Buddha sends a postcard home #7 of 7

Dear Gopa,

I hope you and all the villagers you are helping are well. As we study, meditate and contemplate we come to realize there is only mind. We free ourselves from the delusion that we live in a world that is outside of ourselves, a world that is fixed, solid and permanent. In this delusion we think the world was waiting for us to be born into it, just one more person arriving in a ready-made world. All the things we worry about, chase after or try to avoid are part of this delusion, this wrong assumption that causes so much suffering.

Sitting under the Bodhi Tree all those months ago I saw that my world came with me when I was born. In meditation and contemplation on the path of awareness we can all become free from those anxious and fretful mental states. Our mind becomes tranquil so we can live in peace, treating everyone with understanding and kindness.

Please tell the villagers and everyone in the palace that all composed things are like a dream, a phantom, a drop of dew, a flash of lightning. That is how to meditate on them, that is how to observe them.

Yours with a joyful mind,

Siddhartha

Peter Limbrick, November 2025

See: The Diamond Sutra.

Deepest Practice, Deepest Wisdom. Three Fascicles from Shōbōgenzō  with Commentaries by Kōshō Uchiyama.

Sailing the Worldly Winds: A Buddhist Way Through the Ups and Downs of Life by Vajragupta.