Birth

The Buddha had not intended to return to Earth so soon. But things were not well with his planet, and the worsening (by the day it seemed) situation could not brook another 2,500 years of idly standing by. That much was clear.
So after a brief reconnaissance life as Giordano Bruno, the Buddha returned in current times to try again to set things right. This time as a young girl called Ruth Marten, Melissa’s daughter.
But would the observations and the wisdom tailored for long-ago India serve today? How would she approach man in his current state, fused to the compulsion to own, to amass; blinded by greed and other defilements. Was there indeed a path, a channel to reach modern man? And was there a way to make the world listen to a young woman?
Well, there simply had to be ways, hadn’t it?
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The Bodhisatta Setaketu saw that the time had come.
After a nearly uncountable span in the Tusita Heaven preparing for his destiny, preparing for his return to the little blue planet so far below, how could he tell the time was now right?
Because man far below had begun, again, to ask meaningful questions. Because nearly incessant war and slaughter had finally begun again to recede, and the northern part of the large Indian subcontinent now lay spent but peaceful after centuries of upheaval. For how long this peace would last he could not tell, but it would last long enough for his purpose, that he saw.
The war and barbarism that had flourished for the last many centuries, had now run out of breath or passion or both; things settling. He could see a small, still lake of opportunity in that far-below spiritual darkness. And so, seeing by the light that he was, he saw that the time had come to show and share it once more.
Although he did not make a point to mention this, word nonetheless soon spread throughout the Tusita realm that Setaketu was leaving for Earth, and many a well-wisher gathered to see him off, each proffering their advice as parting giftâ€"some sensible, most not; it is so very easy to be wise from such a safe distance.
Embracing his friends one by one, thanking each for his or her well-meant guidance, Setaketu finally stepped back, bowed in slow and graceful namaste to honor them all, then turned and strode toward gates that now swung open to admit soon to be Siddhattha Gotama into the cold and starry beyond.
And that is how, with a final step, he left Tusita and with it the brilliant body he had worn so long. Then, as if falling through a long and dizzying shaft, he plummeted to Earth, through eons of lightless space, through the dust of a billion billion stars, through harder and harder gravity, through miasmal planetary grasping, and finally into startled flesh and blood that legend holds fell out of his mother’s side feet first to then take seven steps in each of the four directions: North, South, East, West.