(10) The Cloud

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Because you once forgot the vast deathless sky, you once became this tiny lonely cloud.

Drifting around, one amongst many others.

Bound to a desire of becoming, a soaring spirit of countless desireful raindrops, you now drift over vast samsaric lands, saturating everything beneath you, like a dog, marking his personal space.

But born as a cloud, you die slowly as a cloud.

The more you rain, the faster the shadows beneath you bear fruit and not always good.

The sky above you cannot move an inch, but you, you move around like a lost frightened child in a large crowd of strangers, forgetting the true face of your deathless self.

One day, apparently vanished from this ground, you reappear again, as a new cloud with another form, but the same ol’ raindrops that needs touching new ground and a body that needs space in order to drift and act as all clouds do.

New imagined lands, views, new impressions, yet old winds, brings you here and there, over so many imagined destinies and temporary relationships.

Why then do you not turn that attention around and recollect what you truly are?

Nothing but a new vantage point is needed here.

The sky above is vast, in fact as you cultivate a clouds imagination, it seems to you limitless.

It illuminates all clouds as what they truly are.

Indeed nothing but passing shadows and drama plays.

Transient states between illusive emptiness and form.

One day, you may even find yourself asking the sky, why?

As a sky, all things have place in you, but as a cloud you fight and suffer.

You fight for recognition, for space, respect and integrity.

Sometimes you get it, sometimes you don’t.

So you try new paths and new views and wind up, above new lands, but in the end all the same.

Thus I ask you.

If you now are so preoccupied with this limited cloudy life, although you may be a big cloud or perhaps a small, or even a large black thundering cloud, why then, if you suffer, don’t you turn your attention around and discover that Unborn Sky which illuminates and brings life to all foolish and fluffy plays?

Do you really need this mortal inhabitance, or is it so that you suffer from a temporary amnesia of what you truly are?

The way of deathlessness and Noble Wisdom, free from mortal ignorance is truly simple, yet how can such wisdom have place in a tiny cloud of your present mortal stature?

My Friend, you have at least this freedom until the end of this cloudy life…

You are either, ONE with that true self, which IS not itself these clouds, but more the sustainer of all self-born clouds…

Or, you choose to identify yourself, with that fluffy thing which now drifts slowly over lowly lands, known as various heavens and hells.

All you need to detach yourself from this puny form and fate, is a last joyful goodbye cloudburst and a firm vow to never again enter the tempting form of any cloud.

Let its form slowly die, in its own natural pace and never lose sight of the true source of all clouds.

Thus you bring attention towards the true and bring amnesia towards the false.

This border between freedom and suffering is thin as a razor’s blade.

Yet for most, a vast dark abyss, as large as this very universe.

A dark beast indeed…

One with many stories…

Many destinies…

In the end, all nothing but tempting tales for foolish children…

Who desire nothing more…

But long, dark, sleepy-time naps…

Shrouded, with colorful dreams…

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