the mantra of Maitreya

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2018, 8*, acceptance, anger, attachment, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, delusion, emptiness, falling, fire, flower, ground, life, love, Maitreya, mantra, openness, others, peace, sentient beings, suffering

the mantra of Maitreya

oh my loves,

                wriggling on the very thorns you couldn’t live without
                struck by the match over the gasoline you just poured
                falling like a stone through the emptiness you cannot evade

                you wave your arms at me
                you entice me in your dancing embrace
                you collide with me completely oblivious

                let me place the flower in the barrel of the gun
                let me accept-wide your disfigurement, your awkwardness
                let me be the ground, flat as the palm of a hand

                                open
                                open
                                open

SOHA

Maitreya will be the next being to manifest as a Buddha in this world after the teachings of the current Buddha have been lost; the mantra is actually OM MAITRI MAITRI MAHA MAITRI ARYA MAITRI SOHA; insofar as it can be translated it reads ‘OM love, love, great love, sublime love SOHA’, where ‘OM’ is ‘regarding everything from the most-bottom line’ and ‘SOHA’ is ‘let it be so, as it already is’; the poem flowered quite petally from Bodhisattvacharyavatara, chapter VI, verses 37-38: [37] And like this, when they are so bewildered under the spell and influence of the kleśas, they will even destroy and, finally, take their own treasured life, then, how might it be hoped they would hold themselves back from harming or killing the bodies of others? [38] Even if I have lost, or cannot develop, compassion for these beings intoxicated and driven mad by their kleśas, who are engaged within their own self-destruction – lost in their own perdition, chained within their own fall – and who are, even now, committed to my destruction, then, how could I develop anger towards them? The least I could do would be to restrain from anger.