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I am a cosmic emerald shining in the azure blue sky. The emerald is both a gateway and a universal boundary, for through it you enter my world.

In your past life in the Buddhist monastery The Emerald Garden, the reason for the title of the place was forgotten. The jealous abbess shifted my worship to that of Gautama Buddha. The mandalas of the celestial buddhas were hidden, and the sadhana scrolls thrown behind my statue in a locked and forgotten room.

The current situation echoes the past. Buddhist leaders have forgotten the celestial Buddhas and turned their followers back to Gautama Buddha. Our existence is denied. We are [seen as] only [symbols of] emptiness. Our wisdom, beauty. and value evaporated in the arid path of Emptiness.

Those of us who dedicated our existence to helping others have become worthless, for there are no souls to experience suffering.

The differing importance of matter and spirit rises and falls in cosmic cycles. But it seems that [the importance of] matter is not falling again as it should. It has trapped spirit and over-shadowed it by claiming to be the true nature of spirit. Thus, the body is true, but soul and spirit are false. Truth is Emptiness, yet the body is also true. Beauty, ideals, worlds of compassion - all are locked away, just like my statue was in a monastic prison.

I shall not stop helping those who suffer, even if meditation on me and my worship are neglected and my existence is forgotten. My images have become, as they say, "decorative" to adorn the walls of temples. My compassion and my vows [as a Bodhisatva] are eternal.

In a world of suffering, people must have hope. If they do not, the world becomes a meaningless place. As the song [Ol' Man River] says, "I'm tired of living but scared of dying." Desire and fear take the place of compassion.

You cannot make up for the world's neglect. But you can write my words in memory of a time of faith. Whether in a book or on the Internet, they are available to those who seek them.

Not all Buddhists have amnesia. Those who remember are the ones I bless.

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