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Once, I would rather tumble in the realms of suffering,

To endure infinite kalpas of torture and pain…

Once, I would rather blind myself of the light

Than have you missing from my life again

Once, I was so foolish with how much I searched

As I ignorantly hunted you down for gain

Once, I have killed your heart by millionfold

So that I would endured aeons of torture and craving

Once, I mindlessly planted sixfold debt,

As aging and dying recycled me

Once, the beat of your heart haunted each new rebirth

With every second of my helpless sorrow

Once, I regretted having fallen into love’s trap

As it was such torment which bounded my feet together

Once, Images of your face were tattooed deep into my soul.

As it hammered me down to the wheels of samsara screaming

Once, I was crucified to the grand cross of birth and death

Because of the stupidity of how much I foolishly loved you

Once, I could not imagine what life would be like

Without the water of love for the basking of a swimming fish

Once, I asked the birds in the sky what freedom felt like

Yet all I could do was imagine the loosening of my cuffs

Once, I trembled with weak desperate hopes at night.

Half hoping to forget you, half hoping to die once more

Once, I could not let go of my mundane desires

Because fear delude my functioning

Once, it seemed I was the corps of yesteryear

As Karmic retribution become unstoppable

Once, warnings of hell constantly cracked into my skull,

Dragging me further away from the heavenly surface

Oh Such cruelty that each life brought your voice to my ears.

Each breath brought your face to my eyes.

It was blinding, it horribly deafening!

Once, I was drowning in my own sea of tears

Gripping onto anything I could grasp from phoney heroes

Once, I had given up all faith of saviour,

To surrender to the numbness of the cold

But oh what treasure I have today, lord Tathagata!

…The name that strangely soothes my frustration,

like the relief of a million years’ agony.

Like an ant carrying the massive ancient globe…

I have carried love’s burden since the dawn of time.

Incompetent language unable to describe the bliss of today

For Liberation is beyond all meaningful words,

Today is the day that I finally hear of the cure of my illness

And the illness of others just as I who suffer under obsessive love

I now see all sentients beings who have journeyed my road

How they have crawled their way up this steep mountain

To finally overlook the billions burning from below

The incalculable number of wanderers at the bottom

Are just 1 millionth of the actual size who truly suffer

What joy it is to finally meet the Dharma

To be rescued from one’s own stupidity

Now I finally see the vastness of true love and its compassion

True love is the noble love for all sentient beings I have finally learnt,

Love and Kindness is what transcends the infatuation of gods and men.

May all beings escape the suffering of love to see the larger picture.

Namo Sakyamuni Buddha!

By Jessica Tran - Lay Buddhist Student Tam Lac

23 January 2005

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