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Coming Home- Bright Eyes… Once, countless eons ago, there lived a woman named Bright Eyes. She was devoted to her mother, but when her mother passed away, her heart was troubled: Where has she gone? Is she safe? Bright Eyes offered a meal to a great arhat and asked him to help. Entering deep samadhi, the arhat saw that her mother had fallen into a realm of great suffering, the fruit of lifetimes of harming sea creatures. Bright Eyes wept, but the arhat gave her a way: “Be mindful of Pire Lotus Eyes Come One. Create his image. Offer your merit to your mother. Through your sincerity, she may be freed..” Bright Eyes did this with her whole heart, and through the power of her vow and love, her mother was released. This story is about remembering, not only the mother’s liberation, but Bright Eyes own awakening to her capacity for boundless compassion. We forget. We lose sight of our true nature- weather through ignorance, through the weight of karma, or through generations of suffering. But the Buddha, like a father, like the arhat meets us where we are. He does not force awakening upon us, but patiently gives us a way to return. Bright Eyes mother was freed because her daughter remembered her, and acted with unwavering sincerity. We, too are like them- sometimes the one in need of rescue, sometimes the one who remembers for another. Enlightenment is not handed to us: it is the homecoming to what has always been ours- the Buddha- nature, bright and whole, waiting for us beneath the forgetting. ~Ven. Bao Co
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