The Illusion of Forgetting

 

At forty-five, when most people were busy discussing cholesterol levels, property loans, school fees and knee pain, our hero found himself consumed by longing once again.

Not a longing for material things, but for something far more difficult to forget.

An unbearable longing for Mañjughoṣa.

Or so he told himself.

Some mornings, before his eyes had fully opened, the thought of Mañjughoṣa was already there waiting quietly beside his waking mind.

Some longings endure quietly through time.

He thought of Mañjughoṣa while brushing his teeth.

While standing under the shower.
While eating quietly alone.

Even during the smallest and most ordinary moments of life, the mind wandered back again.

On public transport, while strangers stared endlessly into their phones, he looked outside the window pretending to observe the city. But deep inside, memory was moving through old landscapes only he could see.

Every song seemed to remember something he was trying to forget.

Certain lyrics suddenly felt like prayers.
Certain melodies carried invisible longing.
Even silence sometimes felt full of unfinished conversations.

And the strange thing was this:

Everywhere he looked, the world seemed to remind him of Mañjughoṣa.

A smile in passing.
A familiar softness in someone’s eyes.
The sound of laughter from far away.

The world had quietly become full of echoes.

At times he wondered whether life itself was merely imagination stitched together by memory. Maybe human beings were nothing more than collections of unfinished moments pretending to move forward.

Why else would certain thoughts refuse to leave us?

Why does the heart keep returning to the same place even after decades?

Years pass.
Cities change.
Bodies grow older.
Parents leave.
Friends disappear into their own lives.

Yet some memories remain untouched by time, sitting silently inside the heart like monks in deep meditation.

Sometimes he tried to reason with himself.

You are forty-five now.
Be practical.
This is foolishness.

But memory does not obey logic.

Especially when devotion disguises itself as something spiritual.

Old longing survives in strange ways. It hides inside songs, rainy evenings, empty roads, sleepless nights and passing faces in crowded streets. It waits patiently inside ordinary moments before returning suddenly with full force.

And perhaps that was why thoughts of Mañjughoṣa never truly left him.

Not because he deliberately wished to remember.

But because somewhere deep inside, his heart had mistaken memory itself for something sacred.

namo mañjuśriye kumārabhūtāya bodhisattvāya mahāsattvāya mahākaruṇikāya || tadyathā | oṁ araje viraje | śuddhe viśuddhe | śodhani viśodhani | amale vimale | jaye vahini ru ru cale | hūṁ hūṁ hūṁ | phaṭ phaṭ phaṭ svāhā