Three Wonders (in part the writing that inspired Star Wars, nitey nite )
Joseph Campbell's beautiful description of
the myth of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara
The Hero with a Thousand Faces, pp. 160-161.
Peace is at the heart of all because Avalokiteshvara-Kwannon, the mighty Bodhisattva, Boundless Love, includes, regards, and dwells within (without exception) every sentient being.
The perfection of the delicate wings of an insect, broken in the passage of time, he regards--and he himself is both their perfection and their disintegration.
The perennial agony of man, self-torturing, deluded, tangled in the net of his own tenuous delirium, frustrated, yet having within himself, undiscovered, absolutely unutilized, the secret of release: this too he regards--and is.
Serene above man, the angels; below man, the demons and unhappy dead: these all are drawn to the Bodhisattva by the rays of his jewel hands, and they are he, as he is they.
The bounded, shackled centers of consciousness, myriadfold, on every plane of existence (not only in this present universe, limited by the Milky Way, but beyond, into the reaches of space), galaxy beyond galaxy, world beyond world of universes, coming into being out of the timeless pool of the void, bursting into life, and like a bubble therewith vanishing: time and time again: lives by the multitude: all suffering: each bounded in the tenuous, tight circle of itself--lashing, killing, hating, and desiring peace beyond victory: these all are the children, the mad figures of the transitory yet inexhaustible, long world dream of the All-Regarding, whose essence is the essence of Emptiness: “The Lord Looking Down in Pity.”
But the name [Avalokiteshvara] means also: “The Lord Who is Seen Within.” We are all reflexes of the image of the Bodhisattva. The sufferer within us is that divine being. We and that protecting father are one.
This is the redeeming insight. That protecting father is every man we meet. And so it must be known that, though this ignorant, limited, self defending, suffering body may regard itself as threatened by some other--the enemy--that one too is God…
New life, new birth, new knowledge of existence (so that we live not in this physique only, but in all bodies, all physiques of the world, as the Bodhisattva) was given us. This is the meaning of the image of the bisexual god.
Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, pp. 160-161.
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