Make of Yourself a Light

Jaune Evans, monoprint image of a Radiant Light-Emitting Buddha

The Buddha's Last Instruction

by Mary Oliver

“Make of yourself a light,”
said the Buddha,
before he died.
I think of this every morning
as the east begins
to tear off its many clouds
of darkness, to send up the first
signal -- a white fan
streaked with pink and violet,
even green.
An old man, he lay down
between two sala trees,
and he might have said anything,
knowing it was his final hour.
The light burns upward,
it thickens and settles over the fields.
Around him, the villagers gathered
and stretched forward to listen.
Even before the sun itself
hangs, disattached, in the blue air,
I am touched everywhere
by its ocean of yellow waves.
No doubt he thought of everything
that had happened in his difficult life.
And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire --
clearly I'm not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value.
Slowly, beneath the branches,
he raised his head.
He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd:
“Make of yourself a light.”

“Make of yourself a light” is a favorite line from this favorite poem from a favorite story about the historical Buddha.

No matter how many times I hear stories about the Buddha – his birth under the rose-apple tree, the death of his mother seven days later, his ‘leaving home’ from life as a prince, his ascetic spiritual practices nearly killing him until saved by a young girl who gave him a bowl of milky porridge, his touching of the earth upon awakening, his holding up of a flower and a disciple’s smile of receiving the ‘true dharma eye’ in a moment of face-to-face transmission, his forty-five years of walking and all-inclusive teaching of monastics and lay people, how he emphasized kind speech and spiritual friendship as medicine for our hurting hearts, his teaching of universal grief in the story of sending a bereaved and unconsolable mother into her village to bring him a mustard seed from any house that had not experienced grief, the image of two sala trees between which he lay down to die – I never tire of them.

To be continuously curious, touched by the Buddha’s words and actions, exploring and being explored by the practices of wisdom, compassion and service, repeatedly falling down and getting up, catching glimpses of mystery… this human life is a precious gift.

Once I was asked, “Why did you turn away from life in the fast lane of New York City in the late 1970s?” My spontaneous answer was, “The beauty made me do it.” Those words surprised me. Now almost fifty years later, I realize they are only half the answer. The other half is:

“clearly I'm not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value”

These words of awareness, just being a human being, not a human doing, being something of inexplicable value feeds me good medicine every day, continuously turns me toward the light of Buddha’s teachings, saves my life.

This monoprint image of a Radiant Light-Emitting Buddha appeared spontaneously four decades ago in my first experience of drawing with inks on a glass plate, then impressing the plate on porous linen paper which had soaked for hours in water, covering it all with a flannel blanket, then turning the hand wheel of a press, becoming something of inexplicable value that hangs above my bed blessing me day and night.