Commentary: “Benediction”

Mother Prajnaparamita, inconceivably manifesting as the many-gowned goddess, removing each layer of her dress at her own delight; mother of all stories, peaceful, wrathful, and self-liberating: may the intimacy of your gaze in all things be the owner of our attention. May your bright face be revealed as the face of our stumbling and finite appearance, disclosing our daily bread, sweet nectar of your vine, the dharma song of all things, in each intimate occasion of our lives.

May time and her raking tines, the illusions of grasping and separation, be as empty vapor that has no power to distract from our surrender into the empty and fertile truth of love present, the aromatic delight of our own awakened heart.

Mother of original light, who bends to us now even as tender nightfall, effacing our frantic daydreams of birth and death; who bends to us with the moist breath of the nighttime in the womb of transformation we call earth: hold and conceal us long and close against your dark breast; your hidden warmth rising from beneath the desolate moor, where the carnival of the mind meets only indifference, where all strength must go to the root, where the seeds of the soul have time to sprout in emptiness, and the pleasures of the profoundly plain and simple may announce themselves in their time, wholly unnoticed by those who are still only rushing by and who have no power to disturb, to diminish, or to detract.

May all beings, fruits of the infinitely flowering tree, elf, grub, seed, bee, fish, sylph, and starlight, winds of the north and south, least asteroidal microbe traveling empty space, be so held, so fed, and so delivered. And may all run their course, true to their nature, free of our righteous control, our piety, and our best intentions.