The Great Beyond
or, The Tale of Ursa Minor
What follows is a narrative, a tale of a star-system, the "Little Bear" of the constellation, Ursa Minor. The "tale" of the little bear is his "tail," which ends with the North Star of Polaris in Ursa Minor.
From the North Star, we calculate our "bearings," at sea, with compass and sextant, on land, by understanding the constellations of the night sky (the Northern Hemisphere) or in the air, the climatory changes of planetary energy revealed in the atmosphere.
True north means we have an accurate or reliable guage of our geospatial dimension. We can trust the North Star, like we rely upon the plane of the right angle for engineering, making our way through space.
I am a person, but my consciousness of life began before my birth or karmic incarnation. I was aware of myself and others in a "pure land" of enlightened beings prior to birth. (Pure lands are celestial abodes or buddha fields. Bodhisattvas or buddhas gather here for the benefit of others.) No one spoke or gestured since every nuance was quite clear through a subtle telepathy of the mind, as if the "One Mind" already knew both question and answer.
One such "time" was a gathering of light-beings in the fellowship of the pure land we shared. From the center of the mandala (the circle of the mind), an almost rhetorical qustion was floated for the assemblage. A light-being, and friend, standing next to me transmitted the message he received from the center to me. I was happy to respond, that is, to incarnate again spontaneously without a second thought.
Reincarnation remained central to the bodhisattva principle of compassion to alleviate suffering for all beings. Some lamas implied there might also be a necessary last lifetime for the absolute bodhisattva before the complete realization of buddhahood. It was the gathering of the bundle of bits and pieces of previous lifetimes, or karmas, to be completed before the journey home to transcendental buddhahood
The process began immediately. I swooned in a gravity of profound emotions, both joy and sorrow. The realities of time and space closed in, as I quickly became acquainted with my body. It was animating in a blissful sense and, at the same time, sublime understanding, as I lost consciousness on my way into rebirth. The earth-date of my birth was October 24, 1949.
Big Hand, November 2, 2014
