Make of Yourself a Light

Weekly wisdom to level up your creative life in 3 minutes, for free.

A SHORT STORY

There is a lot of fear these days.

Just this past Wednesday, my students peppered me with questions — How do I stay centered? How do I quiet myself and still act in the world? How do I speak up?

I paused for a moment and said — “Do something that matters to you.” Or, as the Buddha once said, “Make of yourself a light.”

It feels a bit naive as I type it now.

But I meant it. Every word.

There’s a dharma statement I love:

If everyone panicked, all would be lost.
If one person remains centered and calm, it will show us the way for all of us to survive.

We all know who that person is in our lives.

And so, I take great comfort in that knowledge.

The world will keep turning. Fear will keep rising. But we are not powerless. Each of us in our small, ordinary lives can choose to be a presence of steadiness, of care, of light. Not perfectly. Not all the time. But enough.

Enough to help someone else remember who they are.

Enough to remind yourself.

Make of yourself a light.

Who do you need to be a light for right now?

A POEM

“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.

Grateful,

Michael