Nembutsu

Great and kind Quan Shi Yin
Give us the grace to know and recognise you,
In whatsoever form you may take,
On the streets, in the shops, in our work, in our leisure.
Give us the courage to recognise you in pleasure and in pain,
In happiness and unhappiness;
Give us the wisdom that comes from the ability to recognise you
In all your myriad forms,
Not merely the ones we want to see;
Give us compassion to forgive those who are in the grip of delusion,
Prejudice and bigotry;
Grant them the power to know the spirit of the Dharma,
Not merely the ability to read rules and scriptures;
Give us the wisdom to know that what the Christian church teaches
Has been taught by the Buddhas for thousands of years;
Give us the courage to take the Sufis by the hand
And, in their dancing, to know the joy of meditation;
Give us the understanding that the Jewish festivals are celebrated by Buddhas;
Teach people to know that peace in the world
Can only be gained if we make peace with ourselves within our own hearts;
Teach us to know that we are responsible,
Every one of us,
For the conflicts that tear the world,
Because of the greed and duality in our hearts;
Teach us to face ourselves as we really are
By holding up your mirror, in all your manifestations, before us;
Teach us that the Buddha Nature is within all beings,
Of whatever colour, religion or species they may be;
Teach us to be grateful to inanimate objects
For making themselves available for our use;
Teach us that we have not the right
To expect trees and plants to give themselves to us
Without our expressing our gratitude;
Give us the common decency, if nothing more,
To improve the lot of animals,
Without whose suffering at the hands of experimenters,
Many of us would not be alive today;
Teach parents that their children have the right to respect,
Attention, love and acknowledgement of their opinions;
Teach children that their parents’ words
Should be listened to and seriously considered;
Appear on the television screens and in the theatres
And show us the dangers of drug addiction and the evils of crime
That we may be saved therefrom;
Help us to know that all living things
Have the same basic fears, hopes, loves, longings, hunger and thirst,
That they only pretend not to have them for fear of ostracism by society;
Teach us not to be made cowards by circumstances and the truth;
Teach us that an angry person is a frightened person;
Help us to be friends to the lonely;
Give us the sight of your thousand eyes
To see where help is needed
And give us the strength of your thousand arms to give that help;
Teach us not to look at others’ faults but to see our own;
Teach all Buddhists that it is better to live in harmony with each other
Than to argue and fight over doctrine and dogma;
Teach those who slander, curse and revile others
That the only person who gets hurt thereby is themselves
For all curses must, by the law of karma,
Return upon the heads of those who utter them;
Teach those who are slandered to have compassion
For those who are wretched and misguided who utter such curses;
Teach us that, in the whole universe,
The only real enemies are fear and superstition;
Grant to those who seek to control others
The courage to face themselves and their desire for power;
Give us the courage to look into the great mirror
That all living things and inanimate objects hold up before us
And see ourselves as we truly are;
Grant us the intelligence to do something about the reflection;
Teach us that the Buddhas and Ancestors undergo no conceivable harm
By our living our lives naturally;
Teach us to know that an enlightened person is a whole person,
Unfettered by the opinions of others;
Teach us to love and enjoy the blue sky,
The sun, the rain, the snow and the storms that nature sends us;
Give us the wisdom to use the opportunity for perpetual training that they bring;
Grant us that, in the winter of our lives,
We may be able to look back down the years without too much regret;
Help us to face that which is called death truly
For if one can see gods and angels at the moment of death and feel no elation;
If one can be set upon by devils and demons and feel no fear,
One knows true freedom.
By such means as these do we live in eternal meditation.

Dhyana Master Houn Jiyu