Fingerprints on the wheel – an original heart sutra.

Today I opened my eyes to a sad dream. When I brought my mind home to itself away from the fictitious dream space, a thought occurred to me.  Like my own fingerprints are unique, so are every other person's on this planet. Like my dreams, my life is imaginary. It emanates from mind.

Stop and digest that.  Every person's fingerprints have left their mark on what their owner-fingers touched.  Love, hate, life, death and everything in between, including the desperate escape from that sense that what is going on is not what’s really happening.  Either into or out of the heart of the matter, I still tango with the conditions of the matter itself.  Stop and digest that.  Every person’s  fingerprints are unique, just as unique as mine.   There is no solid value to a fingerprint.  Yet it is proof that something existed.  Don’t forget, actions lead to actions.  The value of those actions is the heart of an entirely other matter.

Actions are like fingerprints, hard to trace once the being that acts moves past the action itself, but millions of actions happen in fragments of seconds with all those fingerprints left behind, no fingers to see once the touch fades.  Actions leave the traces of our intent.  I suck up the weight of that notion, every action I took or refused bore and bears karma.  Consequence.  Every thought I think right now is a seed.

So I bend myself into the lull of a deep crooning chant, the chant of my mothers who came before me, a song of healing energy oṃ tāre tuttāre ture svāhā and in your arms, oh mothers, I lay in the embrace of your wisdom.  I become the song of healing for my children in turn.   I, one of the daughters of mother Tsogyal, come to you without pride or hate. I come to you with my heart cracked open, spilling the tears of all those children who don’t have food to put in their belly today.  I come to you, my mothers, as a speaker for the dead.  I am filled with the voice of grief, the hundreds of thousands of lives extinguished in the dark, unknown and unseen.  They loved and lost, as much as you or I, and in their ignorance they closed their eyes.   I weep for their pain, like every mother who has come before me. 

oṃ tāre tuttāre ture svāhā oṃ tāre tuttāre ture svāhā oṃ tāre tuttāre ture svāhā om tare tuttare ture soha om tare tuttare ture soha om tare tuttare ture soha om tare tuttare ture soha om tare tuttare ture soha om tare tuttare ture soha

Yeshe Tsogyal, mother of my heart, I come to you with the fingerprints of infinite losses and births.  From small to big, I bow to the vastness of suffering's extent.  I cannot fight the ocean with a sword.  I must make myself an ocean to fill the canyons grooved by countless years of pain with new streams of bubbling laughing healing joy.  Oceans are only made of drops.  No need for swords.  This is the gift of woman.  It fills up my cup till till it’s almost too much to hold in, it threatens to overflow, so I drink a daily dose, doing shots of remembrance and humility on my kitchen floor. 

I was born, like you alone, and like you dearest mother, I have so much work to undertake some days I need to hear it’s gonna be ok.  On those days it feels as if my back might breaks at every task, but I struggle on, because you dearest mother, are in my heart and have never given up on me, no matter what.  You are the deepest part of my womanhood, the primal prajna queen that guides and comforts the small girl frightened and unsure of being able to make the right choice. 

Then I realize, no one else knows better either, we’re just all fingerprints on the wheel that haven’t quite caught on, that this is already gone, we have just this one chance to wake up and let go. 

We’re all fingerprints on the wheel, we’ve all touched life and death.  So at least, we’re all together in this mess… And for you and for me I will wait till the end of suffering to release my last breath. It is in this emptiness that I grow this seed, and offer you my lotus, for you to be free.

Om ah hum vajra guru pema siddhi hum!