Maitreya Buddha is the embodiment of becoming and the potentiality of awakening to the truth of our vast Buddha Nature. The notion that we will become Buddha in the future is misleading because already we are the matrix of inter-being, the web of rocks, trees, sky, earth, animals, light, and dark. Maitreya is the potentiality within each of us for realizing our actual circumstance of intimacy with all beings and things. We all are potential seeds of illumination and awareness, we can wake up from sleep into reality.
Zazen in its broadest sense is becoming. It is the arising of phenomena simultaneously together in the present moment. It also means we are entirely unformed, we are not a quantifiable something. With our senses we can experience sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, and mind, but we are not these things in the sense of them being objects. Our senses are doorways of perceptions, links of connection, filaments of the process of living and dying, of becoming.
Can we live as Maitreya Buddha, as a person who is completely open to becoming? Can we see others as Maitreya and not fix them in our judgmental sights? How do we loosen the bonds of words and concepts, of labeling and prejudice so that what remains is forever unknown? How am I a seed, what waters me, how do I water seeds, how can I revision the potentiality of becoming Buddha into the reality of being Maitreya in the here and now, which of course paradoxically means I am Buddha? Dropping all of these ponderings, can I breathe out and let myself go into the unfathomable sense of my whole body and mind without limiting it?
Scattered clouds over Mt Tamalpais
Autumn dusk arrives early
Crows settle on pine branches
Becoming Maitreya
