, birds, snakes, fungi, insects, and grubs finding homes in them. humans shelter beneath their branches, gather fruit, nuts, bark, and sap for medicine and food… then in death, trees add nutrients to the soil; we build houses from their bones…
over hundreds of millions of years, plants and trees formed soil and transformed our barren rock into a garden. Now they oxygenate our atmosphere and pull heavy metals from the earth, pollutants from the air. They do not kill to live; they photosynthesize energy directly from sunlight. How’s that for compassionate action and living as one interbeing?
