The Very Short Sutra on the Meeting of the Buddha and the Goddess

The Very Short Sutra on the Meeting of the Buddha and the Goddess September 25, 2016

Guanyin dancing

Rick Fields was a poet, a journalist, and author of the first comprehensive history of Buddhism come to America, How the Swans Came to the Lake, first published in 1988, and which went through several editions. Toward the end of the 1960s he studied Zen at both San Francisco and Los Angeles, but found his heart practice in the early 1970s with the Tibetan traditions and particularly with the late Chogyam Trungpa.

We who care about Buddhism in the West owe Rick an immeasurable debt for his archiving of many of the details of the early years of the great wave of our Western convert Buddhism. That’s why I dedicated my own small contribution to that archiving project, Zen Master Who: An Introduction to the People and Stories of Zen to Rick.

So, it was a small delight when I was noodling around the web and stumbled upon this poem by him. It touches on many things, but most of all, it reflects the eclectic spirit of our contemporary engagement, and the love of the encounter that Rick showed us all with complete abandon.

While I never had the pleasure of meeting him in person, he was an important figure in my life. I miss him…

The Very Short Sutra on the Meeting of the Buddha & the Goddess

Rick Fields

Thus I have made up:

Once the Buddha was walking along the forest path
In the Oak Grove at Ojai, walking without arriving anywhere
Or having any thought of arriving or not arriving
And lotuses shining with the morning dew
Miraculously appeared under every step
Soft as silk beneath the toes of the Buddha

When suddenly, out of the turquoise sky,
Dancing in front of his half shut inward looking eyes,
Shimmering like a rainbow or a spider’s web
Transparent as the dew on a lotus flower,
-The Goddess appeared quivering
Like a hummingbird in the air before him

She, for she surely was a she
As the Buddha could clearly see
With his eye of discriminating awareness
Was mostly red in color
Though when the light shifted
She flashed like a rainbow.
She was naked except
For the usual flower ornaments
Goddesses wear
Her long blue hair was deep blue,
Her two eyes fathomless pits of space
And her third eye a bloodshot
Ring of fire.

The Buddha folded his hands together
And greeted the Goddess thus:
‘O Goddess, why are you blocking my path.
Before I saw you I was happily going nowhere.
Now I’m not sure where to go.”
“You can go around me,” said the Goddess,
Twirling on her heels like a bird darting away,
But just a little way away,
“Or you can come after me.
This is my forest too,
You can’t pretend I’m not here.”

With that the Buddha sat
Supple as a snake
Solid as a rock
Beneath a Bo tree that sprang
Full leaved to shade him.
“Perhaps we should have a chat,” he said.
“After years of arduous practice
At the time of the morning star
I penetrated reality, and now .. “
“Not so fast, Buddha.
I am reality.”

The earth stood still,
The oceans paused,
The wind listened
– a thousand arhats, bodhisattvas, & dakinis
Magically appeared to hear
What would happen in the conversation.
“I know I take my life in my hand,” said the Buddha
“But I am known as the Fearless One
– so here goes.”

And he & the Goddess
Without further words
Exchanged glances
Light rays like sunbeams
Shot forth
So bright that even
Sariputra, the All Seeing One,
Had to turn away.

And then they exchanged mind
And there was a great silence as vast as the universe
That contains everything
And then they exchanged bodies
And clothes
And the Buddha arose
As the Goddess
And the Goddess
Arose as the Buddha
And so on back & forth
For a hundred thousand kappas.

If you meet the Buddha
You meet the Goddess,
If you meet the Goddess
You meet the Buddha.
Not only that. This:
The Buddha is the Goddess,
The Goddess is the Buddha.
And not only that. This:
The Buddha is emptiness
The Goddess is bliss.
And that is what
And what-not you are
It’s true.

So here comes the mantra of the Goddess & the Buddha,
the unsurpassed non-dual mantra.

Just to say this mantra, just to hear this mantra once, just to hear
one word of this mantra once makes everything the way it truly is: OK.


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