Let me share a few poems by Ryokan, Great Fool, one of my favorite Japanese zen poets, with you who long for solitude and renunciation...
This world
A fading
Mountain echo
Void and
Unreal
The rain has stopped, the clouds have drifted away,
and the weather is clear again.
If your heart is pure, then all things in your world are pure.
Abandon this fleeting world, abandon yourself,
Then the moon and flowers will guide you along the way.
These verses speak deeply to me today as I arise from a week filled with mundane activities....so much love and yet so much angst at times, too, in these human created and lived holidays. "Abandon this fleeting world, abandon yourself, then the moon and flowers will guide you..." Moon and flowers, I bow at your feet.
This poem reminds me of the wonderings explorers would have expressed when trekking into Pemako, when layers of suspended rhododendron flowers held them between the cliffs and jungle floor as the moon glistened off thousands of petals. Pemako is a place written about as a geographical location that houses Vajrayogini's body, but always, the stories of those who have gone in search of Her "places" round back to Pemako only being found inside one's self. The echo of that search is the purity of the void that is found within us all .. if we trek deep enough into our own Pemako, we find the abandon that is our guide to solitude and renunciation.
Thank you for this, Khandro-la.