Countless Living Beings

The sun sets — toward what?The sun rises — inheriting what?Stars wheel in a nameless vault,the years turn and turn without looking into themselves.

Without our knowing,tens of millions of years have run half their course,time handed on layer after layer,and who is inscribing where it came from?How many Earth years, replaced over and over,bought a single instant —still, without a sound.

I once dwelt above and watched.Mountains and rivers rose and fell, finished in one breath,civilizations flourished and were ruined, like dust and sand churning.The living run about,the dead return to zero,desire and fear cross into a net,all beings pass back and forth inside it,each believing they are going forward.

And so the words arise:Who fixed the starting point?Who rules on the final stretch?By what are merit and fame weighed,and where does a soul get its name?

Having reached the heights,what I saw was all things surging.Flourishing and withering stand side by side,gain and loss weigh each other out.No one truly arrives,and no one strays from the path already set.

Suddenly my line of sight falls,and I enter the country of flesh and blood.Cold and heat cling to the body,sharing day and night.In the echo of a heartbeat,I feel hesitation, pain,and the one shape that longing wants to leave behind.

I lift my head toward the void.Where I came from is unspoken,the place I go is undecided.This finite life —must it really prove something?

Then the viewpoint draws back again.Names and forms come loose,individuals dissolve,language loses its weight word by word in the vacuum.The universe says nothing,yet keeps on turning,nebulae turn over,dark matter resonates slowly —

To exist is simply to be,not to answer anything,and countless living beings are only what the universein one long instanttoward itselfechoes again and again:a low vibration.