KUKLOS

THE HILLSIDE OF HEAVEN SUTRA

(A dream within the dream)

I dream, and-

‘I see a cold land at evening, under a copper-hued sky by the sea. Chill wind soughs in the scattered clumps of grass. It blasts raw the eyes of little animals as they hurry about, causing them tears. They seem to wail as they make for the shelter of their dens.

See now against this nightfalling sky, twin points of blue fire, sparking as eyes. A shadow takes shape about them, and lo- a phantom forms in the gloom.

The phantom speaks -

“I am still here. I am a ghost, a little Kami, an elemental, a spirit.

Humanity is gone, and I am still here.

Time has passed- centuries since the unquiet age.

All remaining life on Earth is now here, on this scree-lined coast; the western shore of a land long gone unnamed. I alone am here to name it, and I name it not. There are dull pulses, living mats on the sea, and oozy things, flitting through the deep. But here is sentient life’s last land; a narrow beach, a narrow plain of drab and wiry grasses, a dim salt-marsh, and the gloom of the forest beyond, sighing in the shelter of a nameless mountain.

These here, the cautious little beasts chittering and scurrying around me, are the last living breaths of eyes and ears on land.

The people are gone. All of their clamour and their pain is done. All of their endeavour, their successes, failures and triumphs. All of human history is done. Humanity is done. Their life’s portion sleeps in silence. They are whitened bones, or charred black, withering and mumbling as they crumble in desert vales, far away.

Here only sentient life remains, on this little stretch of beach, scrub and forest, between the dreary mountain’s feet and the sea. Here on the edge of the northern darkness.

The light of the stars still reflects in the eyes of the little blinking creatures here, advancing to grassy land and shore in summer, in winter retreating deep into the woods. The sun and moon still visit earth’s sky. The night still brings sleep and waking dream. The little beasts still murmur through life and death. But humanity is gone, done, and the darkening air is sad.

I am a ghost, a little Kami, elemental, a spirit. In the forest, in a little cave, in a pine strewn dell I reside. The chill wind soughs through my haunted home. The beasts fear me not, for I am kind. When the storms come raging from the sea, or down from the mountain, some gather around me, and I sing to them and ease their fear and pain.

I am a ghost, and I still dream.

When I dream, I am dissolved into wisdom. When I wake, I can set it into words. I will speak of what I dream, though none are left now to hear it. It is always the same. This is my dream.

I dream I fly to yonder lofty mountain height. There appears a shimmering circle of light, sapphire blue and glittering. I am beckoned to pass through. Through this gateway is revealed the way of heaven, a hill-road towards a darkened sky. I go through.

And so –”

“Ascending the high hill of heaven, I found the grotto and green bower in which her lantern was lighted- blessed Lady Wisdom, internal ground of groundless consciousness, Prajnaparamita, the Seeress, Mother of the universe, and the universe itself.

Listen!

I asked- “What is the ultimate reality?”

The Seeress replied- “what answer would satisfy you? All of these names and forms – Brahman, God, Buddha, Heaven, Sakti, Christ, Zeus, Isis, Tian, Great Nature. All of these, and more than all that are yet formed, by mouth, in mind. What of them? On the northern slope of that hill yonder, there appears a faint shadow at midday. If I told you that that shadow is the Mother and Father of the Worlds would you believe it? And yet, were it possible for you to investigate it to the utmost, you would find it to be so, and tire yourself in the doing . Better to just believe, for believing is a kind of knowing. The root of believing and knowing is not non-existent. Call it what you wish, but whenever you say “I”, you glance at its presence. That is all.

She whispered verse-

“Naming the eternal-

More hooks, confusion more.

Flux of form and emptiness

Name and leave it so

2

Boundless form in nothingness,

eventide turns to night.

Name for water’s colour,

ink and pen on air.”

Then all was plunged into a gulf of blackness, pitch-

and yet the void hummed.

Then again the Seeress appeared,

from the star-flecked ground

of the holy abyss,

sparks of cyan and mauve,

on midnight blue her woven shawl,

ascending her throne of augury.

She speaks –

“A violet cloud appears in the abyss. Myriad particles of vaporous light. Each luminous point reflected in each- each an appearance of all. The cloud self-transforms with it’s light. It rests in darkness, though in constant motion. It light’s up the chasm, but is not separate from it. Without this cloud, there is no abyss. Without the abyss, there is no cloud. The abyss, the cloud, and the myriad transformations : they are distinct, yet they are one.”

The Seeress then led me through own my minds abyss, to a vast expanse, shrouded in night. The ground was soaking underfoot; a quagmire black, heaving beneath impenetrable shadow.

Behold! in the distance, a flicker of blue fire, risen, vanishing like a ghost of a dream near waking.

‘that fire you see' she said

‘in that gout of flame, a hundred billion cycles of the Universe you perceive. In a hundred billion years of our time here- on the mire of wakeful unconsciousness- will it blaze forth again, and so on and on. All that you have known: recurring billions in just one flash, billions of flashes on this dark and empty bog.

As it is said :

‘Here I see, a black watered pool,

With a fire at its centre, blazing without fuel

Up in a whirling tower, worlds rise and fall,

As sparks against the pitch vault of night'

More could be said, but it would be only detail. There is a danger; too many words fog the clear aether of the mind. If nothing else then, remember this, and that will suffice.

Then the Seeress led me back to her greenlit bower, and lo-

I saw that her throne was of translucent opal, and it pulsed with a living light.

She spoke – “ here, this throne of mine is nothing but your own mind. Here is my base and yours, here is the fountain of all my teaching. Trust it, keep it free of crust and becloudments. It’s source runs deeper than yet you can know. Return now. Always return! Bear in mind these teachings and be a spring to the wide world.

I asked; “oh mother, who are you in truth?”

With these verses she replied;

‘I am all that is, that was, that will be again,

All, yea, though no mortal mind,

can pierce my shadow’

2

‘I am the content and the vessel,

I am the turns of space and the stars,

I am the dawn and the dusk,

Mother of the Sun,

We are the dark beneath the day”

Then, I wake.

When I wake, I am still here;

here, haunting this sub-arctic night, this little strip of life remaining.

Soon all life will sleep into a great and long night of death. Yet it will seem no more a time than a flicker of light, a twinkling of starlight in the eyes of one of these little beasts around me. A breath in, then out. Soon the turn comes, and ceaseless are the wheels of experience in the endless dark of space.

With these verses I complete my ministry;

‘I saw, through the door of dream,

a world gone still and quiet

Soft sighs of crumbling bones

Far off whispers of falling dust

Little stirs, achingly remote

One star at nightfall

but no living eye to see

Silence for a long age.

The spirit turns in the dark of space

2

I see a world of snow and ash,

white wings in the star-vault,

cold air, gone still,

I hear-

Creation’s new soughing,

a hum from the fathomless

I know now the cycle’s turn is near

3

I saw in dream, an eclipse –

a Sun emerging greater,

A storm’s black pall come menacing,

Yet, swiftly vanishing away.

4

Some prophets thrill seeing doom,

- not so this seer of worlds

A morn of mist and midday maybe,

But night wells whispers of new shoots

5

I see, risen up again –

The towers of smiling women and men,

Garlands of song, from roof to roof

Bells of crystal,

Dawn in Tara, green.

6

I see, in violet blooms again-

the midday vale, in God and space,

Mother, father,

brotherhood and love,

Beyond the death

and night’s embrace”