Gratitude for small miracles

in my loneliness
the neighbour cat
lets himself in
and curls up on my lap

would that i could capture the fire of sunset
and light it in your eyes
its flames i would worship
until the passion dies

Night Fog

Invisible to wingless eyes
a seagull's echoing cry

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye ~

(Words From Under the Words: Selected Poems)

Link

Quan Shi Yin Litany

(P.T.N. H.J. Kennett, adapted Brazier/Johnson)

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 to recognise you in all your myriad forms, not merely the ones we want to see;

Give us compassion to understand 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 churches teach has been taught by the Buddhas for thousands of years;

Give us the wisdom 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 one another deep in our 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 conflict in our own hearts;

Teach us to face ourselves as we really are by holding up your mirror, in all your manifestations before us;

Teach us that all beings, of whatever colour, religion, or species they may be, are equally loved by all the Buddhas;

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 compassion to improve the lot of animals and to desist from their exploitation;

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; 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, 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, but meet with the infinite light in faith and ease, one knows true freedom.

By such means as these do we live in your grace eternal.

Namo Quan Shi Yin Bosat

Every night, when I go to sleep, I die.
Every morning, when I wake up, I am reborn.

-- Mohandas Gandhi

Nembutsu

Among all living things
mountains and rivers,
grasses and trees,
even the sounds of blowing winds
and rising waves -
there is nothing
that is not the nembutsu

-- Ippen