Chapter 08 · 3 min 30 sec
All Is One
Recognition — looking back and seeing the love that was always present, just unnamed.
Lyrics· 289 words
[Mantra intro - building] Om mani padme hum / om mani padme hum (the jewel in the lotus / the divine within the ordinary)
[Verse 1] You see borders where there are none / you see self where there is all You see ceiling where there's cosmos / you see failure where there's call Everything you think is separate / everything you think is you Is the one thing looking at itself / in ten thousand different views
[Chorus] All is one / all is one / everything you see All is one / all is one / is also already me The stone the star the silence / the broken and the whole All is one / all is one / one consciousness one soul
[Verse 2] When you love the stranger's child / you are loving what you are When you weep at someone's music / you are hearing your own star The compassion that arises / when you witness someone's pain Is the one thing recognizing / what has always been the same
[Chorus] All is one / all is one / everything you see All is one / all is one / is also already me The stone the star the silence / the broken and the whole All is one / all is one / one consciousness one soul
[Bridge - mantra euphoric drop] Om mani padme hum / the jewel in the lotus is you Om mani padme hum / the divine you've sought is you All is one / all is one / all is one / all is one Drop into the knowing / it was always everyone
[Outro] All is one / om mani padme hum / all is one
Short Story
*What we recognise in others is ourselves.*
She saw it in a train station.
A man on a bench, not young, with the particular exhaustion of a person at the end of a difficult thing — she couldn't have said what thing, only that the exhaustion was the specific kind that sits in the eyes and doesn't shift when you look away.
She was in a hurry. She had a train to catch. She didn't know him.
She sat down beside him.
She didn't know why. She couldn't have explained it in the moment and couldn't explain it afterward. She just sat down.
She said: are you alright?
He looked at her. Not with suspicion — with something more like recognition. As if being asked had reminded him of something he'd almost forgotten.
He said: not really.
She said: me neither, to be honest.
They sat on the bench for ten minutes. She missed her train. They talked about things — not deeply, not the way you talk to people you know, but the way you talk to strangers at the end of things, which is sometimes strangely honest. He was visiting a hospital. She'd had a difficult week. They didn't exchange names.
She got the next train.
She thought about his face for months. The specific tiredness of it. The specific look when she'd sat down, that thing that had looked like recognition.
She thought: I knew something about that face. Not because I knew him. Because I'd seen it in the mirror on my own difficult days.
We are not as separate as we move through the world pretending to be.
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*The face of the stranger is the face of someone you already know.*
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