In the last few days I read some Eliot and Pound, Wordsworth and Tennyson, Shakespeare and Chekhov and Swift. I learned from them all. My mind has expanded, my heart opened. But I am no closer to Knowing my Deepest Self, my Soul, than before. But this was never their intention.

For his departing student, the Buddhist Master painted a perfect circle.

A Perfect Circle – the Perfect Mother. Amida Buddha, the Buddha of Light and Infinite Compassion. And as Shinran, the ancient Master, taught, it was She revealing Herself through the painting.

I look through the subject's eyes into his Soul and find myself singing:

God's gift sent from above,
A real unselfish love,
I found in my mother's eyes.

You are as my mother aspired to be: when I look in your eyes – it’s her love I see.

All the world is my mother,
and all the world is yours.
We see it differently,
as we each see our mothers.

You are as you believe your mother to be.
So to Know her Soul is to Know your own.

About to die, the Zen monk Shisui was asked by his disciples to write a death poem. He grasped his brush, painted a circle – and died.

Go not with your mother's actions
– but with her Aspiration, her Soul.
As I do with you.

“Heaven is not a place … it is a condition … Heaven is within you … [F]irst find God within yourself.”

The uterus shrinks with middle age,
but the Womb ever Expands –
with her more Knowing
her mother as Love.