Introduction: About the Cover

In the winter of 2013, Santosha Ma gave us all — her devotees — a project which was to pick our five favorite pieces of her art, to take a picture of that image, the best job possible, and to write up the story about that image in terms of our lives in relationship to her.  The cover art for this story was one of my picks.

In witnessing the Master’s art, I cannot help but remember the beautiful stories of the life shared with her. It is truly a unique kind of life in which beauty and above all else, love and regard for enlightenment is so wonderfully expressed, and demonstrated by Santosha Ma’s livingness and passion for art.

Santosha Ma is such an incredible artist. The words fail to describe it.  I can only share with you how it moves me.  Santosha Ma expresses the perfect story of life, the perfect reality of it as she stands awake in it.

Thusly, she has always stressed that we must notice our own lives, that we must sharpen our awareness of the beauty of it, the inherent divinity of it, to honor this life, cherish it, without need of a search for it, an assertion that we have separately mastered it, and are somehow validated as well adjusted individuals, but rather that we are already happy, already whole.

The story of the cover art for this book for me is that many years ago I was writing a series of short stories for Santosha Ma; really bad ones too. I remember her telling me that I had to just happily write really bad stories for awhile until I found out how to do it better.

Santosha Ma always encouraged creativity and she often pointed me in the direction of writing. She convinced me to risk failure, and so after writing some bad stories and some that were …meh…so so, I wanted to do one that was more ambitious, something that honored her, told a story about her with a mythical backdrop, but that expressed my love for her and the excitement of being on this journey of coming to know her.

I struggled for months with this story, and felt like it was never going to take shape, but then Santosha Ma told me;

“I want it next month!”

She set the deadline and made me take it seriously. I think the deadline was August 14, 2004.

So much was going on that final week of pulling it all together to present to her. A dear friend of mine was giving birth to her child in the next room– while in my room adjacent to that adventure, the birth of this story was nearly complete, the final lines of the story taking shape, all of this while I began a new relationship, and was looking for a new place to stay for awhile to be introduced to the next level of my sadhana by my guru.

So, despite all the sudden changes, I remember having to keep on it every day, writing page after page until finally I began to feel it come alive, crowning so to speak.  I was out of the way now. Not to blame her for my poor spelling and grammar, but I began to feel that Santosha Ma was literally writing the manuscript, and laying out all the character archetypes, and it would all come together if only I promised to meet Her, and give Her all I had.

Many years later, we sat in Santosha Ma’s meditation room one evening in 2013, Santosha Ma asked me what was the difference between now and that time where my sadhana began.

“Then, I had lots of ideas about myself, and tried to will myself along.  Now I’m only to be your devotee,”

“And you let Me be the Master?” She asked.

I nodded, grinning.

“It’s much better that way,” I said

We all laughed! It was true.

As it turned out, that is the central theme of The Master Returns; that is, giving the Divine Master the space to master you, to return, despite our ego assertions and constantly throwing Her out! The scope of the story seemed way beyond my actual understanding then, but she painted all the lines, trained me to see it, to fight for it, mastered me to hear and transcribe what the heart wanted to express through fiction.

Santosha Ma guided me through it, and when I made the same ego-frenzied mistakes of claiming ownership of it, wanting to go write the next great big installment, she reminded me that in truth I was not yet mastered by Her sufficiently for the task—stubborn in my assertions that “I,” could determine the best time to begin.

I called this story, “The Master Returns,” a prequel of sorts for another installment for Diamond Eyes (The Last Khoorlrhani Warrior) I had in mind, and was unable to approach, and when I gave it to Santosha Ma I was so happy that she was pleased by it. I stood next to her in her kitchen, shaking, trembling hands sweaty with anticipation. I really hoped she liked this one, because, man what a complete on the edge, joyride it was for me to write it. I hoped I hadn’t fooled myself again in unjustifiably thinking it was any good. Santosha Ma, who went by the name Freea then, put the book down on the counter, and then said to me;

“So… OK pretty fucking good. It’s about the dharma,”

and then she placed the cover art on the counter before me. She then said, “Put this on the cover.”
I could have died after that moment. I was so happy. I loved that she chose this picture, because I purposely described the Master, Master Paen (Pi Yen), in the story as a man with a bald head.  Santosha ma shaved her head during those times and I could not help but want Paen to look like her.  I really loved that Santosha Ma creatively engaged me by being Paen as Herself, as She Is precisely that one, the Master.

In our conversations throughout my time of living with her, she sometimes joked that she should have been born a man, that it was difficult being a woman.  I knew that she joked mainly to poke fun at our male egos, but still I thought I’d make a play on the joke within the story by sort of describing Paen as she appeared. I could not help also to think of Paen as Adi Da, her guru, who I love tremendously.

It just seemed to me like a yearned for collaborative desire was sweetly answered by her putting that picture of herself down to represent its main character! Santosha Ma also said,

“I particularly like what you wrote at the end,”
The end read, and this is not a spoiler, but rather what should have been placed in the beginning;

“Dedicated entirely to Freea, my Master, whose presence bathed me during the writing of this and moved me through my many limitations to reach the end. I love you insanely, Santosha Ma!!”

Writing this story really showed me how the divine truly lives us and plays us in sweet collaboration, attracting us to become more sensitive to Her and to know Her so intimately, so much so, that there is no more ego. And so with that, this book is entirely dedicated to my beautiful guru, my beloved master Santosha Ma who has inspired me to write.