Gone, Gone Beyond

📝Reflection

This is a mantra, chanted by its sound rather than parsed for meaning. Yet the image within its rhythm is vivid: crossing over, from this shore to the far one. To cross a river, you must leave something on this side. You cannot swim with both hands full of baggage. Our lives, too, have rivers to cross — old grudges, vain desires, the worn names that once defined us. To reach the far shore, we must set them down on this bank. The repeated "gone" in this verse says it is not done in one stroke. We cross over, a little at a time, again and again, all our lives.